It’s finally here! The 2025 NFL season kicks off on Thursday night with the Dallas Cowboys facing the defending Super Bowl champion Philadelphia Eagles. The Detroit Lions play Week 1 in Green Bay on Sunday, ready to defend their reign as two-time champions of the NFC North.
Dan Campbell’s Lions are loaded with nearly all of the same talents that led the team to a 15-2 record and the NFC’s No. 1 seed in 2024. Injuries rampaging across the defense ended that incredible season too soon.
The onset of the new season means it’s time to get the official predictions done.
I ran through every week of the NFL season, manually choosing the winners and losers of all the games, via the Playoff Predictor tool at Pro Football Network.
Let’s start with the Lions and the NFC North…
Lions
I picked the Lions to finish 12-5 overall. That includes a 4-2 record in the NFC North, splitting with the Packers and Bears by winning the home matchups and losing on the road. The other three losses: at Baltimore, at Cincinnati and at Philadelphia.
Detroit captured the NFC North on a tie-breaker thanks to the Vikings beating the Packers in Week 18 in Minnesota. That left both teams finishing at 12-5, the same record as Detroit, but dropped Green Bay to 3-3 in the division. Detroit’s sweep of Minnesota makes the Lions the champs.
The NFC
The Tampa Bay Buccaneers rode an easy divisional schedule and an underappreciated defense to the No. 1 seed. They finished 13-4 with a clean slate in the NFC South. One of their losses came at Detroit in Week 7, the game before the Lions hit their bye week.
Los Angeles also forged a relatively easy run to a 12-5 finish and an NFC West title. This prediction is heavily contingent on Matthew Stafford avoiding any missed time with his aging back, which was already starting to bother him five years ago in his final year in Detroit.
The Eagles maintained their supremacy in the East, besting Washington by two games. Minnesota, Washington and Green Bay earned the wild card spots.
The AFC
The same four teams that won divisions in 2024 all repeat in 2025. The only one that really gave me any pause was the AFC West, where the Broncos are legit challengers (at least in the regular season) to the Chiefs. That division was decided in Week 17, when the Chiefs beat the Broncos in Kansas City to sew it up.
The Chiefs, Bills and Ravens all finished at 13-4, reflecting the top-heaviness of the conference. The Bengals and Jaguars snag the wild cards with 10-7 records, along with the Broncos, who are my pick to lead the league in scoring defense. The Chargers finish a game back of the bottom playoff teams.
Race for the 1st pick
By virtue of their 3-14 record, the New Orleans Saints win the first pick in the 2026 NFL Draft. Dallas, Seattle and Las Vegas all finish 4-13. I wouldn’t be surprised if any of those teams win a few more than that, but the schedule played out this way. Quarterback play will be the key, especially for Seattle; if the Sam Darnold from the first 15 games of 2024 shows up, the Seahawks will be better. If the Darnold that Detroit destroyed in Minnesota and who he was for years in New York is the one Seattle’s getting, they’re in trouble–especially behind what looks like the league’s worst O-line.
Variable teams
There were a few teams I struggled with predicting on a weekly basis. As a result, they wound up being more skewed one way or another than I expected when I mapped out a general overview.
Foremost in that group: the Vikings. They finished 12-5 here. That is effectively a best-case outcome, with Minnesota winning all those coin-flip games.
Seattle is on the other side of that coin. Their worst-case scenario is the 4-13, last-place finish. Pittsburgh, Arizona and the Jaguars are all teams I’m not confident in their outcomes listed here. The Cardinals rising up and winning the NFC West in a year where injuries hit the Rams and 49ers would not surprise me at all, even if that didn’t play out in the exercise here. The Aaron Rodgers experiment in Pittsburgh is a fascinating unknown, too.
Super Bowl prediction
As the 2024 postseason proved, being healthy at the right time is critical. Assuming equal injury variables amongst the playoff teams, my Super Bowl pick:
Ravens over Lions
Enjoy the season!
This article originally appeared on Lions Wire: Predicting the NFL’s playoff teams, including the Lions, ahead of the 2025 season
Reporting by Jeff Risdon, Lions Wire / Lions Wire
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
