September 02, 2025
Stephen Lew/Imagn Images
The reigning Super Bowl champion Eagles begin the 2025 season as the No. 1 team in the NFC Hierarchy.
For those of you who are new here, we do a "Hierarchy/Obituary" post every week during the season, in which we kill off teams that have reached the point where they have almost no chance to make the playoffs. We then write their obituary and never speak of them in the Hierarchy again.
Anyway, it's my hackneyed sell-out spin on the more traditional "power rankings." Got it? Cool. It's Week 1, so let's get this journey started.
15) Giants (3-14 in 2024): The preseason can only reveal so much, but Jaxson Dart looked pretty good. He completed 32 of 47 passes (68.1%) for 372 yards (7.9 YPA), 3 TDs, and 0 INTs. He also ran 6 times for 52 yards and a TD. Analysis here via Ted Nguyen:
I know they'll wait a while to give Dart the opportunity to start, but the Giants would actually be interesting if they threw him out there Week 1.
14) Panthers (5-12 in 2024): I'm starting to like the Panthers' offense. They have a decent offensive line, a good running back, Bryce Young made major strides last season, and he has some young receivers to grow with.
The defense? Long way to go.
13) Cowboys (7-10 in 2024): In the aftermath of the Micah Parsons trade, Jerry Jones held a press conference that must have made their smarter fans absolutely furious.
During that presser, Jones claimed that the team got better in the short-term (!), because they added a player who can help stop the run. (Obviously, Jones is a bit of a snake oil salesman and he can't really believe that, but as the president proves every day, people are eager to be lied to by old rich guys. So why not try?)
But the most egregious comment that Jones made was that the Cowboys only contacted teams for a trade that (a) had the cap space to take on Parsons (OK, fine), and (b) had a DT they liked that they could get in return.
To limit the pool of offers to teams that have a DT they like is insanity, and if true, I have to imagine that there were better offers that would have been on the table if their demands weren't as specific.
That process reminds me a little of what they did in the draft. Per Daniel Jeremiah of NFL Network on his 40's and Free Agents podcast with Gregg Rosenthal, part of the Cowboys' plan — if the draft didn't fall the way they hoped — was to settle on a guard at pick 12.
"I had heard early on in the process that they were dialed in on interior offensive linemen, and that if Tetairoa McMillan was there, they liked him," Jeremiah said. "So it was going to come down to that. I knew that if they were going to take an interior O-lineman they preferred to trade back, but what looks like what happened, was that McMillan was gone — he goes to Carolina — and they couldn't [trade back]. So you're stuck and you just make the pick."
Process aside, it's also kind of hilarious that Kenny Clark was the apple of their eye. Clark has had a nice NFL career, but he's turning 30 this season, he's not really an impact player, and he did not have a good season in 2024.
What an incompetent front office. That man puts out a stellar press box spread, though.
12) Bears (5-12 in 2024): NFL Head Coach of the Year odds, via Sharp Football Analysis:
I feel like the NFL Coach of the Year award goes to the team with the best win-loss improvement from one year to the next, with bonus points if they weren't the head coach of that team the previous year.
In past years, the "OC turned HC" doesn't always go so well. See: Brian Daboll, Adam Gase, Josh McDaniels, Mike McDaniel, Nathaniel Hackett, Fran Reich, Shane Steichen, Arthur Smith, etc.
Some do pan out. Matt LaFleur, Nick Sirianni, and Kevin O'Connell have all done good jobs for their teams so far. But more fail than not. We'll see.
Also, lol, why is Gannon one of the favorites?
11) 49ers (6-11 in 2024): The Niners' 2025 opponents had a combined record of 120-169 (0.415) and a combined point differential of -845 in 2024. They very well could land back in the playoffs after a miserable 2024 season.
And yet, I look at this roster, and, yuck.
If they do sneak into the tourney because of their impossibly easy schedule, they're going to be an ideal first-round opponent and a quick out.
10) Falcons (8-9 in 2024): The Falcons haven't had a player notch 10 sacks in a season since 2016, when Vic Beasley had 15.5. They also haven't had anyone with at least 7 sacks in the last five seasons. Their sack leaders, by season:
| Year | Team sack leader | Sacks |
| 2024 | Arnold Ebeketie | 6 |
| 2023 | Calais Campbell / Bud Dupree | 6.5 |
| 2022 | Grady Jarrett | 6 |
| 2021 | Donte Fowler | 4.5 |
| 2020 | Deion Jones | 4.5 |
| 2019 | Vic Beasley | 8 |
| 2018 | Takk McKinley | 7 |
| 2017 | Adrian Clayborn | 9.5 |
No wonder they made an asinine trade for an edge rusher during the 2025 draft. As a reminder, the Falcons traded their second-round pick (46th overall), their first-round pick in 2026, and a seventh-round pick in 2025 to the Rams for the 26th overall pick, and a third-round comp pick (101st overall).
If the Falcons are awful in 2025 and that 2026 first-round pick ends up in the top 10, then the Rams may have gotten more valuable draft capital from the Falcons for James Pearce than the Cowboys got for Micah Parsons.
9) Seahawks (10-7 in 2024): Sam Darnold folded faster than Superman on laundry day when faced with pressure in the playoffs last season. Now he'll play behind one of the worst offensive lines in the NFL.
8) Cardinals (8-9 in 2024): Ohhhhh, OK, I see why Gannon has the third-best odds of winning NFL Coach of the Year. Nine of the Cardinals' first 11 opponents had losing records in 2024, and a combined record of 75-112 (0.401), with a combined point differential of -643.
| Week | Opponent | 2024 record | 2024 Point differential |
| 1 | At Saints | 5-12 | -60 |
| 2 | Panthers | 5-12 | -193 |
| 3 | At 49ers | 6-11 | -47 |
| 4 | Seahawks | 10-7 | +7 |
| 5 | Titans | 3-14 | -149 |
| 6 | At Colts | 8-9 | -50 |
| 7 | Packers | 11-6 | +122 |
| 8 | BYE | ||
| 9 | At Cowboys | 7-10 | -118 |
| 10 | At Seahawks | 10-7 | +7 |
| 11 | 49ers | 6-11 | -47 |
| 12 | Jaguars | 4-13 | -115 |
It does get a little harder after that, but man if this team isn't at least 6-5 at that point in the season just fire him in-season.
7) Commanders (11-6 in 2024): On the evening of NFL 53-man cutdowns, we published our yearly age rankings, and the Commanders were the oldest team in the NFL, by far. In fact, they were the oldest team since we started calculating age at 53-man cutdowns in 2012, again, by far.
Commanders fans' collective reaction to these facts was something like this:
I'll give their most common rebuttals, and react to each of them.
• Rebuttal No. 1: Their QB3 (Josh Johnson, 39), punter (Tress Way, 35), and long snapper (Tyler Ott, 33) heavily skew their average age.
#JimmySays: They skew the average age, but not that heavily.
To begin, 21 of the NFL's 32 teams have long snappers who are 30 years of age or older. From a comparative perspective, taking Ott out doesn't skew much if you take out every long snapper, league wide.
If you take out Johnson and Way, it drops their average age from 28.09 to 27.75, which still makes them the oldest team we've ever calculated by a comfortable margin.
If you take out Johnson, Way, Ott, and another three backups in Eddie Goldman (31), Nick Bellore (36), and George Fant (33) – and don't do age gymnastics for any other team – they're still the second-oldest team in the NFL, barely behind the Steelers.
There's no getting around it. It's a crazy old roster.
• Rebuttal No. 2: The Commanders drafted poorly during the Ron Rivera era, so the Commanders had no choice but to load up with old players to fill out the roster.
#JimmySays: You know what's a good way to further deplete the young player pipeline? Trading a slew of picks for three older vets on the downsides of their careers, in Laremy Tunsil, Deebo Samuel, and Marshon Lattimore.
Lattimore looked cooked last season, Deebo hasn't been good in like four years, and Tunsil led the league in penalties in 2024.
And they didn't have to almost exclusively load up on old players. They had a lot of cap space, and could have absolutely been more selective about adding players in the 25-28 range who could've potentially grown with the team.
Rebuttal No. 3: The Commanders' window to win is right now, while Jayden Daniels is on his rookie contract.
#JimmySays: I do agree that the team's brass may very well be thinking this way, which is a failure to understand that they lucked into an NFC Championship Game appearance last season, when the shellacking they took in Philly should've revealed a more realistic outlook on where they are as a franchise.
But also, the last time a team won a Super Bowl with a quarterback on his rookie contract was in 2019, when the Chiefs did it with Patrick Mahomes. The last time before that was in 2013, when the Seahawks did it with Russell Wilson. Is it an advantage to have a good quarterback on a rookie contract? Sure! Should you build your roster on the premise that it's an unclearable hurdle if you don't? Of course not!
Daniels is likely going to be a great player for the next decade-plus. The more good young players they can surround him with long-term, the better chance they'll have for sustained success. Instead, they brought in double-digit mercenaries in their 30s, the majority of whom will be gone in a year. And then what? They do it again because Daniels will still have one year left before he is eligible for a second contract?
Rebuttal No. 4: Yeah, they're old. So what?
#JimmySays: Seriously? As players age into their 30s, they often decline. And it's not just a handful of guys. They have 25 (!) players who are 29 years of age or older. The next closest team has 17. How many of those guys are going to be worse players than they were a year ago? Spoiler: It's not going to be like 2 or 3.
But then also, obviously, as players age they become more prone to injury.
Strategically, the Commanders had an odd offseason.
5) Rams (10-7 in 2024): Per ESPN's Dan Graziano, Matthew Stafford's back injury is going to have to be managed all season.
The Rams believe starting QB Matthew Stafford is on track to be healthy and start Week 1 after struggling throughout camp with a back injury that stubbornly refused to follow his or the team's recovery timetable. But Stafford is 37 years old and has dealt with back issues in the past. (To his credit, he has found ways to play through them.) My understanding is that this isn't something the Rams expect to sideline Stafford for a long period of time or affect his play early in the season, but that it is something that will need to be monitored and managed throughout the season.
As noted above, as players age, they accumulate injuries over time, and it affects their play. Stafford is now 37. Back issues at that age are tough, as I'm sure many of my readers can corroborate.
4) Packers (11-6 in 2024): The Packers now have four really good defenders in Micah Parsons, Rashan Gary, Edgerrin Cooper, and Xavier McKinney. My NFC top foursome of defenders power rankings:
3) Buccaneers (10-7 in 2024): If we're looking at the teams in the NFC through the lens of "Who is best positioned to take down the Eagles," for me, it's the Bucs, given that that they have kinda owned Philly in recent years.
2) Lions (15-2 in 2024): The Lions lost both their offensive and defensive coordinators to head coaching jobs this offseason. That doesn't happen very often. Recent occurrences:
• In 2023, the Eagles lost Shane Steichen and Jonathan Gannon. Brian Johnson replaced Steichen. Sean Desai replaced Gannon, and was then replaced himself in-season by Matt Patricia. They all got fired after a brutal collapse to close the season.
• In 2014, the Bengals lost Jay Gruden and Mike Zimmer. They were replaced by Hue Jackson and Paul Guenther. The 2013 Bengals went 10-6, the 2014 Bengals went 10-5-1. Both teams got knocked out in the first round of the playoffs.
• In 2007, the Chargers lost Cam Cameron and Wade Phillips. They were replaced by Clarence Shelmon and Ted Cottrell. The 2006 Chargers went 14-2, the 2007 Chargers went 11-5. The 2006 Chargers got knocked out in the first round of the playoffs. The 2007 Chargers actually made it to the AFCCG, but lost to the Patriots.
• In 2005, the Patriots lost Charlie Weis and Romeo Crennel. They didn't hire an offensive coordinator to replace Weis. They promoted Eric Mangini to DC. The 2004 Patriots went 14-2 and won the Super Bowl. The 2005 Pats went 10-6 and got knocked out in the divisional round.
• In 1995, the 49ers lost Mike Shanahan and Ray Rhodes. They were replaced by Marc Trestman and Pete Carroll. The 1994 49ers went 13-3 and won the Super Bowl. The 1995 49ers went 10-6 and got knocked out in the first playoff game (in the divisional round).
Anyway, the moral of the story here is that when you lose your offensive and defensive coordinators in the same offseason, it's more likely — but not a lock — that the next season won't go as well.
1) Eagles (Super Bowl champions in 2024): The Eagles lost six starters (five to free agency and one to injury), they hardly spent any money in free agency, and yet they still pretty clearly in my opinion have the best roster in the NFL.
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