2026 NFL Preview: NFC South
Three teams finished 8-9. The fourth won four of its last five and still finished 6-11. Carolina took the division on a three-way tiebreaker and became the fifth team in NFL history to win a division with a losing record — and the first team ever to make the playoffs twice with a losing record.
It is the worst division in football and I say that with affection. It's also the only division in the league where all four teams are +400 or shorter to win it. Nobody is good. Everybody can win. This division is quite literally a coin flip.
1 – Tampa Bay Buccaneers
2025: 8-9 (2nd in NFC South)
Nobody in football took me on a longer ride than the Bucs last year. Week 6: "Are the Bucs the new Chiefs?" Week 7: I put them FIRST overall and wrote "it turns out that they are actually good," while admitting I had no clue who Tez Johnson or Kameron Johnson were. Week 11: "the Bucs are literally limping toward finishing atop a very weak NFC South... Thank God they play in a weak division."
They did not finish atop the weak division. They went 6-2 before the bye and 2-7 after it.
Here's the thing that keeps me on them anyway: their final four losses were all by four points or fewer. That's not a bad team, that's a broken-down team losing coin flips. And they were broken down — I spent five straight weeks writing about Mike Evans, Chris Godwin and Bucky Irving all being out at the same time. Baker finished under 4,000 passing yards for the first time since 2022.
Now Evans is gone for real, to my 49ers of all places, which ends the streak I already wrote a eulogy for in Week 8. Lavonte David retired after 14 years. Two franchise legends out the door in one offseason is a bad look and people have said so.
Baker is in a contract year, and the front office let his negotiating deadline pass at the start of camp without a deal. That's a lot of pressure on a guy I described as "wildly inconsistent" in Week 8 and an MVP candidate in Week 7 — which is exactly the point. He's streaky. When he's on, this team is a major threat. Josh Grizzard got fired after one season and Zac Robinson takes over, installing more wide-zone concepts. Baker reportedly led a clean two-minute touchdown drive in joint practices with the Jets.
The good news is the guys who kept them alive are all back. Emeka Egbuka had that Welcome to the League moment in Week 1 — the 25-yard game-winner with 59 seconds left, plus another score — and he's the WR1 now. He is currently dealing with a “toe sprain” so thats a lil sketch. Bucky Irving and Godwin are healthy. Cade Otton had his 100-yard games. And Sean Tucker went for 140 total yards and three touchdowns in Week 12 when this team had nothing left, which is the "someone new steps up every week" thing I wrote about all season.
The defense is the actual question. Bowles is a defensive head coach whose units have finished 23rd, 18th and 19th in yards over three years, with no top-ten finish since 2022, and his seat is warm. Like the first 5 minutes of preheating an oven warm. They took Miami edge Rueben Bain Jr. in the first round, which finally gives them someone real opposite YaYa Diaby, added Al-Quadin Muhammad, and drafted linebacker Josiah Trotter in the second to help replace David. Alex Anzalone arrives with expectations. The secondary still runs entirely through Antoine Winfield Jr. while Benjamin Morrison, Jacob Parrish and Tykee Smith all get another year of development.
They're the favorite at +170 to +205 and they open at Cincinnati. Best roster in a bad division, one healthy season away from running it back.
2 – Atlanta Falcons
2025: 8-9 (3rd in NFC South)
Let me open with an apology to myself. Week 7: "Holy Bijan! Raise your hand if you were dumb enough to trade him away in fantasy for CMC. Yep, you guessed it, I did just that." He went for 238 yards that night. I have not recovered.
Atlanta finished the season on a four-game win streak, beat New Orleans in Week 18, and still missed the playoffs on a tiebreaker. Then they fired Raheem Morris anyway. Arthur Blank wanted somebody who could get them past 8-9, and in comes Kevin Stefanski — two Coach of the Year awards, dumped by Cleveland, and now running an offense with Bijan Robinson and Drake London on it. That's a genuinely great hire and the best coaching addition in this division.
Smartest thing Stefanski did was keep Jeff Ulbrich, because that defense was the strength. Back in Week 3 I wrote about four Falcons rookies making an impact in one game — two picks, two half-sacks — and said to expect a lot from that young group. They finished 15th in yards, 19th in scoring, and SECOND in the entire NFL in sacks. In Week 7 they held Josh Allen to 14 points.
The problem is that unit got gutted. Leading tackler Kaden Elliss went to New Orleans, Arnold Ebiketie to Philly, David Onyemata to the Jets, Dee Alford to Buffalo. And James Pearce Jr., their leading sack man and 2025 first-rounder, has an unresolved legal situation — he entered a pretrial intervention program over the offseason and the league still hasn't ruled on his 2026 availability. If he's out for a stretch on top of everything else, this defense could fall apart. They added Christian Harris, Maason Smith, Da'Shawn Hand and Samson Ebukam to patch it.
The secondary is legitimately phenomenal, though: Jessie Bates III and Xavier Watts at safety, A.J. Terrell at corner, and they drafted A.J.'s brother Avieon in the second round. If Billy Bowman Jr. comes back right from his Achilles, this is a top-shelf pass defense.
The quarterback room is where it gets weird. “Pua’a” is what I’ll affectionately call them - Michael Penix Jr. is working back from a season-ending knee injury, so Tua Tagovailoa — cut by Miami, now Atlanta's second left-handed quarterback — may have to start early. Stefanski's timing-based passing game actually fits Tua well, which is either a nice insurance policy or a controversy waiting to happen. Two quarterbacks usually means zero.
They're +300 to +350, the longest or second-longest price here, and a model I looked at projects them for the most wins in the division. Somebody's wrong, and I'm siding with the model — mostly because Stefanski inheriting Bijan Robinson is the most obvious talent-meets-scheme fit in this division. Bijan should be in the OPOY conversation again, and I’ll regret trading him yet again.
3 – New Orleans Saints
2025: 6-11 (4th in NFC South)
In Week 9 I wrote, and I quote, "The Saints are horrible." They were 2-6 at the time and had just lost 23-3 to Tampa. The next week I wrote about them getting run 34-10 by the Rams. Then they went out and won four of their last five, and Tyler Shough turned into a real issue for everybody who wrote them off. Including me.
Shough is the whole reason this team is interesting. He's 26, which is old for a second-year starter, and that's part of the pitch — he came in with a mountain of college experience and looked wiser than a typical sophomore. Kellen Moore has built good offenses in Dallas and Philadelphia and now has a quarterback he can actually mold from the ground up. If Shough shines again, New Orleans skipped the hardest part of a rebuild in about six weeks.
They gave him weapons, too. Travis Etienne signed to be the eventual successor to Alvin Kamara, and Kamara restructured to stick around, so the backfield is Etienne, Kamara, Kendre Miller and Devin Neal. Then they took Arizona State's Jordyn Tyson eighth overall to pair with Chris Olave and Devaughn Vele.
Here's my hesitation, and it's the same one that's haunted this franchise for years: health. Tyson and Olave both have injury histories. Tyson is out for at least the first 4 weeks. Kamara played a career-low 11 games last season. And behind the top three receivers, the depth chart is Trey Palmer, Kevin Austin Jr., Ja'Lynn Polk and a couple of rookies. One hamstring and this offense gets thin fast.
The defense is the underrated part of this team. They finished ninth, Cam Jordan and Chase Young each hit double-digit sacks, and they poached Elliss from Atlanta — taking Atlanta's leading tackler is a nice bit of division business. Jordan came back on a one-year deal in June for his sixteenth and final season, which is the kind of thing that either galvanizes a locker room or becomes a nice story on a 7-10 team. There are playmakers at all three levels here, and a defense that good on a team this cheap at quarterback is how you sneak up on people.
The schedule is the real edge: New Orleans plays the second-easiest slate in the NFL by opponents' 2025 records, behind only Cleveland. In a division where nobody's winning 11 games, an easy schedule might be worth more than a roster upgrade.
They're +250 to +270 and drawing 33% of the division betting handle at DraftKings — the most in the division despite not being the favorite. The public is all the way in on Shough. I'm most of the way in. Third here says more about how tight this division is than about the Saints, and if Shough takes another jump I'll look dumb for having them here. They open at Detroit, which will tell us a lot in a hurry.
4 – Carolina Panthers
2025: 8-9 (1st in NFC South, lost Wild Card)
Somebody has to be fourth in a division where everyone finished within two games, and I drew the defending champs. Sorry, Carolina.
Let's be honest about what happened last year. The Panthers won their first division title since 2015 with a losing record, on a three-way tiebreaker, and earned a home playoff game at 8-9. It counts. Stupid, but it counts. It's also the fifth time in league history a team has done that, and I'm not building a 2026 projection on it.
Year four is everything for Bryce Young. Dan Morgan said in April that "the arrow is up" and that they'll extend him at the right time, which is exactly what you say when you're not ready to pay somebody. Young showed real flashes in 2025 but wasn't consistent week to week, and he's now on the fifth year of his rookie deal. Another inconsistent season and Carolina starts thinking about a transition instead of an extension. Dave Canales gets another offseason with him, but Brad Idzik takes over play-calling, which is one more new variable.
The defense got real money. Jaelan Phillips got four years and $120 million — and I wrote about the Eagles renting him at the deadline in Week 10, so he's been in this column before. Devin Lloyd got three years and $45 million. Second-round tackle Lee Hunter should complement Derrick Brown against the run. That's a measured, sensible upgrade to a middling unit rather than a teardown, and I like it.
Tetairoa McMillan is the guy I'd pay to watch here. I’m really in on this guy. He won an award as a rookie and looks like a genuine number one, and if Young is ever going to break through, it happens with McMillan as the safety valve. Darren Waller getting added in mid-August is another sign they knew the pass-catching group needed help.
The backfield worries me more than anything. Rico Dowdle was the one-year rental that made this offense function and he's in Pittsburgh now, running behind Aaron Rodgers. What's left is Chuba Hubbard, who has cleared 1,000 yards once in five years at 4.1 a carry; Jonathon Brooks, who has played three games in two seasons because of two ACL tears; AJ Dillon, who barely played in Philadelphia; and Trevor Etienne, a second-year special teamer. That's four question marks and no answers for a team that wants to defend a division title. The offensive line has camp injuries on top of it.
They're +305 to +350, the longest price in the division, and they open at home against Chicago. This is a fine team that got a fortunate 2025. Fourth in a four-team pileup where I could talk myself into any order.