Around the NFL Week: AFC East and NFC West
Looking in-depth at every division and the biggest storylines
By Matthew Coller
Welcome to Around the NFL Week here on Purple Insider.
This week, we pull back and take a look at every team in the NFL, how they got to this point and where they are headed. Plus we will make predictions about how each team’s season will go in 2026. We’ll cover two divisions each day.
So let’s dive into the AFC East and NFC West to kick us off…
AFC East
Buffalo Bills
Over-under win total: 10.5
Since the day the light went on for Josh Allen, the Buffalo Bills have been kings of the AFC East. They won the division every year from 2020 through 2024 despite going through a lot of the same roster ups and downs that every other franchise faces.
When their run of division titles began, Stefon Diggs was the driving force. In his first year with the Bills, he caught 127 passes for 1,535 yards. Buffalo’s depth of weapons was also impressive with Cole Beasley dominating out of the slot to the tune of 967 yards and Gabe Davis, John Brown, Dawson Knox, Isaiah McKenzie and Devin Singletary all gave them 20+ receptions.
Allen ended the 2020 regular season with an MVP-level 107.2 quarterback rating.
That year they didn’t quite have enough defensively to stop Kansas City in the playoffs. They finished 16th in points allowed and gave up 38 in the AFC Championship game to Patrick Mahomes, falling short of their first Super Bowl appearance since 1994.
It was clear coming out of 2020 that Buffalo was going to be a force. They made additions to the defense in 2021 and became the No. 1 defense in the NFL under Sean McDermott. Allen made a few more mistakes in 2021 but the offense hummed along, ranking No. 3 in the NFL in points scored and they faced Kansas City again in the postseason.
That’s when the 13 Seconds game happened. The Bills appeared to have locked up a trip to the AFC Championship but they made a mistake giving the Chiefs a touchback, which opened up a 13-second window for Mahomes and Travis Kelce to get in field goal range. They forced overtime, then the Chiefs found the end zone first.
In 2022, the Bills went through the traumatic Damar Hamlin near-death injury and then ran out of steam in the postseason against the Bengals.
In 2023, they had another chance to beat the Chiefs and missed a field goal wide right.
In 2024, it was another three-point loss to the Chiefs. That was the game where they couldn’t execute a tush push.
Despite losing top weapons and struggling to replace them and seeing a lot of defensive talent leave over the years, 2025 had something different for Buffalo in the postseason: The Chiefs sitting at home.
The results were the same though. A questionable call led to a game-changing interception by the Broncos and Bo Nix completed a game-winning drive for Denver in overtime that sent the Broncos to the AFC Championship and left Buffalo wondering what type of evil had been placed upon their heads.
The franchise that has four straight Super Bowl losses and the most tragic single play in Super Bowl history has found a way to become way, way more snake bitten.
Losing to Denver was the breaking point. The Bills decided to fire McDermott and try to recreate the Diggs trade by acquiring DJ Moore from Chicago.
Will it work?
It’s hard to know what Joe Brady is going to be like as a head coach. It’s pretty bold to fire a wildly successful head coach in favor of a 36-year-old coach with only five years experience as an offensive coordinator (and two of those years were with Carolina and went very poorly).
Folks in Buffalo have been making the Tony Dungy-Jon Gruden comparison. While it feels apt because Dungy couldn’t get the Tampa Bay Bucs over the hump and Gruden won the Super Bowl with them, the biggest difference is that the Bucs had been an ascending franchise that peaked the year that Gruden arrived. The Bills did not win the division in 2025 and it’s hard to argue that the arrow is up in terms of total roster strength.
They added Bradley Chubb in the offseason and Moore should give them a reliable veteran weapon. There’s a lot of good around Josh Allen. I’m not sure there’s a lot of great.
Part of the reason for the Bills’ untouchable run in the AFC East for five years was that the rest of the division was largely irrelevant. The Dolphins had a minute there. That was about it until last year.
Then the New England Patriots emerged from a brief dark period with a giant athlete QB with a monster arm and they instantly did something that the Bills couldn’t do for all those years: Reach the Super Bowl.
So the question facing the Bills is whether Josh Allen is so good that they will just continue to be Super Bowl favorites every year and eventually they are going to break through or did they miss their chance and the Patriots have taken away their crown and made the division race way, way harder?
The answer might be a little bit of category A and a little bit of category B. Since 2023, Allen is the most valuable player in the NFL per Pro-Football Reference’s Approximate Value statistic. Even with passing numbers that were less impressive last year, he was still PFF’s sixth best QB and he has run for 10+ touchdowns in each of the last three seasons.
If almost any other team in the NFL had a totally unproven head coach with no clear-cut No. 1 receiving weapon and a defense that has slid down the rankings over the past few seasons, we would be expecting them to be fighting for a playoff spot. But the Bills deserve the benefit of the doubt because of Allen, even if the Patriots are here to fight them for their crown for years to come.
The crazy thing about the NFL is that sometimes the chips fall a team’s way even if they aren’t the best version of themselves that we’ve ever seen. The odds would tell you that someday the Bills will make the playoffs and end up facing a backup quarterback or an opponent who comes off a really crazy physical game and they will finally get to the Super Bowl.
Is that going to be this year? The betting markets are still buying it. Buffalo is the AFC favorite to make the Super Bowl.
But there has to be a voice in the back of everyone’s mind in Buffalo wondering: Did we miss our chance?
With a franchise quarterback like Josh Allen, they are likely to have a dozen chances before it’s all said and done. Quarterbacks like Aaron Rodgers and Drew Brees went into every season with high odds and things broke their way once. If Joe Brady isn’t the answer and the environment isn’t getting any easier in the AFC East, when will they ever have better odds than leading by three points with 13 seconds to go?
BOLD PREDICTION: The Buffalo Bills will have to fight to make the postseason as their defense will decline significantly and they will lose in the first round of the playoffs
New England Patriots
Over-under win total: 9.5
Is Drake Maye the chosen one?
When Tom Brady left for Tampa Bay, there was an idea that we would find out whether it was Brady or Bill Belichick that was responsible for the franchise’s dynasty. Is it a silly debate? Yes, yes it is. Brady is arguably the greatest quarterback of all time and Belichick was a brilliant defensive mind and tactician and they couldn’t have won all the rings without each other.
Despite Brady winning the Super Bowl, it looked like Belichick was going to be fine. Mac Jones went 10-7 and made the playoffs in his first season and the Patriots had the No. 2 defense in football in 2021.
And then something broke. Over the years, Belichick had been famous for hiring coordinators who were outstanding in those positions but terrible as head coaches. From Charlie Weis to Eric Mangini to Josh McDaniels and everybody in between, Belichick’s tree had as many branches as a telephone pole.
After McDaniels left to quickly flame out in Vegas, Belichick brought back a couple of his defunct coaches Joe Judge and Matt Patricia. That makes sense but he brought back the former special teams and defensive coordinator to run the offense. Huh? The bizarre choice went down in flames. Jones declined and lost confidence and Belichick’s roster moves started to hit as often as a Boston Red Sox nine-hole hitter. Soon after that, Rome fell. A 4-13 season that finished with a 17-3 loss to the Jets was the final straw for Belichick.
It was the first time since 1992 that the Patriots had completely come apart. In 1993, they landed Drew Bledsoe and found themselves in the Super Bowl shortly after that. This time around, they selected Drake Maye with the No. 3 overall pick and repeated history.
There’s some irony in Maye’s trip to the Super Bowl. In the regular season, he drove the Patriots. Maye went 14-3 with a league-leading 72% completion percentage and 113.5 quarterback rating and ran for another 450 yards. He was virtually untouchable. In the postseason, he faced a wrecking crew of elite defenses and struggled. The Texans, Broncos and Seahawks bludgeoned the Patriots’ mediocre offensive line and Maye wasn’t able to perform at the same level as he did in the regular season.
With an MVP-caliber season under his belt, is it safe to say that Maye is going to be a superstar for many, many years to come?
The odds are in Maye’s favor. Since 2010, there have only been 20 seasons in which a quarterback produced a 110 passer rating or higher. The quarterbacks to produce those seasons were: Tom Brady, Drew Brees, Aaron Rodgers, Peyton Manning, Tony Romo, Russell Wilson, Matt Ryan, Patrick Mahomes, DeShaun Watson, Lamar Jackson, Brock Purdy, Jared Goff and Drake Maye.
That’s pretty darn good company.
When a team has a quarterback that is this good and is still on his rookie contract, there is panic within the organization. Everybody knows that if they do not produce a Super Bowl championship it will be a failure. Everybody knows that the clock is ticking on his rookie deal and if it doesn’t get done in the next couple years then it’s going to be really, really hard with him making $60+ million per year.
Nobody wants to be the next Dan Marino, who made the Super Bowl in his second year, put together a prolific career and then never made it again.
So how close are they to getting back in 2026?
The biggest unknown is how Maye is going to meld with receiver AJ Brown. The Patriots moved off ever-erratic Stefon Diggs despite his 85 receptions for 1,013 yards last season and acquired Brown to fill his shoes. They are both outstanding receivers but Brown can be just as mercurial and he has a very different playing style. Diggs is a Ferrari, whereas Brown is a Mack truck. Will Maye find it as comfortable throwing to someone who isn’t a route-running demon, rather a power forward on cleats?
The rest of Maye’s supporting cast has question marks everywhere. They shipped out Garrett Bradbury and moved Jared Wilson to center. They have a short-armed left tackle, an old right tackle, a shortage of depth receivers, a hot-and-cold young running back.
On the defensive side, some of the Patriots’ numbers were enhanced by playing a bad slate of quarterbacks that included Geno Smith, Spencer Rattler, Cam Ward, Dillon Gabriel, Tyler Huntley, Brady Cook and Quinn Ewers.
This year’s schedule is going to be much more challenging with the Seahawks, NFC North and AFC West on tap.
Regression is inevitable but as the Bills showed from 2020-2024, an all-time great quarterback can push a team through the forces of nature that are built into the NFL system to cause parity.
If Maye has even a somewhat similar season to last year and the Patriots’ defense doesn’t fall off the map, they should be right back in the mix.
And then we get to ask: What did we do to deserve Josh Allen vs. Drake Maye twice per year for a long time? That’s the good stuff.
BOLD PREDICTION: The New England Patriots will win the AFC East and AJ Brown will gain 1,500 yards receiving
Miami Dolphins
Over-under win total: 4.5
The Miami Dolphins are at it again.
It wasn’t that long ago that we were talking about the “Tank For Tua” movement in Miami, which Brian Flores tried his darndest to derail by winning football games but the Dolphins still ended up with Alabama star quarterback Tua Tagovailoa.
Now they are doing it again with hopes of Arch Manning or whatever other college quarterback emerges by surprise the way that Joe Burrow did in 2019.
The Dolphins’ last few years leave you thinking about how it all was so close to working.
In 2023, Tagovialoa and head coach Mike McDaniel clicked with the fastest group of weapons that have been put on a football field since Al Davis’s 1990s Oakland Raiders. Their offense ranked No. 1 in yards and No. 2 in scoring behind blazers Tyreek Hill, Jaylen Waddle, Raheem Mostert and De’Von Achane. Tagovailoa’s accuracy and execution of their deep passing game was remarkable as he racked up a league-leading 4,624 yards. He was healthy for 17 games and the Dolphins looked dangerous.
Fate was not on their side after that. They landed the Chiefs in the postseason and froze up in subzero temperatures. It’s hard not to imagine if they had landed a home game or dome opponent how things might have gone differently. Putting the fastest show on grass into an ice palace was the perfect recipe for a meltdown.
The following year Tagovailoa suffered a horrific concussion early in the year that set back the Dolphins and things went downhill from there. He suffered another concussion later in the year and the offense couldn’t survive with Tyler Huntley and Skylar Thompson.
You never really know when you’re at the top of your mountain in the NFL. Every team always thinks when things are going well that it’ll keep getting better.
Hill was lost to a major injury. Tagovailoa never recovered. The league figured out some of McDaniel’s tomfoolery and everything fell apart.
After missing the playoffs two years in a row, the Dolphins fired McDaniel and tore the team limb for limb. They traded Waddle to the Broncos, cut Tagovailoa despite a dead cap hit worth the equivalent cost of five helicopters and hired a first-time head coach.
The Dolphins are now at ground level. They signed quarterback Malik Willis with hopes that he can become a good starting quarterback in years to come but they haven’t given him much else to work with. A bunch of no-name receivers, a handful of potentially promising defensive players and dreams of a top-five draft pick.
The question isn’t whether they will be bad, it’s how bad. There’s a scenario where Willis scrambles around enough and Jeff Hafley’s defense blitzes enough to do the same thing that Flores did with his blitz packages and Ryan Fitzpatrick back in 2019.
Maybe they can be competitive enough to achieve their goal of getting young star talent on rookie contracts without being the complete laughingstock of the NFL.
Maybe.
It doesn’t exactly give you hope for Willis when you see two rookies, Tutu Atwell and a couple guys nobody on Miami Beach could identify without a WiFi connection.
Here’s a question: Am I a weirdo for being intrigued by the Dolphins?
When a team has no quarterback at all (looking at you Browns, Cardinals), they aren’t the slightest bit interesting. There’s no chance that it works. Why even turn the lights on in the stadium. But Willis was really good in his small sample of playing time with the Packers and his skillset once had folks thinking he could be a first-round draft pick.
He’s a glorious development story. Willis was patient, honed his skills over several years behind Jordan Love and then was ready and outstanding when his moment came. How can you not be romantic about a quarterback who keeps on plugging until he gets his shot?
This isn’t to say they will be good, just that I want to see it. The Dolphins have a cornerback named Storm Duck, the fastest running back in the NFL and a head coach with a Vietnam haircut. Maybe I like the smell of rebuilding in the morning.
I have a feeling we’ll be saying in 2027: “Hey, maybe the Dolphins could take the next step.”
If I’m wrong, may the football gods have mercy on the souls of tortured Dolphins fans, who are still celebrating 1972 and who couldn’t win a Super Bowl with the most prolific passer of all time.
BOLD PREDICTION: The Miami Dolphins will shock the world by winning six games and Malik Willis will remain as the team’s QB into 2027
New York Jets
Over-under win total: 5.5
On paper, the New York Jets look quite a bit better than they did last year. They brought in a quarterback who won 10 games two years ago, they kept Breece Hall and drafted two super talented young weapons and a high pick edge rusher along with some veteran leadership on defense.
By any measure, we should be buying the bounce. Last year was absolute rock bottom for the Jets and their very impressive tank job resulted in bringing in a truckload of young talent that you could easily see hitting the ground running right away. David Bailey was a monster pass rusher in college, Omar Cooper Jr. is a YAC monster and Kenyon Sadiq is one of the freakiest talents at tight end we’ve seen since Vernon Davis.
They made a good move for T’Vondre Sweat at defensive tackle to give them some beef and made an excellent draft pick of D’Angelo Ponds, an undersized but gifted cornerback and their veteran leaders Harrison Phillips and Demario Davis should help keep everyone pulling in the right direction.
But I’m sorry, I just can’t do it.
The Jets are like somebody who agrees to a tee time with you and never shows up with no phone call. And then when they ask you to play golf again, they swear they won’t ghost and then they do it again. Every year the Jets make an offseason case that this time they are serious and yet they continue to be massively and ridiculously unserious.
Last year NFL.com did an article where they picked every game before the 2025 season and both of the authors had the Jets finishing second in the division.
In 2024, CBS Sports predicted every game and they picked the Jets to finish 9-8. They went 5-12.
Nah, nah, nah, Jets, you gotta prove it.
The overly positive Jets enjoyers are probably overlooking the fact that Geno Smith had an argument for the NFL’s worst quarterback last year. You can blame Pete Carroll and Chip Kelly and the offensive line and receivers and you would be right but Smith’s downfall was the same stuff that inspired the Seahawks not to keep him. He led the NFL in sacks and interceptions.
Smith is also old now. The drop-off for great QBs might be in their 40s but it’s early-to-mid 30s for QBs who have been good-not-great during their career. To use a similarly strong-armed, reckless QB example: Jay Cutler was out of the league by age 34.
Could Smith click with his really good weapons and make the Jets competitive on a week-to-week basis? Sure. It’s possible. Gotta see it to believe it though. This franchise gets zero benefit of the doubt.
The same goes for their defense. The Jets’ roster was horrendous last year so it’s hard to expect much from head coach Aaron Glenn but a golden retriever could have coached them to zero interceptions.
Here’s a stat to put the Jets’ defensive ineptitude in 2025 in perspective: Opposing quarterbacks threw 36 touchdowns, zero picks and were only sacked 26 times. QBs had a 110.9 QB rating when playing the Jets. MVP quarterback Matthew Stafford’s QB rating was 109.2.
Yes, the accumulation of QBs playing the Jets last year were better than the league MVP.
You can’t tell me that’s only because the Jets had a young roster. The coaching has to be abominable in that case. Not a single quarterback was tricked by a coverage? Not a single QB was pressured by a blitz to the point that they tossed the ball up for grabs? Another team in the same league intercepted 23 freaking passes and they weren’t even that great on defense and the Jets couldn’t get a single one?
Aaron Glenn wasn’t a particularly good defensive coordinator with the Lions either. In four years as DC, his teams ranked below 20th in points allowed three times. The only season that Detroit cracked the top 10, he landed a head coaching job.
Certainly it’s possible that the roster could improve to the point where Glenn looks much, much better than last year but that has to be proven.
So while Jets have a lot of promising players as they go into the future, the leap of faith to believe in them figuring out how to be competitive in 2026 is a really hard one to take.
Next year, maybe we’ll be singing a different tune.
PREDICTION: Aaron Glenn will be fired by Week 10 and Cade Klubnik will start five games
NFC West
Los Angeles Rams
Over-under win total: 11.5
They can’t keep getting away with this.
When the Los Angeles Rams went all in on the 2021 season, they made one of the boldest and most aggressive strategic roster building plays that we have ever seen in the NFL. They traded a quarterback who had led them to the No. 1 offense in the NFL and reached the Super Bowl for a sub-.500 QB from a bad franchise and then sent the rest of their draft capital away in favor of a bunch of in-their-prime stars.
The fact that it worked has inspired teams around the NFL to think more in terms of when they are ready to go all in with a roster.
The thing that I can’t stop thinking about with the 2021 Rams is how close it came to not working.
The Rams went through a losing streak midway through that season where Matthew Stafford was struggling with turnovers and they looked more like a middling team than an All-Star team. They didn’t land the No. 1 seed and had to go on the road against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in the divisional round. L.A. got ahead of the Tampa Bay Bucs but blew a lead to Tom Brady and probably should have walked out of Tampa as a massive disappointment. Had Todd Bowles not dialed up a preposterous blitz versus the best QB in the league against the blitz, the Rams’ season would have ended there.
In the NFC Championship, Stafford made a reckless throw late in the fourth quarter that should have been picked off and given the San Francisco 49ers another trip to the Super Bowl. Instead the pass was dropped by Jaquiski Tartt, the whole thing would have been for naught.
Of course, all championship teams have those almost-didn’t-happen moments but the point is how fragile this thing is, even if you are a super team.
The 2026 Rams have absolutely everything needed to get back to the Super Bowl. They have the MVP at quarterback, two superstar receivers, a deep tight end room and the best coach in the NFL. The acquisition of Myles Garrett gives them the most violent defensive line since the Fearsome Foursome and they acquired two proven cornerbacks who might have a chance against Jaxon Smith-Njigba.
On paper, there is no reason to suggest anything other than the Rams winning the Super Bowl because. But that’s why they play the games.
What I can’t stop wondering is: How could this not work?
The answer is probably if age hits them hard at QB. Last year they got and MVP season from a 37-year-old quarterback with back problems. What is the likelihood that Stafford is going to be able to repeat his 2025 season? In 2024, Stafford threw for nearly 1,000 less yards than 2025 and only had 20 touchdowns and a 93.7 QB rating.
Stafford’s weapons are a little creaky as well. Davante Adams had 14 touchdowns at age 33 and with hamstring problems. Puka Nacua has had some off-field problems. The Rams were only 21st in PFF pass blocking grade last season. That didn’t deter Stafford then but if there are struggles again, it’s always possible that it could hurt more this time around.
On the defensive side, Garrett has been essentially invincible and the other great D-linemen Byron Young and Kobie Turner are going to be a nightmare for opponents to face. At the same time, defense can be fragile. Everyone is a couple injuries away from being mediocre.
Oh and there’s that special teams issue. You could make a pretty strong argument that the Rams would have been raising the Lombardi Trophy if they could have stopped a punt return for touchdown or made a key field goal.
There are so many things that could go wrong that we can never assume that a team is just going to win a championship based on them winning the offseason or loading up on an already-strong roster.
That said, the Rams’ squad has as much star power as any team we’ve seen win the Super Bowl over the last decade. Last year they couldn’t cover at the cornerback position so they acquired a star in Trent McDuffie and another very solid starter in Jaylen Watson. Heck, they even have a good backfield. One of the more underrated things about L.A. last year was their run game, which ranked top-10 in total yards and yards per attempt.
It’s hard not to look at their depth chart and laugh in disbelief that a team could put this many excellent players on the field at once in a 32-team league where some squads are starting guys who could be in the UFL next year. It’s crazy that they were able to do this again.
Will it all turn into a title? Who knows. The NFL has a way of surprising us.
PREDICTION: The Los Angeles Rams win the Super Bowl. Aaron Donald comes back out of retirement. Matthew Stafford has another top-10 season, the Rams lead the NFL in sacks and Sean McVay walks away from coaching to join Amazon at $20 million per year
Seattle Seahawks
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