by Ali Bhanpuri , Brooke Cersosimo , Gennaro Filice & Dan Parr
Copied!
With the NFL playoffs entering the Divisional Round, you won’t want to miss a moment. Watch every postseason game live on mobile, get NFL RedZone during the regular season, stream game replays and more with NFL+ Premium. And for a limited time, get 40 percent off an NFL+ annual plan. Offer ends 2/16/26. Sign up today.
Anyone who declares an ironclad understanding of the NFL landscape is just begging to have the rug pulled from beneath their feet. That’s been especially true this season, when eventual flops like the Colts and Bucs masqueraded as potential front-runners, while late risers like the Texans looked cooked early on. The first weekend of playoff games was no different, with all but two games coming down to the final moments — throwing the specifics of our round-by-round postseason forecast into disarray (though, in our defense, the big-picture assessment is still in decent shape).
So what are we doing here? Why, in an environment that makes a mockery of the very concept of certainty, did we dare assemble a confidence ranking of the remaining postseason participants? Well, there is one thing that has begun to crystallize: each team’s potential path to the Lombardi Trophy, with the top-seeded squads in each conference (the Broncos and Seahawks) joining the fray for the Divisional Round of the playoffs this weekend. Yes, any of the eight groups below can still win it all, but with six teams having been discarded from the race, we can at least begin to think a little more clearly about the survivors’ chances of completing their journeys.
Each of the editors behind NFL.com’s weekly game picks column (Ali Bhanpuri, Tom Blair, Brooke Cersosimo, Gennaro Filice and Dan Parr) ranked every team still in the hunt for the Lombardi Trophy according to one specific criteria: Who do we think is most likely to end up as the last team standing? Our hierarchies were combined to form the list below, presented in reverse order.
Related Links
NOTE: The lines provided by DraftKings are current as of 12:30 p.m. ET on Tuesday, Jan. 13.
