Over the next six months, the majority of NFL buzz will center around the Combine, league meetings, the Draft and OTAs, followed by some meaningless fodder before training camp. Some people are in the 'wake me up when football starts’ mode, but for the rest of us, things are just getting juicy, and juicy is good. Here are some ridiculously bold (if not illogical) predictions for what we'll see before August.
Fist fight at the league meeting
For the better part of the past decade, the Kyle Shanahan/Sean McVay coaching tree has been the gold standard for offensive scheming in the NFL. This year, the tide began to turn with Ben Johnson’s scheme-fiend offense in Chicago.
That all culminated in the postseason: The Bears beat the Packers in the Wild Card round, so Packers head coach Matt LaFleur ended up helping Sean McVay and the Los Angeles Rams prepare for the divisional game. Did he do that because he’s friends/family with the Rams coaching staff and because he doesn’t like the Bears? Or was it because that whole coaching tree is a clique that thinks they are the pinnacle of football knowledge, and anyone who has success against them poses a threat to their legacy? I would venture to say that it’s a mix of all three.
Regardless, those coaches will be together for the first time at the annual league meeting at the end of March. Johnson doesn’t seem like the kind of guy to hold back or mince words, so maybe he gives McVay and LaFleur a piece of his mind for their conniving and conspiratorial ways, and that comes to blows.
You have to think Johnson wins that fight. Sure, it’s two-on-one, but he’s jacked and crazy. McVay and LaFleur are too pretty. Bonus prediction: As the mayhem of that melee is unfolding, Liam Coen and Robert Saleh get an opportunity to slug each other a few times.
10 new starting quarterbacks Week 1
To be clear, this isn’t about 10 new starters compared to Week 18 of the 2025 season — it’s about 10 new starting quarterbacks compared to who took the field in Week 1 last year.
Right now, the Chiefs, Colts, Broncos and the Falcons all have quarterbacks whose seasons ended with an injury. At least two of those teams are going to be missing their starter in Week 1, but there’s a chance three of them will. The Dolphins, Jets, Browns, Raiders and Saints all moved on from their 2025 Week 1 starter at some point through the season. Now we’re up to eight new QBs.
That leaves the Steelers and the Vikings. The Steelers are going to be working on Aaron Rodgers early this offseason, but did you catch the way he walked off the field at the end of last season? I think he might actually be gone this time. That’s definitely hopeful thinking by me, trying to manifest a world without Rodgers, but it’s still in the realm of possibility.
For the Vikings? Woof. If you were them, would you stick with J.J. McCarthy? I didn’t think so. You would trade for Tanner McKee or Kyler Murray, or you would go after Malik Willis in free agency. Or there’s this other guy that might be available…
Deshaun Watson competes for a starting job somewhere
The reason this is a bold prediction is because the Cleveland Browns are not a smart franchise. In 2024, the Broncos bit the bullet and cut Russell Wilson. That gave them an $85-ish million dead cap hit (paying a player who's not playing for you), which was the biggest hit in the history of the NFL.
If you’re the front office of a team, and a very bad one at that, all you really have is a semblance of pride. If you’re Andrew Berry and Jimmy Haslam, all you really want to do is not make yourself look dumber than you already look.
The Browns can cut Deshaun Watson after June 1, and their dead cap hit will be $80-ish million; that’s lower than the record set by the Broncos. If those two ding-dongs want to move on from the horrible, horrible mistake that they made by giving a man who has been accused of sexual misconduct by more than two dozen women $230 million of guaranteed money, this offseason could be the time to do it.
If that happens, there are plenty of teams that need a quarterback to start the season. Hopefully franchises have some self-respect and blackball Watson, as they did with Colin Kaepernick, but there’s definitely going to be someone who gives him a league-minimum contract and tries him out in the preseason.If I had to guess, that team would be the Jets, but it would be very funny if he won a job in Minnesota over McCarthy.
A.J. Brown doesn’t get traded
If you watched the Eagles at all last season, you saw that A.J. Brown was clearly frustrated with something. We don’t know what that something was, and everyone has thrown around some of their own thoughts, but he never explicitly said that his problem was with one specific thing.
This bold prediction is that Eagles fans were right. The biggest problem with the passing offense was that Kevin Patullo didn’t know how to scheme a wide receiver open if his life depended on it.
If that’s the case, then it would make sense that Brown was fed up with running routes into coverage where his only direction was, ‘Hey, you’re a big guy. You don’t need our help. Just go win on your route.’You have to think an offense run by a young cat like Sean Mannion is going to be more creative than one run by a Nick Sirianni disciple. More creative (ideally) means more scheme. And if a lack of scheme was Brown’s problem, then that means no trade. This could also be completely wrong, and he’s gone the first day of free agency. It’s a coin flip.
The Bills actually help Josh Allen
Last offseason, Brandon Beane went on a sports talk show and berated the hosts for saying that the Bills needed help at wide receiver. He said that because they were the highest-scoring offense in the NFL, clearly pass-catcher talent wasn’t an issue.
He would then go on to only sign Joshua Palmer in free agency. Palmer had 303 yards and four touchdowns all season. The Bills' leading pass catcher was Khalil Shakir, who had 719 total yards; it was the lowest yardage total for Josh Allen’s leading pass catcher since his rookie season, when Zay Jones had 652 receiving yards.
As you would imagine, the Bills’ passing offense looked terrible all season. They lost their stranglehold on the AFC East, and the Patriots made it to the Super Bowl. This prediction is that maybe, just maybe, Brandon Beane has learned from his mistakes and gets Allen an actual WR1.
If the Eagles do trade A.J. Brown, he’s not going to be that expensive, money-wise. The Eagles would still be paying the bulk of his salary, so the Bills would have to fork over a lot of draft capital, and maybe a player, but their ownership is cheap, so an inexpensive WR1 would probably be tasty for them.
Or they could go after George Pickens or Alec Pierce in free agency, or one of the high-end receivers in the draft. The point is: They have a lot of opportunities to do the right thing. But they’ve had those opportunities before, and have just relied on their quarterback to turn a bunch of mid-to-low tier pass catchers into Pro-Bowlers. That hasn’t happened.This shouldn’t be a bold prediction, but here we are.