SPORTS TODAY
We’re four weeks into the 2025 NFL season, which means we’re about a quarter of the way through. It’s hard to believe, given that it feels like the season just started, but that’s where we are right now.
And after four weeks, we’ve seen enough to — mostly — start declaring which teams are good and bad. There’s obviously plenty of football left to play, but all 32 teams have also put quite a bit on tape already. And we know with some degree of conviction which teams are definitely good and bad. There’s a squishy middle of the league that is more complicated to sort out, but we can at least make some educated guesses on which teams are probably good or bad.
That’s what we’re here to do today: We’re sorting all 32 of the league’s teams into five distinct tiers based on where they are right now and will likely go in the future. These include factors like their schedules, conditions of rosters and more.
SPORTS TODAY Tier 5: See you at the draft
These teams are going nowhere fast.
The Panthers have looked fairly embarrassing in three of their four games, and they somehow blew out the Falcons 30-0 in the other. We’re betting that the three losses are more representative than the one win. The same goes for the Browns, who somehow had their defense steal a game against the Packers in Week 3 but have otherwise not looked good and are making a quarterback change.
The Saints, Jets and Titans are all 0-4, and they look varying degrees of terrible. The Jets have probably looked the “best” of the three teams, and they don’t look good at all. They could have won that Week 1 game against the Steelersand almost stole Week 3 at the Bucs, but they’ve gone down big in three of their four games so far. The Saints have generally hung around and seemed run-of-the-mill bad rather than atrocious in their games, but they’re just not a talented team. Tennessee is probably on the verge of firing its coach, and quarterback Cam Ward put it best when he said of the Titans, “We ass.”
It might be aggressive to put the Bengals here, but they’ve lost two straight in pathetic fashion without Joe Burrowand their next three games are against the LionsPackers and Steelers. They’ll likely be 2-5 before we have a chance to blink.
SPORTS TODAY Tier 4: Probably bad
The Raiders have lost three in a row, including one game to a backup quarterback, and their offense just has not been able to get much going to date because Geno Smith can’t stop throwing interceptions and Brock Bowers doesn’t look like himself. The defense also is not nearly good enough to carry the team, as it’s probably still the weaker unit.
Miami has looked vaguely competent in two of its four games but been able to defeat only the decrepit Jets, and the Dolphins just lost Tyreek Hill for the season. Undermanned on both offense and defense now, they’re likely to slide even further back from the pack over the rest of the season. (They do have the good fortune of playing games against the Panthers, Browns, Saints and Jets again, though.)
The Giants pulled off Sunday’s shocking upset of the Chargersand Jaxson Dart acquitted himself fairly well in his first start, but this team that could do nothing offensively with Russell Wilson under center just lost top playmaker Malik Nabers for the year to a torn ACL. Unless the defensive line totally dominates like it did in Week 4, it’s probably still going to be a long season.
SPORTS TODAY Tier 3: Possibly frisky
- Arizona CardinalsAtlanta Falcons, Baltimore RavensChicago BearsDallas CowboysDenver BroncosHouston TexansIndianapolis ColtsJacksonville JaguarsMinnesota VikingsNew England PatriotsPittsburgh Steelers, Washington Commanders
This is the largest group of teams, and that makes sense because we’re still pretty early in the season and don’t really know enough about anybody to draw that many definitive conclusions just yet. So we’re lumping the entire middle class of the NFL into one tier, deemed possibly frisky, until we know more.
Arizona beat two bad teams and lost to two good ones. The Falcons have shown a low floor without yet showing the type of ceiling that we want to see from a good team. The Ravens have a lot of talent, but their defense is decimated and now Lamar Jackson might miss time. The Bears seem to have rebounded from their rough start but did so against two weak defenses.
The Cowboys have shown that they can move the ball and put up points, but their defense is atrocious. The Broncos just stomped the Bengals, but their offense hasn’t fully gotten untracked just yet. The Texans are here mostly because the AFC South isn’t great and we know that they have a really good defense.
The Colts are off to a surprising start to the season but required a massive comeback for one of their wins and just lost to the first elite team they played. The Jags are 3-1 but lost to the Bengals, and there’s no way that they can keep forcing turnovers at the rate they have to date. The Vikings have a ferocious defense, but we have yet to see the offense get fully untracked.
The Patriots have had their only two wins against the dregs of the league, and have looked ordinary in their two losses, one of which saw them turn it over five times. Pittsburgh could easily be 1-3 instead of 3-1 if the ball had bounced differently in games against the Jets and Pats. And we don’t yet know what Washington will look like when Jayden Daniels comes back.
All of these teams have their strengths, obviously. But again, we probably don’t know enough about them to make a determination on whether they are probably bad or good. So we’re sticking them here and punting on that determination a while longer.
SPORTS TODAY Tier 2: Probably good
- Kansas City ChiefsLos Angeles Chargers, San Francisco 49ersSeattle SeahawksTampa Bay Buccaneers
These are teams that we know are talented and have gotten off to varying degrees of good starts (they’re all 3-1 except for the Chiefs) but also know have real flaws on one side of the ball or another, for one reason or another.
The Chiefs finally looked like themselves offensively against the Ravens, but that defense has been torn to shreds by every opponent. We need to see that type of performance more consistently, and the same goes for the defense. The Chargers just lost to the Giants and now must play without both of their starting tackles for a while, but the defense is still terrific (two of New York’s scoring drives started deep in L.A. territory) and Justin Herbert was playing at an extremely high level.
The 49ers are dealing with injuries pretty much everywhere on both offense and defense. Brock PurdyRicky PearsallJauan JenningsNick Bosa — basically everyone except Christian McCaffrey is ailing at the moment. The Seahawks have one of the NFL’s best defenses, if not the single best, and that will keep them competitive in just about every game. We have to see what the offense looks like when it gets into trailing mode to have more confidence that the 49ers can contend.
The Bucs are also 3-1 and dealing with a ton of injuries. Mike Evansand the entire right side of the offensive line are out. Jalen McMillan won’t be back until after the bye. The run game has not looked the same as it did last year and Bucky Irving is now dealing with an injury. We almost have to be in wait-and-see mode here.
SPORTS TODAY Tier 1: Inner circle (for now)
- Buffalo BillsDetroit Lions,Green Bay Packers,Los Angeles RamsPhiladelphia Eagles
The Eagles and Bills are 4-0. They were inner-circle contenders last year and just keep winning. There have been some fits and starts for Philadelphia’s offense, but we know how talented a team that is, and we’ve seen that the Eagles can win games despite not playing at their best. Buffalo has given us no reason to doubt that it is one of the league’s best teams, with a rollicking comeback over the Ravens in Week 1 and double-digit wins over dregs in the other three games.
Separating the Lions, Packers and Rams from the rest of the teams near the top is a bit more difficult, but mostly comes down to ceiling. The Lions have shown that their offense is still a machine, even if that machine got taken offline for a while in Week 1 against Green Bay. The Packers have shown that their defense, which did just get torched by Dak Prescotthas the ability to be such a monster that it is almost impossible to move the ball. And the Rams have shown that they can compete with anyone on both sides of the ball. Their only loss came on a blocked kick in Philadelphia, in a game they mostly controlled.
