2025 NFL season sim: Predictions, surprises, playoff teams - ESPN

If you don't want spoilers for the 2025 NFL season, look away.

I typically write about the NFL in terms of probabilities — the chance the Eagles repeat as Super Bowl champions, the probability the Bengals get back to the playoffs, the odds the Browns are actually the best team in football (OK, maybe not that one).

But every so often, we need to inject certainty into a forecast. After all, the upcoming NFL season will play out only one way. So why not simulate the season one time and see what happens?

That's what we're doing here. We're detailing the story of a single simulation from ESPN's Football Power Index, which normally uses 10,000 simulations to build its projections. To be clear, this is not my prediction or ESPN Analytics' prediction of how this season will unfold. (Vikings fans still in my mentions about Minnesota's 4-13 record in last year's simulation — please read that sentence.) This is simply simulation No. 4,091 — what definitely, absolutely, certainly could happen in 2025. Let's play it out.

See FPI's full projections for the 2025 season

Eleven months after the Chiefs and Eagles squared off in Super Bowl LIX, both teams cleaned out their lockers following Week 18. Neither managed to make it back to the playoffs, easily the shocker of the 2025 campaign in this simulation.

The Eagles were actually done before the final week. Thought to be infallible heading into the season, the Eagles were 5-4 after Week 10 — a game behind the Cowboys but still seemingly in control of their postseason destiny. But that turned into a 6-8 record, leaving Philadelphia in pure panic mode. In the end, the Eagles couldn't make up the gap, falling short in the NFC East and wild-card battle.

The Chiefs' collapse was much more