Inside Football’s Most Unpredictable Season in Years
It’s easy to forget that just a year ago, enough people believed the Super Bowl was rigged that it became an actual thing that demanded actual answers from the actual people in charge.
In early February of 2025, in the weeks leading up to Super Bowl LIX, this was the working thesis of a rising tide of online skeptics who believed they’d finally pried open the curtain hiding the secret machinery of the National Football League. They were so convinced they’d exposed a scheme to choreograph the Super Bowl that both NFL commissioner Roger Goodell and the referees union had to declare publicly that they weren’t in on the whole thing. And it was clear that all of this wild paranoia grew out of one central complaint:
People were very, very tired of the Kansas City Chiefs.
The Chiefs were led by Patrick Mahomes, a quarterback who played with a unique brand of mesmerizing voodoo that drove opposing fans nuts. The Chiefs were also led by a tight end, Travis Kelce, who had landed himself in a romantic relationship with the most famous popular music star on the planet. The Chiefs, the theory went, were the NFL’s favored franchise, because they perpetuated an agenda of endlessly looped State Farm commercials and People magazine features. The Chiefs had already won three Super Bowls since Mahomes had become the archetypal quarterback of his generation, and were appearing in the Super Bowl for the fifth time in six years. Now here they were, destined to win their fourth against the Philadelphia Eagles, the same franchise they had beaten just two years earlier.
And so the conspiracists floated theories that went as deep as the colors in the Super Bowl logo itself. The Chiefs, they assumed, would win because this was what the Goodellian wizards who pulled the strings of the NFL demanded–just as they argued those same dark forces had engineered two decades of Tom Brady black magic before that, and crafted dynastic runs by the Cowboys, the 49ers and the Steelers dating back to the 1970s.
But then came an unexpected twist: The Chiefs got utterly destroyed by the Eagles.
It was an old-school 1980s-style Super Bowl, the kind that was over from the very beginning, and it felt like a reset for the entire league. The Chiefs were no longer invincible; the Chiefs were no longer the league’s dominant force. The old narrative was dead. A new one was about to begin. And that led us straight into 2025, the most surprising and unpredictable season in the modern history of professional football.
The Season No One Saw Coming
It was clear by early October of 2025 that something kind of weird was happening to this NFL season. The Chiefs began the year 0-2. The Baltimore Ravens, another preseason favorite, found themselves at 1-5. The defending champion Eagles won their first four games, but then lost two straight, the second to the wayward New York Giants–their seemingly unstoppable Tush Push-driven offense sputtered amid the kind of acrimony that only Philadelphia is capable of generating. The Buffalo Bills, led by the league’s second most high-profile quarterback, Josh Allen, also started 4-0. But then they lost to the New England Patriots–a team that had gone 4-13 the year before–and lost again to the middling Atlanta Falcons. Something wasn’t right about them, either.
Around this time, it became clear that nothing about the 2025 NFL season was going to line up with expectations. The entire structure of the league was being warped and upended in ways we had rarely seen happen all at once. The Detroit Lions, one of the most dominant teams of the 2024 season, found themselves at 6-4 by early November and would fade away without making the playoffs in 2025. Every one of the preseason favorites appeared to be riddled with flaws, and a bunch of teams emerged to take their place that most of us never saw coming.
This was the moment when dynastic quarterbacks gave way to a pack of upper-middle class talent, and when new coaches infused moribund franchises with newfound energy.
For a time, the Indianapolis Colts, led by a seemingly tapped-out retread of a quarterback, Daniel Jones, appeared to be the best team in football (at least until Jones’ body broke down). Down in Jacksonville, a franchise where hope had long ago been abandoned suddenly rediscovered itself under the leadership of new coach Liam Coen and quarterback Trevor Lawrence, a former number-one pick whose window of opportunity was on the verge of closing. In Seattle, Sam Darnold–who had once been so lost that he admitted to being haunted by ghosts while with the New York Jets–was well on the way to becoming one of the best quarterbacks in the league. In Los Angeles, 37-year-old future Hall of Famer Matthew Stafford overcame a perpetually aching back to produce perhaps the best season of his career. In New England, second-year quarterback Drake Maye, under the tutelage of new head coach Mike Vrabel, began throwing the ball with pinpoint accuracy. And in Chicago, Caleb Williams, another young quarterback on the edge of being abandoned as a lost cause, suddenly found himself with the help of new coach Ben Johnson.
By December, it became evident that no one knew a damn thing anymore. Now it felt like any franchise with a functional culture–basically, any team other than the Browns, Jets and Cowboys–should be competing for a playoff spot while this window of opportunity stayed open. The 49ers, playing with C-level talent due to numerous injuries, somehow won 12 games and made the playoffs. Meanwhile, the Chiefs faded from contention, getting eliminated from the playoffs on the same day Mahomes blew out his knee. The Ravens lost to the Pittsburgh Steelers in the final game of the regular season, ending their playoff hopes and ending the tenure of veteran coach John Harbaugh. A week later, the Steelers and their own longtime coach, Mike Tomlin, would part ways, with Tomlin stepping down after Pittsburgh failed to win a playoff game. In the end, a record ten coaches were fired at the end of the season, in large part because every franchise now believes it needs to compete immediately.
All of this was happening because the true NFL conspiracy was finally coming into view. It had never been the league’s intention to somehow further some Machiavellian plan that created dynasties. For thirty years, ever since the league embraced full-on free agency and a salary cap, they’d been striving for just the opposite. The NFL had been aiming for parity–the idea that any team could make the Super Bowl at any time–and now it was here, staring us in the face.
Then came the playoffs, where every game seemed to exist on a razor’s edge, decided by contentious officiating decisions and ridiculous Hail Marys and double-reverse passes. It gave us arguably the most entertaining back-to-back weekends in modern playoff history, where nearly every game seemed up for grabs and leads continually changed hands in the fourth quarter. There had never been a season quite like this one, where the narratives felt so fresh and the path to the Super Bowl felt so unpredictable. And it’s probably ideal that we enjoy it while we can, because it might not last.
The Future Is Wide Open
It’s possible that there is a fresh dynasty just waiting to blossom and trigger new conspiracies, maybe in New England or Seattle or Denver. It’s also possible that Patrick Mahomes will rehab, recalibrate and hurl the Chiefs dynasty back in our faces. It’s possible, as well, that some quarterback we were about to give up on–Justin Herbert? Jordan Love? Baker Mayfield? Jayden Daniels?–will throw off the narrative once more. Beyond that, it’s possible that the narrative of the league will be derailed by some kind of on- or off-field controversy that will detract from the games themselves.
But this season, nothing was predictable, and nothing felt pre-ordained. For now, there is nothing but possibility. The NFL has never been this wide open. It may not be the ideal set-up for figuring point spreads from week to week, but it is the ideal set-up for a league that just keeps getting bigger and bigger. It proves that building a competent roster, hiring a competent coach, and employing a competent quarterback are enough to give any team hope of becoming a dynasty someday.
If and when that new dynasty emerges, I’m sure we’ll once again argue about whether the league is rigged. But until then, these are the glory days of professional football. This is the moment where anything feels possible. The NFL has succeeded in executing its grand conspiracy, and it’s not the one where we think we know what’s coming. It’s the one where we have no idea what’s going to happen next.
The New England Patriots will face the Seattle Seahawks in Super Bowl LX on February 8, 2026.
Michael Weinreb is a writer and journalist and the author of Throwbacks, a bestselling Substack newsletter about sports, culture and history.