Conor Orr’s 14 Teams That Can Actually Win Super Bowl LXI

The NFL is more wide open than usual this season, but we can still narrow down the field and exclude a few teams you might not expect.

Welcome back to my annual column naming every team that could end this season as the Super Bowl champion. First order of business: You would be correct in pointing out that the Seahawks were not on last year’s list. My arrival to the Seattle hype train came toward the tail end of training camp. As such, I felt like I missed a chance to buy Apple stock at $10 a share. (I’m assuming that’s how stocks work?)

When outlining the teams that, each July, leap anew into the group that can actually win the Super Bowl, we often find these commonalities: teams that, by virtue of being reimagined by a new coach or coaches, or the arrival of a new quarterback, end up making an extraordinary leap in competence. The Commanders were that team last year, based on the run they had with Dan Quinn and Jayden Daniels in 2024.

This exercise always gets a great deal of pushback. In theory, the Patriots (also left off last season’s list) showed that many more teams than we initially imagine at the outset of a given season can win the Super Bowl. There are factors beyond the traditional confines we normally consider, and, certainly, a cascade of injuries to opponents and unexpected poor performances can create an opening where one did not previously exist. Still, I believe we should be able to look at the NFL economically and acknowledge that there is a short list of teams actually capable of reaching the playoffs this year and an even shorter list of teams that are good enough to go undefeated once they get there. 

What I am trying to capture here is the optimal short list.

Could a new quarterback raise the Lombardi Trophy for the first time? | Erick W. Rasco/Sports Illustrated (Allen); Lon Horwedel/Imagn Images (Goff); Erick W. Rasco/Sports Illustrated (Prescott)

Some notes before we get started: 

• You may have noticed that this year’s list includes 14 teams, whereas past iterations stopped at 12. This is not specifically a reaction to whiffing on the Seahawks and Patriots last year, but also an acknowledgment that the league feels a bit more wide open than it did during the stretch when we could just pencil in the Chiefs to the AFC championship game and likely beyond.

• I believe 2026 will continue to be a defense-led period in the NFL. You’ll see me more biased toward teams that have attacking fronts and amoebic secondaries flexible enough to handle both the run and the pass.

• Schedule will play a larger factor in my consideration. While it’s true that talent matters most, New England’s ability to develop a special identity and confidence during a regular-season run against weaker opponents was undeniable. 

• I feel like the Rams are in a tier above the rest of the NFL right now. Because of that, I do not believe that division rivals like the Seahawks and 49ers are necessarily done adding. I am building in the possibility that either John Schneider or John Lynch has another trick up his sleeve before we arrive at Week 1. 

• I want to get ahead of this and address the last three teams left off this list: the Bengals, Eagles and Chiefs. Cincinnati’s defense has improved immeasurably this offseason but I fear that, structurally, this offense is far, far too dependent on the health of both Joe Burrow and Ja’Marr Chase to project them in the conference championship round (even though, as I type this, I imagine these words will be clipped and pasted above my head in January). While some teams on this list will benefit from a coordinator change, I am taking the Eagles down a notch for the loss of offensive line coach Jeff Stoutland. We’re going to be asking two of the best anchor tackles in franchise history to learn a brand-new running scheme in addition to asking Jalen Hurts to operate without A.J. Brown as a major security blanket. That’s a pass for me at this juncture. The Chiefs have, unquestionably, one of the two best quarterbacks in the NFL. They may very well win 11 or 12 games this season. But I don’t see how they can simply replace the losses of Jaylen Watson and Trent McDuffie while also running back essentially the same version of the offensive line for another year, especially if the team’s most significant offensive upgrade was at the running back position.

Again, I want to be as open as possible when it comes to the Chiefs in particular, as it may look like a “troll” of some kind to leave them off this list. As I said earlier, I believe the story of the 2026 season is going to be told through versatile defensive fronts and offenses that are set up to create consistent explosive plays in the running game. Kansas City’s lead tight end will turn 37 in October and even Noah Gray left something to be desired as a run blocker last season. The addition of Kenneth Walker III isn’t going to simply change the complexion of Kansas City’s offense, and even when Eric Bieniemy was previously the Chiefs’ OC, there was a failed attempt to create a more diverse, downhill running scheme to protect Patrick Mahomes.

Now, onto the list, in alphabetical order.

Baltimore Ravens

The Jesse Minter–Mike Macdonald comparisons are obvious. Baltimore not only got younger at the head coaching position, but also poached former Sean Payton protégé Declan Doyle off Ben Johnson’s staff to run the offense. Former OC Todd Monken was great at understanding the abstract nature in which Lamar Jackson approaches a given play. Doyle spent last season in Chicago, where he watched Johnson transition from the Lions and Jared Goff to a similarly abstract-thinking passer in Caleb Williams (abstract in that these quarterbacks may eschew a certain designed route because of their internal confidence in pushing the ball further downfield, or a belief in their own athleticism and their ability to create a play elsewhere). Chicago was able to replicate the big-play hunting nature of Johnson’s Lions teams, though Baltimore has not made a similar, sweeping investment in the offensive line that Johnson has enjoyed in both Detroit and Chicago. However, if the Ravens can find consistent explosiveness on offense, I am confident that Minter has the pieces to turn Baltimore’s defensive backfield into an attacking unit that forces opponents to play more conservatively.

Buffalo Bills

The Bills will open the 2026 season with a new stadium and peak optimism. Joe Brady is replacing Sean McDermott as head coach and the new defensive staff is led by Jim Leonhard, a rising young star coordinator, who has spent the past seven years at the college and NFL levels generating a lot of buzz. That’s where I’ll start because I think, offensively, the Bills need something of a makeover. Teams were able to identify and work against some of Josh Allen’s key preferences, especially with how he tries to maximize the number of receivers flooding the defense on passing plays. Leonhard was a critical piece of a highly innovative Rex Ryan staff in the early 2010s as a player and went on to Denver where he coached under Vance Joseph, instituting a similar simulated pressure-style defense aimed at stressing offensive lines beyond their resources. Weaponizing the Bills’ defense will be the key to helping Buffalo weather a division with a much improved Patriots team, and a conference that is returning to full strength after many of its behemoths fell to injury last season. The Bills are always going to be a Super Bowl contender so long as Josh Allen is healthy, but it’s a question of raising the bar at all corners around him to fully realize his potential. 

Chicago Bears

The Bears enter the 2026 season as everyone’s darling. Caleb Williams is on the cover of Madden. Chicago will star in this year’s NFL on Hallmark original holiday movie. The Bears thrived amid the largest question that, I felt, plagued the team going into Ben Johnson’s inaugural season: Could he create explosive plays as efficiently with the Bears as he could with a star-studded Lions’ offense. The answer was a resounding yes. Even when dependent on some rookies and a fleet of free agents, the Bears were sixth in yards per game and fifth in plays of 20 yards or more. Chicago had a league-best plus-22 turnover margin, two one-point wins and one two-point win, in addition to four other one-score wins. Three of Chicago’s 11 wins last year were against teams that made the playoffs, including an overtime victory against the slumping Packers sans Micah Parsons. Given all of that, I still think Johnson is one of the league’s elite play-callers, who will be setting the pace for what is schematically possible this season. Because of that, sometimes one-score wins represent less of a fluke and more of a fact that Johnson is simply calling better plays in bigger moments than other offensive play-callers. 

Dallas Cowboys

Definitely the most controversial team on this list, the Cowboys are coming off a 2025 season in which they posted one of the top 10 offenses in the NFL in explosive plays, were third in first downs generated and had a team quarterback rating within a point of the 49ers. Those are attractive bones when held in conjunction with the fact that Dallas took a big swing at a great under-the-radar coach in Christian Parker to be its next defensive coordinator, on top of adding a ton of defensive help via free agency and the draft. Even if Dallas’s defense rises to the level of mediocre—the Cowboys had a league worst 0.162 expected points added per snap on defense and were equally vulnerable against both the run and the pass—this will be a playoff team. Dak Prescott faced a lot of pressure last season but one would assume that the still very young Cowboys offensive line sees a net improvement, especially with another season under hybrid offensive coordinator and long-time valued offensive line coach Klayton Adams. 

The Broncos beat the Bills in last season’s divisional round, but Bo Nix missed the AFC championship game with an injury. | IMAGN IMAGES via Reuters Connect

Denver Broncos

The Broncos are this year’s “on the doorstep” team, though the recent track record of those teams has forecasted disappointment. The Lions were on the doorstep in both 2023 and ’24, just like the Commanders were theoretically only a few players away going into last season after an unexpected playoff run. Last year’s Broncos, however, seemed to evade some of the more luck-adjusted factors that some teams making a surprising run enjoy. Denver actually had a net negative turnover margin and, despite having fantastic offensive line play, was a pedestrian running team—both factors that one would imagine will see improvement this season. The transition from Sean Payton to Davis Webb as offensive play-caller would be concerning if it were a different situation. Payton is clearly going to remain involved in the offense and help guide Webb. Webb’s youth and energy will be an added bonus for Bo Nix in his critical third season and may have unseen trickle-down benefits. (Though I am not overrating Payton’s animated sideline conversations with Nix, given that Payton has had them with all of his quarterbacks, I am noting that Payton is prone to rubbing some people the wrong way; whereas Webb may have a softer landing, or a more relatable one, having played in the NFL so recently). The Broncos are probably the most bulletproof-looking “on the doorstep” team of the past few years, though their schedule does raise some red flags at this point in the summer. 

Detroit Lions

The Lions have the league’s most generous schedule by some measures, which we must consider alongside this startling fact: Despite changing offensive coordinators at midseason, and heaping a ton of extra responsibility on Dan Campbell’s plate, the Lions still managed to finish third in passing yards and passing touchdowns, tied for fourth in points, tied for fourth in turnovers and seventh in yards per rushing attempt. The Lions won nine games last season, beat the Bears twice and rolled into the bye week at 5–2. New OC Drew Petzing is, I feel, a highly underrated offseason signing. After the Lions flirted with Mike McDaniel, settling on Petzing, the former Cardinals offensive coordinator, should help stabilize and make more sensible a run game and protection scheme that left some of the Lions’ best players hung out to dry under former coordinator John Morton. The loss of Terrion Arnold is undeniable, though Detroit has prided itself on the man-off-the-street mentality when it comes to the league’s No. 3 most frequent man defense. 

Green Bay Packers

I think last season was a narrative buster for Jordan Love, whose pocket presence often conveyed a sense of erraticism beyond the truth. Love is athletic and can see the field well, which motivates him to take chances—many of which get home. He finished last season with the lowest bad-throw percentage of his career (in a full-season sample size). His percentage of on-target throws was also a career high. He ranked third in down-to-down efficiency behind only Drake Maye and the EPA god, Brock Purdy. His completion percentage over expectation was better than Josh Allen’s. All of this is to say that Love is set up to start the season on a monster run, with the Packers likely to be favorites in their first four games (against the Vikings, Jets, Falcons and Buccaneers). This will be a solid confidence-building runway and ease Green Bay into the point in the season when Micah Parsons should return from last season’s torn ACL. The Packers were really only blown out once last season, had five one-score losses (and a tie) and were one disastrous quarter away from making the second round of the playoffs. I’m often biased toward teams like the Packers, who underperformed with some of their best players, over a team like the Broncos, whose best path to the Super Bowl has seemed to already materialize. 

Houston Texans

The Texans are my Super Bowl LXI pick. This Houston team was outpacing the 1986 Bears (who allowed fewer points than the ’85 Bears that won the Super Bowl) over the first few weeks of the 2025 season and added the versatile Reed Blankenship to its secondary. There is no team in the NFL that Houston cannot adequately defend and no offensive line capable of turning them inside out. I also believe C.J. Stroud will finally emerge from the football wilderness (and that his “struggles” still had him playing more efficiently on a down-to-down basis than Trevor Lawrence, Justin Herbert or Lamar Jackson last season). He is not blameless, but he has shouldered a disproportionate amount of blame for his struggles. The Texans have attacked his development with the best of intentions, and a reworked offensive line full of the right players, along with a workhorse back in David Montgomery, should make a world of difference. 

Jacksonville Jaguars

The Jaguars were a 13-win team last season that retained both of its coordinators. Ahead of us lie two distinct possibilities: Jacksonville benefited from a difficult-to-replicate turnover rate last year (second in the NFL) and lost a phenomenally impactful linebacker in Devin Lloyd, making the team a major regression candidate. Or, Liam Coen is one of the autonomous bots from the Sean McVay tree who has a second major evolution on tap in his play-calling (making the same true of Trevor Lawrence in his play). Of the teams on this list, Jacksonville is one of the few that makes me very suspicious; however, this is an organization that has invested in finding edges. The Jaguars’ in-game scouting and analytics departments are solid, which can make close games less of a coin flip. 

Los Angeles Chargers

Mike McDaniel brings a fresh look to the Chargers’ run game and a more quarterback-centric approach to run-first football. I don’t see this as a complete departure from the Greg Roman regime, but the latter years of McDaniel’s Dolphins era are a helpful clue as to how dizzying the Los Angeles backfield is going to look and how much less effort it will take from Justin Herbert to arrive at a sensible option when it’s time to throw. We’re all prisoners of the McDaniel-Herbert hype train at this moment, but it’s hard not to be. The Chargers’ defense will prove to be the biggest question mark, though key additions on the defensive interior (Dalvin Tomlinson) and edge (first-round pick Akheem Mesidor) make them less susceptible to bottoming out after the loss of star coordinator Jesse Minter.

The Rams are favored to win it all after making a couple of splashes this offseason. | IMAGN IMAGES via Reuters Connect

Los Angeles Rams

The Rams are the obvious, heavy-hitting front-runners on this list. The additions of Myles Garrett, Jaylen Watson and Trent McDuffie to a team that was a few plays away from going to the Super Bowl is the clearest example of Les Snead and Sean McVay appropriately reading their roster and honing in on the right time to triple down. The Rams’ schedule is relentless, and managing rest for both Garrett and Matthew Stafford will be a major storyline this coming season, especially after beginning the season in Australia. Still, it would be fair to say the Rams were on equal footing from a talent perspective with the Seahawks last year and made premium upgrades in every area where they were deficient, whereas Seattle had a post–Legion of Boom redux where it had to confront the difficulty of paying certain Super Bowl–winning stars versus opting to save elsewhere. Anyone who does not rank the Rams as one of the two or three top Super Bowl contenders is simply overthinking it. This is one of the best preseason, on-paper teams I have ever seen. 

New England Patriots

This list is an exercise in many what-ifs, but what if Drake Maye ends up as the league’s consensus best quarterback in 2026? Last year was his second season in the NFL. This year, the team has added A.J. Brown and Romeo Doubs as weapons, plus Alijah Vera-Tucker and Caleb Lomu to protect him. It’s impossible for me to ascribe that much of New England’s success last year to its schedule and ignore the overwhelming additions made to a team that reached the Super Bowl. Maye was exceptional and had a completion percentage over expectation of 3% better than the next-best quarterback in the league. Again, a tougher slate of defenses may narrow that margin a bit, but not nearly enough to dispose of his progress from a year ago. Brown’s addition also adds a similar element to what the Rams enjoyed upon signing Davante Adams. The Patriots had their highest success rate against nickel looks last year, seeing nickel about three times as frequently as any other defense. I would assume that Brown’s presence will only increase the amount of passing-first defensive looks the Patriots will see, by virtue of his size and his 48% double-team rate, which was second in the NFL only to Justin Jefferson in 2025.

San Francisco 49ers

As I said above, I can imagine a world where the 49ers either convince Joey Bosa to come back to football and anchor the defensive line with his brother, Nick … or where they realize how wide the talent gap is between their own defensive line and the Rams’ and trade for Maxx Crosby. By signing Mike Evans, the 49ers have made clear that their timeline parallels Los Angeles’s. We talk often about windows—mostly inaccurately, seeing as multiple quarterbacks are playing so effectively into their late 30s—but it’s hard to imagine Kyle Shanahan getting more juice out of George Kittle, Trent Williams, Evans and Kyle Juszczyk than he will this season. As I’ve mentioned before, I think signing Evans was meant to rectify the situation with Christian McCaffrey running into so many heavy boxes and finding no room. The 49ers were 30th in yards per rushing attempt last season, which was the first time since 2021 that a Shanahan-called offense was outside the top 10 in that critical stat. The 49ers won 12 games despite playing eight with a backup quarterback in by far the toughest division in football. San Francisco logged wins over the eventual Super Bowl champion Seahawks, the Rams and the late-season Bears, and had Fred Warner for only six games. As has been the case before, I feel like people are sleeping on a team that could very easily play in a Super Bowl just down the coast.

Seattle Seahawks

The Seahawks have run-it-back potential for one main reason: I think Mike Macdonald learned a very important early lesson about choosing the right offensive coordinator after a disappointing 2024 season with Ryan Grubb. Pivoting to Klint Kubiak last year and then combing the Shanahan tree for the respected Brian Fleury shows a solidification of his personal vision, and I don’t imagine a major step down from Fleury, who worked alongside Kubiak in San Francisco. The Seahawks spent the offseason strengthening their strengths, adding key depth at the running back position with Jadarian Price in the first round of the draft before pivoting to safety. This Mike Macdonald defense, the intricacies of which I detailed here, is set up to dismantle offensive lines at a time in the league’s developmental arc when I don’t imagine teams have much of an ability to catch up. While repeating is almost impossible, this Seattle team has majored in a replicable scheme both on offense and defense that will still have opponents backpedaling for another year to come.

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