- NFL
What analytics say about the NFL’s contenders and pretenders
by James DatorDec 2, 2025, 7:34 PM UTC
Getty ImagesNothing in the NFL makes sense this season. Down is up, up is down, the Browns are consistently down, while the Chiefs might be up, even though they’re down right now. If you’ve been trying to make sense of 2025 you’re not alone, because week-to-week it’s impossible to know what is going to happen in the league. That whole mess has snowballed into the spot we’re in now, where just a few weeks removed from the playoffs nobody has any idea which teams are good or not.
At times like this we have two options: We can either throw our hands up and say “none of this makes sense,” or we can look to the cold, steely embrace of analytics to give us some idea about who is actually good or not.
Over at RBDSM we have a fresh tier NFL list, which is a two axis graph that plots offensive EPA/play, and defensive EPA/play allowed to map how all 32 teams stack up. If you’re not familiar with EPA, it stands for “Expected Points Added,” an essentially boils down every single play in a game to a numerical value to see how well the play was executed in terms of adding points on offense, or preventing them on defense. It’s the only advanced metric we have which factors in success rate, penalties, turnovers, everything — all into one stat.
This is interesting to see, because it naturally factors in quality. An explosive play against the horrendous Bengals defense won’t be worth as much as one against the juggernaut Browns defense. Similarly, stopping Matthew Stafford and the Rams is more significant than intercepting a pass thrown by J.J. McCarthy. It’s for this reason that raw wins and losses often don’t match up with EPA rankings due to strength of schedule. Football is always unpredictable (ask the Panthers), but we can use EPA metrics as a predictor for how teams should fair when we hit the playoffs.
Tiering is read diagonally from top right, to bottom left. The perfect team would dominate in both offensive EPA and defense EPA allowed — but that’s rare. So the sliced tiers can account for true dominance in one area, while being sub-par in another. It’s for this reason the Cowboys can still be a high-tier team, because they’re one of the best offensive teams in football, and one of the worst defensively.
First a few general observations before we dive into separating the wheat from the chaff when it comes to contenders and pretenders.
No. 1: There is no “elite” team this year
The Rams are about as close as you’ll get to a top tier team, but even so they sit at the cusp of the first and second tier. This isn’t that surprising in the scheme of things. It’s rare to truly have an ideal team, and since EPA tiering began in 2016 there’s only been one true “Tier 1” team that has dominated both offensively and defensively in the regular season, and that’s the 2019 Baltimore Ravens, who boasted the No. 2 offense in the NFL, the No. 4 defense, and dramatically crashed out in the playoffs to the Titans in the shocker.
No. 2: The Titans are legendarily bad
No need to rub salt in the wound, but my God that team sucks.
No. 3: The Chiefs are the most dangerous team outside the bubble
A defining factor of the 2024 Chiefs that made the Super Bowl was the number of one score games they managed to win. This year the coin has flipped to the other side, and they’re 2-6 in one score games this season. This incredibly small margin of error means that Kansas City is still very dangerous, and are easily the scariest potential playoff team — if they can get in.
Contenders vs. Pretenders
In order to do this we’re going to take a team’s ranking in the composite EPA and match it up with their current standing in their conference W/L record. If these match up in a high tier, the team is a bonafide contender. If there is a significant delta between division standing and composite EPA then we have a strong possibility the team is a pretender. A higher number indicates the team’s record is weaker than their EPA making them better than their record shows, while a negative shows the inverse, making a team’s record look much better than they’ve actually been.
AFCContenders: Patriots (-1), Bills (+4), Colts (+5)Pretenders: Jaguars (+5), Ravens (+5) Broncos (+3)
The Patriots really are as good as their record shows, while the Colts are still very good — even if they’ve cooled off a little in recent weeks. Meanwhile we see the absurd weakness of the AFC South and AFC North shine through with the Jaguars and Ravens both being very mediocre teams (15th and 19th in the NFL respectively), but have very high seeding due to their divisions.
NFCContenders: Rams (-1), Seahawks (-2) Packers (-5)Pretenders: Buccaneers (+5), Bears (+4)
We know how good the NFC West has been this year. Football’s most brutal division by a mile, it’s entirely possible we see three teams get to the playoffs out of the west — all of whom could win a playoff game or more. Where this gets interesting is the pretender side. The majority of the NFC has its current seeding match its potential, with two outliers: The Buccaneers, who are below average in both offense and defense this year. Also the Bears. As much as Chicago fans may bristle, their Charmin soft schedule has this team looking much, much better in standings that they do as an analytic team.
See More:- NFL
SB Nation Daily Roundup
A daily roundup of all your sports news
Email (required)Sign UpBy submitting your email, you agree to our Terms and Privacy Notice. This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.Advertiser Content FromThis is the title for the native ad
