Predicting NFL teams most likely to improve in 2022 - Numbers, history show Bills, Broncos, Jaguars, Lions, Ravens will win more games

This is one of my favorite weeks every year, as I'm starting my annual look into the NFL teams most likely to improve or decline during the upcoming season. It's time to take a closer look into what happened a year ago and use history to help project the most surprising teams in 2022.

Heading into last season, despite their 1-5-1 record in games decided by seven points or fewer, the Bengals narrowly missed out on the list of teams most likely to improve. Given that this column identified the 2017 Eagles and 2019 49ers as major improvers before they made their own runs to the Super Bowl, not including the Bengals was disappointing.

The good news is the five teams mentioned in last year's column all improved, gaining an average of 2.9 wins per 17 games on their 2020 records. (The move from 16 to 17 games means that many of the stats mentioned in this column are a little more torturous to discuss than they were before.) The 49ers and Eagles both went from last place to the playoffs, while the Broncos, Falcons and Jaguars each made smaller strides.

In all, 20 of the 25 teams mentioned in this piece over the past five seasons have improved the following season, rising by an average of 3.1 wins per 17 games. I'll hit my five favorites for 2022 below, including teams at the top and bottom of the league. I'll even include an honorable mention for a team that undoubtedly would have been included in this list if it had merely avoided a foolish mistake this offseason. On Wednesday, I'll hit the five teams most likely to decline.

As is the case every year, this list relies on statistical measures of performance that have a track record of predicting improvement or decline in the following season(s). Let's start with a team with