Post-Free Agency NFL Power Rankings
In most free agency periods we can only guess which teams got markedly better or worse. We follow the hype and overlook the substance. Who would have thought, back in 2017, that Kyle Juszczyk would have been a more important offseason acquisition than Alshon Jeffery, Dontari Poe or Terrelle Pryor that year? This year is different. When Russell Wilson changes teams, Davante Adams and Tyreek Hill find new destinations and there are top-five-caliber left tackles on the board, life in the NFL changes in a hurry.
So, the natural reaction when the landscape shifts is to … RANK POWER. For a deeper dive into one substantive shift that has taken place around the NFL, you can check out our piece on running back value in the drop-eight-into-coverage era. For deeper dives into a lot of these moves individually, you can also subscribe to The MMQB NFL Podcast.
But for now, here’s a quick snapshot of where the league stands and where each team lies as we inch toward draft season.
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The Rams aren’t done yet, as evidenced by the blatant trading of salary expectations via anonymous sources through the media with Bobby Wagner. This is a team good enough to win the NFC West again and, I believe, it is wisely changing speeds on offense. By letting go of Robert Woods and replacing him with a more possession-by-possession threat in Allen Robinson, Sean McVay may be abandoning his most familiar tendencies and creating an offense that is threatening even when Cooper Kupp is neutralized (and you better believe there will be a Kupp-neutralizing subset of every opponent defense next year).
I don’t think we can punish the Bengals by dropping them below No. 2 when all they did this offseason is rebuild the entirety of their offensive line. At the combine, Cincinnati’s mild-mannered personnel czar, Duke Tobin, was berated with questions about a unit that gave up the most sacks in the NFL. Tobin defended those players adamantly, while simultaneously laying the groundwork for some upgrades. The Bengals remain deep at the skill positions and have a formidable pass rush. Re-signing B.J. Hill will help them maintain an interior push, and the replacement of C.J. Uzomah with Hayden Hurst could end up being a cheaper, skill-neutral swap (even though Uzomah was, behind the scenes, a major contributor toward the Super Bowl run).
Tom Brady could end up being the most significant offseason addition in a year of massive upheaval. Weirdly, NFL defenses in general still have weak points suited to Brady’s strengths, making him an effective, quick-release quarterback who will lock the Buccaneers into another playoff run in 2022. Tampa Bay’s young core, which was drafted for a limited-time Brady run in ’20 has now matured. The most telling portion of the team’s offseason is still to come. The Bucs still have double-digit free agents on the market, some of whom are too old for the kind of money they’ll demand. Did Brady’s miniature retirement cost the Buccaneers too much time to be competitive with some of the younger options available? It’s a worthwhile question to ask. This draft, which is at least three rounds deep in pass-rush help, needs to be perfect for the Buccaneers, who also need to coax Rob Gronkowski back on the field or add supplemental tight end help. They also need to layer depth at the cornerback spot and beef up the defensive interior to free up their star off-ball linebackers.
We have not seen Josh Allen without Brian Daboll, which should be a scarier proposition for Bills fans than they’re currently making it out to be. This weighed on me heavily while compiling the first post-free agency power rankings, despite Buffalo making some really smart and vaguely splashy maneuvers. The Von Miller signing was brilliant. Pass rushers age gracefully, especially in a defense that has two ball-hawk safeties that keep quarterbacks pinned in the backfield for long stretches. Miller will face Zach Wilson and Tua Tagovailoa twice a year and could coast to double-digit sacks. Under the radar, adding O.J. Howard to the fold gives Buffalo an option to finally get out of exclusive 11-personnel looks. The Bills went with a double-tight end set fewer times than any other club in football last year.
I’ll probably be dragged for saying this, but at some point, we have to worry about the Chiefs’ automatic first-down playmakers either aging out or getting traded, right? JuJu Smith-Schuster is a fine addition, but he isn’t Hill. Mecole Hardman isn’t Hill either, though he was billed as a suitable replacement during the 2019 draft. The additions of Marquez Valdes-Scantling and Smith-Schuster show that Andy Reid and Eric Bieniemy are unafraid of leaving Patrick Mahomes with precious little weaponry in the zero-to-10-yard range outside of Travis Kelce. It will be a true test of Reid’s play-designing ability and the most realistic look we’ve had at Mahomes. Don’t get us wrong, it’s still going to be great, but maybe a little less so?
While the Packers would never admit this, it’s hard not to wonder if trading Davante Adams felt easier given that the division didn’t get any better around them. Aaron Rodgers is so good that it’s impossible to imagine the Packers anywhere else but first place in the NFC North. The major question is whether Green Bay will pry loose any receiving help, or if it’s ambitious enough to try to develop a top option on the fly. The narrative that the Packers don’t draft high-profile wideouts because it takes Rodgers too long to break them in is a curious one that I’d like to see tested empirically throughout this season particularly. Will we get that chance? Who knows. One would imagine some veteran options are still available, and Green Bay has a stuffed cupboard of picks.
Kyle Shanahan isn’t going anywhere, but this season will be somewhat of a defining one for his legacy. At some point, we’ll have to see what kind of long-term work he’s put in on Trey Lance. The 49ers’ former top QB lieutenant, Rich Scangarello, is now at Kentucky as an offensive coordinator. Mike McDaniel, his top run-game strategist, is in Miami. At seemingly every turn, Shanahan’s staff gets shaken down and raided, putting more of a magnifying glass on his contributions. Brian Griese, who has never coached professionally, is now the team’s QB coach. Jimmy Garoppolo will likely get dealt when his shoulder is cleared and teams have time to evaluate him medically. All of this is a fascinating preamble to the 2022 season, in which the 49ers are coming off a trip to the conference title game, could look completely different on opening day ’22 and, depending on the progress of the quarterback, be even better.
A member of the national media is overrating the Chargers in the offseason? You don’t say! The Chargers of my mind are some kind of invincible technological society that visits earth on game days to clobber the dated civilizations of football past. In real life, it’s far more complicated than that. Sometimes they don’t convert those fourth downs deep in their territory. Sometimes Khalil Mack and Joey Bosa will look way better on paper than in an actual game when both of them mistakenly stunt into the same gaps and get swallowed up by a pocket of offensive linemen. That said, I think Brandon Staley made some of the decisions he did last year to cover up for what he didn’t have on the personnel front. Signing J.C. Jackson, Mack and, maybe even more importantly from a functional standpoint, Austin Johnson and Sebastian Joseph-Day on the defensive interior could steer him toward more of a comfort zone as a defensive play-caller.
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Nathaniel Hackett gets a crack at running his ship after being a background catalyst in major turnarounds at Syracuse and with the Bills and Jaguars. One of the more enjoyable parts of this offseason will be seeing how Hackett decides to incorporate the increasingly popular outside-zone system he worked with in Green Bay into a melting pot of his own sinister ideas, which run the gamut stylistically. His muse during this process will be Wilson, who, when healthy, remains one of the five best quarterbacks in football. The remainder of Denver’s free agency was all at once frantic, brilliant, puzzling and surprising. General manager George Paton was always going to throw his heft into the pass-rusher market and struck gold on the versatile D.J. Jones, while simultaneously overreaching on the situational pass-rusher Randy Gregory. K’Wuan Williams may have been their best grab, and he polishes off a secondary that could emerge as one of football’s toughest in 2022.
10. Baltimore Ravens
The Ravens still have some work to do on the back end of free agency and leave a slew of valued veterans on the heap while they evaluate their current roster. The big addition of Marcus Williams gives Baltimore a classic Ravens safety who can be active in blitz scenarios and also a cleanup center fielder for the errant passes their defense tends to create. One of the most important moves was not allowing versatile backfield blocker Patrick Ricard to hit the market. They enter 2022 as a realistic contender to reclaim the AFC North from the Bengals, assuming Lamar Jackson is healthy.
11. Dallas Cowboys
The Cowboys’ biggest score of the offseason was somehow holding onto Dan Quinn, who reenergized their defense and saved what was a quickly spiraling Mike McCarthy tenure. Most of the big news in Dallas this offseason surrounds departures. La’el Collins is gone. Gregory is gone. Connor Williams is gone. Amari Cooper is gone. While some core players have returned on short-term deals, they are no longer a part of Dallas’s core. The Cowboys have to figure out exactly what that core looks like now. They are still a betting favorite to win the NFC East but lack the air of sustainability they once had.
Out of all the news we’ve ingested this offseason, I’m still surprised at the massive extensions handed out to Steve Keim and Kliff Kingsbury, who made a first-round exit in the playoffs this year after two losing seasons before that. Each year, the Cardinals seem to falter down the stretch, and Kingsbury himself admitted at the combine that he did not have enough in the arsenal to combat the loss of DeAndre Hopkins (this, despite Christian Kirk receiving almost $20 million per year on the open market). Still, if the Cardinals somehow manage to find some adequate, ancillary firepower, they are a veteran club built to contend at the moment. It’s extremely difficult to imagine they’ll have the same white-hot start they did a year ago, but it was difficult to imagine them going on such a run in the first place.
Bill Belichick’s coaching staff was picked apart once again, this time leaving him without an offensive or defensive coordinator. The egalitarian approach is fascinating and could guard against teams gathering tendencies on play-callers if they don’t know exactly who is dialed into the headset. Matt Patricia and Joe Judge are both in the mix with Josh McDaniels now in Las Vegas. On the field, the Patriots followed up an explosive 2021 free agency with a far more timid one this time around, adding Ty Montgomery into the fold to help Mac Jones on checkdown throws out of the backfield. With another year in the system, Jones and the Patriots should be increasingly efficient and competitive after starting the long, post–Tom Brady turnaround process a year ago.
The Colts were on the edge of playoff contention last year before an epic end-of-season implosion that cost Carson Wentz his tenure in Indianapolis. Now entering the ring for the Colts in this veteran QB royal rumble? Matt Ryan. Ryan should more closely resemble Frank Reich’s ideals for a decisive veteran passer and Chris Ballard’s ideals for an experienced leader who can handle the day-to-day responsibilities of running a locker room. The Colts lost Matt Eberflus to a head-coaching job and have been pecked at in free agency without any notable moves outside of trading for Ryan (which we’re not underplaying in significance). Right now, Indianapolis projects as a playoff team, and one that should at least be on par with, if not slightly ahead of, the Titans.
Last year’s late-season Cinderella, the Eagles come into 2022 momentarily invested in Jalen Hurts with a troika of first-round picks on tap for the draft. They also added Haason Reddick to bolster the pass rush and brought back both Fletcher Cox and Derek Barnett on short-term deals. The Eagles also swiped Zach Pascal away from the Colts on a one-year deal. While it’s true that any team has a legitimate chance of winning the NFC East any year, the Eagles feel like a candidate to run away with the division if their offensive line stays healthy. A majority of teams in the division aren’t tough enough to hang with their dizzying combination of zone-read and downhill-style running.
16. Tennessee Titans
This has been a somewhat revealing offseason for the Titans, who are now facing legitimate questions about their quarterback play following a first-round loss at the hands of the Bengals. Their challenge now and in the draft is to create a sustainable plan that addresses life after Ryan Tannehill and Derrick Henry. With just two picks in the top 100, they may have to accept Robert Woods as the crown jewel of this offseason. The Titans tried their hand at a version of outside zone with Julio Jones as the catalyst but may be reaching for more of a 49ers-esque version, with Woods serving as the top-clearing vertical weapon to unlock more of A.J. Brown.
17. Cleveland Browns
This is a difficult blurb to write, considering we have no idea who will be playing quarterback in Week 1. While we know who Cleveland wants to be under center, active civil cases against Deshaun Watson, plus a boatload of already-public information on the quarterback’s conduct, bring to light the possibility of a suspension. We don’t know what Watson looks like without Bill O’Brien and Tim Kelly, who did more than most know to tailor some of Clemson’s key principles into their system for Watson. We don’t know that Amari Cooper, Donovan Peoples-Jones and Jakeem Grant are a formidable weapon set. We don’t know that the defense has finally jelled outside of the transcendent Myles Garrett. And so we wait.
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Josh McDaniels arrived in the crowded AFC West with a bang, bringing with him Chandler Jones on defense and Adams on offense. While we’d normally fear the influx of soon-to-be-30-year-olds or 30-plus-year-olds, McDaniels has done a better job than most over the years of maximizing veteran talent. Derek Carr is playing the best football of his career right now and will now be paired with as formidable a receiving corps as there is in the NFL. Defensively, Patrick Graham will bolster his head-coaching credentials with a unit that added some thickness up the middle.
When someone like Sean Payton leaves an organization, it’s like lifting a boulder that has been sitting in one place for decades. What happens to all the other organisms living underneath the rock’s hugeness when exposed to the sunlight? We could, for example, find out that Pete Carmichael Jr., who had been Payton’s offensive coordinator since 2009, can adequately design the whole system on his own. That makes Jameis Winston a far more attractive commodity than we see him as presently. Or, maybe the offense will be stiff and lifeless, forcing Winston back into his old propensity to huck wild, dangerous footballs into a deep thicket of defenders. Somehow, the Saints fit Marcus Maye under the cap and signed the enterally posterized Daniel Sorensen to bolster their defense. Otherwise, a lot of time and energy seemed to be spent chasing their tail on Watson. Right now, New Orleans projects as a team that will be frustrating to play against because of how good its defense will be, but one with uneven performances on offense that will be difficult to count on in the long term.
20. Miami Dolphins
Before free agency began, we cautioned keeping an eye on the Dolphins, who were remaking their offense so drastically that they had no choice but to spend heavily on the free-agent market. Terron Armstead headlines a class that also included Hill (via trade) and running backs Chase Edmonds and Raheem Mostert. Under the radar, the addition of both Edmonds and former Raiders fullback Alec Ingold should provide Miami with quick outlets for Tua Tagovailoa and movable backfield chess pieces to dictate defenses and create mismatches. Can Ingold be McDaniels’s new Juszczyk?
The Vikings aimed at their defense this offseason, gambling on the injection of Kevin O’Connell to fix their offense. Za’Darius Smith will be billed as the top prize, though Harrison Phillips, coming off arguably his best season with the Bills, may end up being the best overall player. Phillips is deceptively nimble and will pair nicely with a front four that all of a sudden feels a lot less vulnerable than it did a year ago. Kwesi Adofo-Mensah, the team’s new general manager, arrives with some of the highest initial praise we’ve heard for an incoming executive. His previous employer, Cleveland, was known for its targeted approach during Adofo-Mensah’s time there. We will see if the skill set carries over when there’s less of a clean slate.
22. Chicago Bears
There is no basis for putting the Bears here, save for their most important offseason addition: head coach Matt Eberflus. This is, for now, a pro-Eberflus set of power rankings. The MMQB has been infatuated with Eberflus for a few years now, and we’re about to be proven right. The reason we’re starting here is that, at least defensively, he can make their ho-hum free agency, which included the likes of Al-Quadin Muhammad, Nicholas Morrow and Justin Jones, seem like more than it is. In a quick conversation at the combine, Eberflus mentioned to me the influence of Rod Marinelli, his desire to out-stunt opponents and the genesis of his creative defensive play design. That carries over from Indianapolis, even if DeForrest Buckner and Darius Leonard do not.
The Steelers will always be competitive with Mike Tomlin as their head coach, and the Mitch Trubisky experiment may end up faring a little better than many think. I don’t see it outside the realm of possibility that they’ll be edging toward .500 in late November and the rest of a banged-up division is within their grasp. The Bengals are better, but not insurmountable. The Ravens are far too injury-prone and especially vulnerable at the quarterback position. Trubisky, in structure, can be an effective player and will likely have a better run game next year than he ever did in Chicago. Najee Harris has some serious breakout potential in his second season. The offseason additions of Myles Jack, Levi Wallace and James Daniels all have the potential to be strong Band-Aid options for a roster that needs some youth.
Ron Rivera indeed has full control of this franchise, as seen in the fact that it only spends first-round picks on defensive players and the team is now named after the off-brand G.I. Joes you can buy at Dollar General. Typically, this also means disadvantageously conservative quarterback play, but in the case of the newly-acquired Carson Wentz, any Rivera-influenced guardrail will be welcome for a quarterback who can go through destructively bad stretches of hero ball. We will likely see a less-effective version of Wentz than we got in Indianapolis last year, which is still oddly just enough to put the Commanders in contention for the No. 7 seed.
25. New York Giants
The new brain trust of Joe Schoen and Brian Daboll is going to give the Giants something they have not had since 2016: a recognizably modern, competent offense that features its playmakers. While strangely hollow at critical positions—former GM Dave Gettleman embarked on a Sisyphean quest to fortify the team’s offensive and defensive lines, but ended up doing the executive’s equivalent of taking a bag of cash, contorting into an elongated Hideo Nomo–like windup and firing the money deep into the hottest regions of the sun—the Giants do have playmakers. They also have a quarterback who, if healthy, is at the very least capable of some accurate mid-range throws that can arrive on target to speedy wideouts, or stronger wideouts capable of winning 50-50 balls.
26. Detroit Lions
Perhaps the Lions could surprise us and vault back into the quarterback conversation at some point, giving Jared Goff some legitimate competition. While they did not get that much better this offseason, the signing of D.J. Chark seemed to be one of the better receiver deals in an absurd NFL free-agency period. Chark has some athletic upside that was simply untapped with the Jaguars. His drafting GM, Dave Caldwell, has a strong track record of receiver drafts, including Allen Robinson and the undrafted Allen Hurns, both of whom played a critical role in the team’s 2017 AFC championship run. While it may be in their best interests to ultimately bottom out and pray for another Matthew Stafford to land in their laps, Dan Campbell would likely answer a request to tank with full Swayzeian Road House flair, delivering one athletic spinning kick after another to any suggestion that the Lions should lose on purpose.
27. New York Jets
Consider this as much of a love letter to a team as one could receive at No. 27 in the power rankings. GM Joe Douglas deserves credit for placing the team in a position to be competitive, both from a cap space perspective and from a draft stockpile perspective (the Jets have four picks in the top 40 of the draft, and two in the top 10). If the Jets have the trappings of a quarterback of the future in Zach Wilson, they could see themselves vaulted into seventh-seed potential a year from now. The division got better around them quickly, but the additions of Laken Tomlinson and C.J. Uzomah should make for a more streamlined running game and, thus, a more efficient Wilson. Carl Lawson also comes into the fold after missing last year with a torn ACL. He’ll likely be paired with some defensive line help added via the draft.
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A competent Jacksonville is an exciting proposition. And while the Jaguars spent strange money this offseason, they are certainly better at several positions now than they were at season’s end, or, if players like Brandon Scherff stay healthy, markedly improved. They also now have a coach who, in the coming weeks, is unlikely to wind up and kick one of his players, berate his staff or ask a passerby who that Aaron Donald character is. Better days, no doubt. Still, do we see the Jaguars as any more of a threat against the Titans or a much better Colts team? Outside of drubbing the Texans, which would be the most obvious benchmark of improvement, do they have the feel of a fringe playoff team?
29. Seattle Seahawks
Acquiring Baker Mayfield would make this situation slightly more attractive, though either way we’re looking at a post-Wilson reorganization. The Seahawks are a little bit adrift right now, and as any fan of prolonged moribund franchises knows, this is still in the pre-darkness there’s a plan, right? phase. You’re talking yourselves into Drew Lock. You’re wondering if the locker room might blossom without Wilson’s heavy-handed positivity. You have visions of an offense that doesn’t involve theatrical whirls around the backfield and is more of a knifing, quick-strike attack. It may, however, get a little worse from here before it gets better. John Schneider has been so good at his job for so long that the Seahawks have never had this kind of capital. He will define his post–Legion of Boom legacy by how he spends it. Measuring how long that post-Wilson darkness lasts is a fair gauge of how it’s going.
30. Houston Texans
Organizationally, the Texans are a befuddling entity—a kind of technological startup worth billions without a tangible plan as to what they’ll sell or how they’ll maintain their finances, headed by an eccentric ideologue who may be better off running a secret society on some distant island for spiritually lost rich people. Still, Lovie Smith did a nice job last year and his defensive philosophy is coming full circle in the NFL at the right time. On the field, the team should be middling, but maybe not distractingly so.
31. Atlanta Falcons
Selling out for Watson, and then forcing yourself to trade Matt Ryan and supplant him with Marcus Mariota is going to have its consequences. While I don’t hate the Mariota acquisition at all, he didn’t perform well enough in an outside-zone-focused scheme to stave off Ryan Tannehill in Tennessee. What makes us think life will be that much better in Atlanta?
Arguably the most disappointing team this offseason, the Panthers are without an offensive identity and lost some of the most critical components of a blitz-forward defense during free agency. They are not going to have the secondary to drop back into coverage more frequently, nor do they possess the firepower off the edges anymore. Barring a stunning draft that adequately addresses both the edge and the quarterback position, they are vying for third place in the NFC South at best.
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