NFL 2026: Three Teams Surprisingly Not Expected to Reach the Playoffs Next Season

By: Sam Nawman, Guest Contributor
May 26, 2026

The NFL was full of surprises in 2025. The Kansas City Chiefs — back-to-back-to-back Super Bowl appearances, Patrick Mahomes as the league's immovable axiom — went 6-11 last season and watched January from their couch. The Baltimore Ravens, with Lamar Jackson a million miles away from his blistering two-MVP winning peak fitness levels, went 8-9. The Detroit Lions — the league's most intoxicating feel-good story across the previous two seasons — finished 9-8 and missed the playoffs on a tiebreaker.

Three franchises entered last September carrying the full weight of consensus expectation. All three collapsed before Christmas. Meanwhile, the Seattle Seahawks dismantled New England in Super Bowl LX and hoisted the Lombardi Trophy as the sport's consensus forgot to check the weather in the Pacific Northwest.

Fast forward to now, and online betting sites make the reigning champions a contender to repeat as champs. The latest odds from the popular Bovada betting site currently position them as a +1000 second-favorite behind their +750 divisional rival Los Angeles Rams. But while those two are the frontrunners to deliver the Lombardi in 2026, three other teams that look like playoff contenders on paper are surprisingly unfancied by the bookies to even reach the postseason next season.

So, who are those teams? And crucially, can any of them upset the odds?

Chicago Bears

Imagine Caleb Williams this past spring, working routes at Halas Hall and processing a specific absence. DJ Moore — the receiver who ran routes tailored to their developing chemistry throughout 2025 — is now in Buffalo, traded for a 2026 second-round pick. The timing is complicated.

Concerns had circulated that Williams trusted Moore less than Rome Odunze. And yet there Moore was, catching two touchdowns in a Week 12 win over Pittsburgh, and connecting with Williams on a pair of plays that onlookers were calling throws of the year late in the season. So, which was it — a receiver surplus the Bears intelligently monetized, or the dismantling of a quarterback's trusted weapon heading into the most brutal schedule in the NFL?

Ben Johnson turned a 5-12 disaster in 2024 into an 11-6 NFC North champion in his first year as head coach in 2024. He then masterminded Chi-Town's first playoff win since 2011 with that thrilling fourth quarter comeback against Green Bay in the Wildcard Round before ultimately succumbing to the much-fancied Rams in overtime in the Divisional.

Caleb Williams took a genuine developmental leap under his guidance, but three team captains are gone: Moore to Buffalo, Tremaine Edmunds released, and Kevin Byard departed in free agency. The locker room that finally believed in itself lost its institutional memory in a single offseason. Now, with one of the toughest schedules in the league ahead of them and a haunting fact that only 25% of worst-to-first teams return to the playoffs for a second season, the bookies make them an even money outsider to secure that second straight postseason berth. Can they upset the odds again?

Dallas Cowboys

Two consecutive losing seasons. For Dallas, that's an identity crisis playing out under the brightest lights in American sport. The 7-9-1 finish in 2025 made it back-to-back losing records for the first time since 2002, and the defense wasn't just bad; it was historically, comprehensively bad — a crime scene that no amount of offensive brilliance from Dak Prescott and CeeDee Lamb could compensate for. George Pickens arrived from Pittsburgh and delivered career highs in one of the most talented offensive trios in the NFC, but it wasn't enough.

However, there were marked improvements after the trade deadline that have to be acknowledged. With the defense bolstered by the return of DeMarvion Overshown and the blockbuster trade for Quinnen Williams, the Cowboys reeled off back-to-back wins against the Philadelphia Eagles and the Kansas City Chiefs, proving that there was still life in America's Team yet.

Now Rashan Gary arrives from Green Bay, acquired for a 2027 fourth-round pick, tasked with doing what a succession of defensive coordinators have failed to do — make opposing offences flinch. And running through the entire offseason is the ticking clock of Pickens' $27.3 million franchise tag, with both sides having until July 15 to agree to a long-term extension. If those negotiations go cold, Dallas could spend seventeen weeks watching their second receiver play out a lame duck season while his agent whispers destinations into beat reporters' voicemail boxes.

The Cowboys restructured Prescott, Lamb, and Tyler Smith to manufacture cap space; they believe they've built a contender. The bookies are not convinced, pricing them as a +105 outsider to return to the postseason at long last.

Pittsburgh Steelers

Mike Tomlin left. That sentence belongs in its own paragraph because it almost doesn't parse. Nineteen seasons. Not one losing record. When Mike McCarthy signed his contract at the UPMC Rooney Sports Complex in January 2026, he was doing so in a building that Tomlin had occupied long enough to become architectural. McCarthy — a Pittsburgh native, former Green Bay and Dallas head coach — walked into that institution understanding that every press conference for the foreseeable future will open with some version of the same question: how do you measure up?

The answer depends enormously on Aaron Rodgers. The 42-year-old quarterback threw for 3,322 yards with 24 touchdowns and 7 interceptions in 2025, led Pittsburgh to the AFC North title, and his 2026 return has just been confirmed in recent days. Analysts have praised the Steelers for building a roster that didn't entirely depend on Rodgers' decision — but that's a diplomatic way of saying nobody actually knows what Pittsburgh looks like without him. At the age of 42, it remains to be seen what it looks like with him as well.

The cut-throat AFC North offers no grace period for figuring it out. Lamar Jackson has spent years carving up this franchise while Joe Burrow's Cincinnati Bengals have radically rewired their defense so that it can finally compete in 2026. At +185 to reach the playoffs, the market clearly thinks that those two are head and shoulders clear of the black and gold. It's up to McCarthy and Rodgers to prove them wrong.