American Football
Giants, Chiefs headline five NFL teams poised to bounce back in 2026
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The New England Patriots went from 4-13 in 2024 to 14-3, an AFC title and a Super Bowl appearance last season, creating a blueprint that every struggling team is desperate to follow.
Finding another ten-win leap is unlikely; even the Patriots’ transformation required excellent coaching, a second-year quarterback surge, and an accommodating schedule.
But these five NFL teams have reasons to believe that their 2025 record represented the bottom, not their new normal.
New York Giants
The Giants’ 4-13 record obscured some encouraging work from Jaxson Dart, who threw 15 touchdown passes and rushed for more than 400 yards despite starting only 12 games.
His second season now comes under John Harbaugh, whose Baltimore teams recorded just two losing campaigns in 18 years.
A healthy return for Malik Nabers gives Dart the elite target he largely lacked last season, while Harbaugh should bring basic organisational competence to a franchise that has recently treated it as an optional extra.
The NFC East is difficult, but seven or eight wins would represent substantial progress.
Kansas City Chiefs
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Calling Kansas City a rebound candidate feels slightly fraudulent after years of treating the Chiefs as the league’s default final boss.
Yet they slumped to 6-11 in 2025, missed the playoffs for the first time since 2014, and lost Patrick Mahomes to a torn ACL and LCL in December.
That record contained a fairly obvious invitation for regression: Kansas City went 1-9 in one-score games, having gone 11-0 in them the previous season.
Mahomes’ return is the central issue, but the signing of Super Bowl LX MVP Kenneth Walker gives him arguably the best running back of his career.
A return to health and merely normal fortune in close games could restore the Chiefs to contention remarkably quickly.
New Orleans Saints
New Orleans began 2025 at 1-7 but went 5-4 after Tyler Shough became the starter, finishing 6-11.
The second-round pick displayed enough accuracy and downfield ambition to suggest the Saints need not re-enter quarterback purgatory immediately.
They also benefit from one of the league’s gentler schedules, earned by finishing last in the NFC South. Road games against Detroit and Baltimore provide a horrible opening fortnight, but the division remains short of a dominant side.
If Shough’s late-season improvement carries over, an unglamorous play-off push is entirely plausible.
Cincinnati Bengals
The complicated Bengals analysis can be reduced to two points: Joe Burrow needs to remain upright and the defense needs to stop being dreadful.
Burrow played only eight games during Cincinnati’s 6-11 season in 2025, but a healthy version still makes this one of the NFL’s most dangerous offenses.
The defense has finally received serious help, with Dexter Lawrence joined by Jonathan Allen, Boye Mafe and Bryan Cook. Lawrence, in particular, gives Cincinnati the interior destroyer they have lacked.
Average defensive play could be enough to turn the Bengals from bottom-half strugglers into AFC contenders.
Las Vegas Raiders
The Raiders followed a 3-14 season by changing almost everything that mattered.
Klint Kubiak arrives after coordinating Seattle’s Super Bowl-winning offense, All-Pro center Tyler Linderbaum strengthens the line, and Fernando Mendoza offers the long-term quarterback hope that Las Vegas has spent years trying to locate.
The first overall pick will initially ride the bench, with Kubiak naming Kirk Cousins his Week 1 starter. That will limit the rookie's immediate fireworks but need not prevent improvement.
Cousins can run Kubiak’s offense while the rookie develops, and Mendoza’s eventual introduction should at least make a previously stale team worth watching.
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