Patrick Mahomes. Josh Allen. Jalen Hurts. Jaxon Smith-Njigba. These are the names of cornerstone players on NFL contenders. You can build winning teams around those guys.
Not every team is so lucky. Some of the league's worst teams have franchise players who ... well ... wouldn't be franchise players elsewhere, while others have franchise players who are very, very good, but who are wasting away on bad teams.
Let's look at the best cornerstone player on each of the league's worst teams. A quick note: this isn't completely based on current record. Baltimore and Cincinnati would have an argument to be in this list if it were, but one bad year doesn't negate the fact that those teams have Lamar Jackson and Joe Burrow.
New Orleans Saints: Kelvin Banks Jr.
Alvin Kamara is basically cooked at this point. Chris Olave was at least tangentially involved in trade talks. The current quarterback will almost certainly not be the starting quarterback by the end of the 2026 season. Do the Saints even have a single cornerstone player?
Maybe not, but they do have a rookie left tackle that they spent a first-round pick on. Kelvin Banks Jr. He hasn't graded out particularly well according to PFF, but the team trusts him to play the most important position on the offensive line as a rookie, so there's something there. If Banks keeps improving, he'll be a fixture in New Orleans for a long time. This roster is relatively short on players who can do that.
Cleveland Browns: Myles Garrett
Myles Garrett might be the best pass rusher in football, but the fact that Cleveland's best building block is turning 30 this year is probably not ideal.
Still, Garrett is basically the only thing holding this Cleveland roster together. No matter what ragtag assortment of players the team puts around him, Garrett goes out there and consistently does what he does best, which is get after the quarterback.
As far as younger players who could fill the role of franchise cornerstone, the Deshaun Watson deal destroyed this team's ability to draft in recent years, so you're looking at...Mason Graham or Carson Schwesinger, two good defenders who the team drafted this year? Ehh.
Tennessee Titans: Cam Ward
I just feel bad for Cam Ward. The Titans drafted him No. 1 overall but surrounded him with a supporting cast that might be worse — adjusting for level of play — than any supporting cast he's had since he was quarterbacking a wing-T option offense back in high school.
It's not clear yet if Ward is going to be a franchise quarterback in the NFL, but the Titans have to do what it takes to give him that opportunity. Tennessee's success is directly tied to Ward's success, so it's obvious that he's the guy who Tennessee needs to be the cornerstone of the future.
One issue for the Titans and Ward is that there's not really another player on this roster that I'd feel comfortable nominating for this role, which speaks to how bad of a situation Ward is in, a situation so bad that it might derail is career if Tennessee can't fix it.
New York Giants: Jaxson Dart
Ask me this question before the season began, and I'd be debating between Malik Nabers, Dexter Lawrence and maybe Andrew Thomas. Now, though, it's got to be rookie quarterback Jaxson Dart, simply because quarterback is the most important position in the NFL and Dart has been pretty good since replacing Russell Wilson.
That's not to say he's without flaws. He's taking too many sacks — partially the line's fault, partially his fault — and has had a couple of games where he struggled with accuracy, but at his best he's a dynamic playmaker who can hurt you with his legs and arm. He looks like the best quarterback from this class at the moment and is someone that New York needs to build around.
New York Jets: Garrett Wilson
Breece Hall might be the Jets' best skill player, but you can't call someone a franchise cornerstone one week after they were shopping him for a third-round pick. There are some solid pieces on this defense as well, but the one thing that keeps Jets fans believing that the team is just a quarterback away from being good is that that quarterback gets to throw the football to Garrett Wilson.
Now, has Wilson lived up to his pre-draft hype? Nah, not really. He's been good, posting 1,000-yard seasons in each of his first three campaigns, but he hasn't necessarily been a top 10 receiver, though you can feasibly reason that away as Wilson not having good quarterback play through his first four seasons. Maybe the Jets will find a way to get him that next year?
Las Vegas Raiders: Brock Bowers
I was torn here, as Maxx Crosby feels like the heart and soul of this Raiders team, but "future" is a key word here. Crosby is under contract through 2029, but the Raiders have a number of outs to get out of his deal, with no cap hit as early as 2027. If the Raiders haven't shown improvement by then, it'd probably be best for everyone — especially Crosby — to move on.
That leaves us with Brock Bowers as the best pick. Maybe it's not great for a team's future to say that its best player going forward is a tight end, but it is what it is, and Bowers isn't just your ordinary tight end. He's a complete mismatch who can destroy defenses.