One of my favorite stats to check after the regular season is over is which NFL teams won a bunch (or lost a bunch) of close games. Why? Because, to tell you the truth, no one has really figured out how
to win close games consistently in this league. For the most part, your record in close games is mostly noise, and it has almost no (positive) barring in your future if you won a cluster of close games the year before. Being good in close games is largely a myth.
Obviously, it’s better to win than lose in the moment, but the way that you win is sort of important in the NFL, because of how the league purposely tears winning teams apart to provide league parity. If you should have been 9-8 but you went 13-4, the mechanics of the league will still treat you like a 13-4 squad, even if you’re a 9-8 talent.
The two biggest direct examples of this are the NFL draft, where teams that win more games are punished, and the league’s scheduling alignment. With the expanded 17-game schedule, teams now play three opponents per year that they wouldn’t have played otherwise, based on where they finished in their division the season before.
Clearly, there are team-level changes year-to-year outside of these two mechanics, but there’s a strong trend that shows winning too many close games actually severely impacts your ability to repeat a similar record (overall, not just in close games) the following season. Don’t believe me? Below is the chart.
This data is the result of every team’s season since free agency began in 1993 (roughly the start of the NFL we see today from a parity standpoint, the salary cap started in 1994). The X axis is how many close wins (within eight points, a single possession) a team had above .500 in an individual season. So, for example, the 2008 Green Bay Packers were 1-7 in close games, which would have been three wins below .500 (-3 on the X axis). The Y axis is how many more wins a team gets the next season (overall, not just close games), based on the X axis data point. (Hey, the Packers benefited from close-game regression, won five more regular-season games the next year and won a Super Bowl! Yay!)
If teams could win (or even lose!) close games consistently, this line would be flat. It is not. Teams that lose close games a lot are usually better the next year. Teams that win close games a lot are usually worse the next year. This is the NFL’s parity model in action.
Usually, I update this data after every regular season to get a good feel for which teams are due (one way or another) in the upcoming year. We’ve been busy covering Green Bay’s coaching non-search since the Packers’ season ended, so I just finally have time to run the numbers. Sorry to the people who have been asking me non-stop if the Chicago Bears are a regression candidate.
Yes, the Bears relied on a lot of late-game heroics in 2025, especially in some of their biggest games on national television. But I’m here to tell you a secret: They didn’t actually do that much over expected in close games this year.
Chicago was 7-4 in close games (in the regular season), good for 1.5 games over .500 in 2025. In the moment, you’d rather have that than going 5-5-1, but it’s not as big a split as you’d think. For example, they’re in a three-way tie with Jacksonville and Seattle for the 8th-most close wins over .500 this season. Above average? Yes. Insanely unsustainable? Not really. Denver, Carolina, the Los Angeles Chargers, New England, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh and San Francisco are all higher up on the “due for a letdown year in 2026” pecking order.
Teams that finish 1.5 close wins over .500, in the over 1,000 individual seasons played since 1993, average 1.8 more losses the next year. Below is the full breakdown of what every step of the close game regression curve means for teams:
Here is how many close wins above .500 each team had in the 2025 NFL season:
- 4.5: DEN
- 2: CAR, LAC, NE, PHI, PIT, SF
- 1.5: CHI, JAX, SEA
- 1: BUF, HOU
- 0.5: DAL, MIA, MIN
- 0: ATL, TB
- -0.5: GB, LAR
- -1: CIN, DET, NO, NYJ
- -1.5: BAL, CLE, LV, TEN, WAS
- -2: IND
- -3: ARZ, NYG
- -4: KC
So, yeah, Chicago is above the .500 mark, but it’s not like they stick out like a sore thumb, either. Obviously, things like teams’ cap situations (or really just cash spend in this era), free agency, the draft, coaching changes, retirements or injuries could make for meaningful differences between teams’ 2025 and 2026 seasons, but if we just want to use broad brushstrokes to project each club’s 2026 record based on their 2025 record and what regression is expected to do to each team based on their close game record this year, here’s what the next season would look like (rounded to the nearest win):
NFC East Projection
- Philadelphia Eagles: 8-9 (NFC East champ)
- New York Giants: 7-10
- Dallas Cowboys: 7-10
- Washington Commanders: 7-10
NFC North Projection
- Detroit Lions: 11-6 (NFC North champ, new playoff team)
- Green Bay Packers: 11-6 (wild card)
- Chicago Bears: 9-8 (missed playoffs)
- Minnesota Vikings: 9-8
NFC South Projection
- Atlanta Falcons: 8-9 (NFC South champ, new playoff team)
- Tampa Bay Buccaneers: 8-9
- New Orleans Saints: 8-9
- Carolina Panthers: 5-12 (missed playoffs)
NFC West Projection
- Los Angeles Rams: 12-5 (NFC West champ)
- Seattle Seahawks: 12-5 (wild card)
- San Francisco 49ers: 9-8 (wild card)
- Arizona Cardinals: 6-11
All of the good teams in the NFC are in the North and West again. Yay. It’s so cool that you get to host at least one playoff game for winning a bad division. We love that.
In this projection, the 12-5 Seahawks, with the second-best record in the league, would be playing on the road against a sub-.500 Atlanta Falcons team. Makes so much sense. (At least the Bears and Minnesota Vikings would miss the playoffs in this three-way tie with the San Francisco 49ers).
Also, what a plummet for the NFC South-winning Carolina Panthers to 5-12.
AFC East Projection
- New England Patriots: 11-6 (AFC East champ)
- Buffalo Bills: 10-7 (wild card)
- Miami Dolphins: 7-10
- New York Jets: 5-12
AFC North Projection
- Baltimore Ravens: 10-7 (AFC North champ, new playoff team)
- Cincinnati Bengals: 8-9
- Pittsburgh Steelers: 7-10 (missed playoffs)
- Cleveland Browns: 7-10
AFC South Projection
- Jacksonville Jaguars: 11-6 (AFC South champ)
- Houston Texans: 10-7 (wild card)
- Indianapolis Colts: 10-7 (wild card, new playoff team)
- Tennessee Titans: 5-12
AFC West Projection
- Denver Broncos: 11-6 (AFC West champ)
- Kansas City Chiefs: 10-7
- Los Angeles Chargers: 8-9 (missed playoffs)
- Las Vegas Raiders: 5-12
I capped regression projections at three close wins over .500 and three close losses under .500, because the sample sizes are so small on the tail ends of this bell curve, but it is worth noting here the extreme data points in the AFC West (which had the only two teams that were impacted by this cap).
Denver went 11-2 in close games this year, 4.5 wins over .500. Since 1993, of the 1,037 seasons played in the NFL, the 2025 Broncos stand alone as the third-most “lucky” team in close games. The only teams to best that record (in the context of close wins over .500) were the 2024 Kansas City Chiefs, who went from 15-2 that year to 6-11 the following year, and the 2022 Minnesota Vikings, who went from 13-4 that year to 7-10 the following year.
If there is any regression candidate for 2026, it’s the Denver Broncos with a bullet. Not exactly the place you want to be with Jarrett Stidham under center for you in the AFC Championship Game. This is sort of their go-for-broke season, now up to a backup quarterback, with regression right around the corner.
At the same time, the only team that has had more losses under .500 than the Broncos’ AFC West rival, the Chiefs, was the 2001 Carolina Panthers, who, after going 0-9 in close games that year, added six more wins to their overall record the next season.
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In general, you should sell Broncos stock and buy Chiefs stock this offseason. You might want to pick up a little Arizona Cardinals and New York Giants, too, if you can stomach it. And every division is substantially better than the NFC East and NFC South.
