To quote the great Michael Buffer, "Let's get ready to rumble!"

The 2025 NFL season is finally upon us and will kick off tonight in Philadelphia with the Super Bowl LIX champion Eagles hosting an NFC East archrival, the Dallas Cowboys. That also means it's the deadline to get last-second 2025 season preview content to your eyeballs before the real, regular season football action gets underway. 

NFL season primer 2025: Things fans should know entering Week 1, including notable games, new rules, and more

Jeff Kerr

With that in mind, here are five bold predictions for the 2025 season. Yours truly has been entrusted over the last few years to write weekly bold predictions columns that come out on Fridays, and that will continue to be the case this season, but this column is about five bold predictions for the entire upcoming season at large. Cheers to the return of pro football.

Chiefs won't win the AFC

Why is this a bold prediction? Well, the Kansas City Chiefs are the first team in NFL history to reach five Super Bowls in a six-season span, and they've won three of them. Kansas City also typically plays home games in the postseason thanks to nine consecutive division titles, the second longest division title-winning streak in NFL history. Their current run trails only the Tom Brady-Bill Belichick New England Patriots' run of 11 in a row from 2009-2019. 

That run is buoyed by almost always playing in the friendly confines of Arrowhead Stadium in January, with 12 of Patrick Mahomes' 14 AFC postseason starts coming at home. Kansas City is 12-2 in its 14 playoff starts with Mahomes under center. This season, the Chiefs will once again win their division, but they won't go 15-2 again to clinch homefield advantage. Eleven of Kansas City's 15 regular-season wins from a year ago were by one possession, and they went a perfect 11-0 in one-score games last season, which tied an NFL single-season record with the 2022 Minnesota Vikings. 

The Vikings took a major step back and went 7-10 the following season in 2023. Kansas City will still win the AFC West, but losing its grip on the one seed and having to play on the road will be its undoing come January. 

Travis Hunter wins both rookie of the year awards

No one has ever won both of the NFL's Offensive and Defensive Rookie of the Year awards. That's obvious because, since the first year the awards began being issued, 1967 (the start of the common draft era), no one played at a high enough frequency on both offense and defense to earn both accolades. 

Rookie second overall pick Jacksonville Jaguars wide receiver/cornerback Travis Hunter could be the first to do so. He told yours truly, under two weeks before the Jaguars traded up to select him second overall, that he would rather retire than only play one position in the NFL. New Jacksonville coach Liam Coen is one of the league's top play callers, and there's definitely a path to where Hunter could play mostly wide receiver and then catch enough interceptions defensively to get voters' attention. Hunter became the first player in FBS history, since 1978, to produce a season with over 1,000 receiving yards (1,258 receiving yards) and over three interceptions (four). That's why he won the Heisman Trophy in 2024. That two-way ability is also why he could make NFL history by taking home both rookie of the year awards in 2025. 

Packers' Matt LaFleur finally wins Coach of the Year 

Green Bay Packers coach Matt LaFleur's 67 wins since coming to the Lambeau Field sidelines in 2019 are the second most regular-season wins in the first six seasons by a coach in NFL history. He trails only two-time Super Bowl champion San Francisco 49ers coach George Seifert's 75 from 1989 to 1994. 

Yet, LaFleur doesn't have a Coach of the Year award on his mantle despite producing the types of seasons the voters typically look for when submitting their ballots. In 2019, he reenergized a fading Aaron Rodgers and helped lead Green Bay back to the NFC championship game for the first time since 2016 with a 13-win regular season. The next two years, the Packers were dominant: they ripped off 13 wins in both of those years as well, while the marriage between his playbook and Rodgers led to the aging passer winning consecutive NFL MVP awards. Those first three seasons from 2019 to 2021 marked the only time in NFL history that a team has won at least 13 games in three consecutive seasons. 

Fast forward to 2023, Rodgers is a New York Jet, and Jordan Love, the 2020 first-round pick who has been marinating on the bench under LaFleur's tutelage for three years, takes over as the starter for the now-NFL's youngest roster. Green Bay exceeded all expectations and slid into the postseason with a 9-8 record. The Packers entered 2024 as the NFL's youngest squad once again, and they improved to 11 wins while having both a top 10 scoring offense (27.1 points per game, eighth in the NFL) and a top 10 scoring defense (19.9 points per game allowed, sixth in the NFL) in 2024.  

Whether it's been pure dominance (2020-2021) or lifting the NFL's youngest team to consecutive postseason berths in the first two years post-Rodgers, LaFleur has had a strong case for the award. Now, the 2025 season will be his year as he finally takes the hardware home. The entire NFL world has its eyes on Green Bay after general manager Brian Gutekunst ripped All-Pro edge rusher Micah Parsons out of Dallas Cowboys owner/general manager Jerry Jones' hands by trading just two first-round picks and defensive tackle Kenny Clark to Dallas in exchange for the 26-year-old four-time Pro Bowler. 

The attention plus consistently strong on-field play will finally be rewarded, and LaFleur will rise above his +2200 odds, tied for 12th in the league according to FanDuel, to win the award in the 2025 season.

Vikings finish last in NFC North a year after 14-win 2024

The Minnesota Vikings flex the best offensive ecosystem in the NFL. They have 2022 NFL Offensive Player of the Year wide receiver Justin Jefferson, whose 7,432 career receiving yards are the most in NFL history in a player's first five seasons all time. 

Jefferson is flanked by 2023 first-round pick Jordan Addison (who will serve a three-game suspension to begin the 2025 season), two-time Pro Bowl tight end T.J. Hockenson, Pro Bowl running back Aaron Jones and coach Kevin O'Connell -- the reigning NFL Coach of the Year. All of that offensive talent will be asked to uplift the 2024 10th overall pick J.J. McCarthy. The issue is McCarthy's draft makeup entering his rookie year was that of a bust. 

That was before he became the first quarterback taken in the first round in the common draft era (since 1967) to miss his entire rookie season with an injury. McCarthy tearing his meniscus last preseason halted his football development while on the bench as a rookie. He is also the first first-round quarterback drafted with zero collegiate seasons with either 3,000 passing yards or 500 rushing yards since these same Vikings selected Christian Ponder 12th overall in the 2011 NFL Draft out of Florida State. The most recent passer chosen in the top 10, like McCarthy, who had not had such a season at the college level, was Detroit Lions 2002 third overall pick, Oregon quarterback Joey Harrington -- he was a complete bust.  

The NFC North is one of the top divisions in football, and the Vikings entering 2025 with an inexperienced quarterback who didn't produce at a high level in college could add up to a last-place finish for Minnesota. 

Cardinals win a playoff game

The Arizona Cardinals haven't won a playoff game since the 2015 season. That's when Carson Palmer was their quarterback, chucking the football deep downfield to Larry Fitzgerald. They'll win a wild card round playoff game in the 2025 season. Former top-five pick wide receiver Marvin Harrison Jr. will take a leap in Year 2 to become a Pro Bowl wide receiver. The Cardinals' revamped defense will transform into a top 10 unit in scoring defense after the addition of former Eagles edge rusher Josh Sweat, the return of defensive tackle Calais Campbell, and the draft selections of first-round defensive tackle Walter Nolen and second-round cornerback Will Johnson. 

That will lead to Kyler Murray outdueling either the Tampa Bay Buccaneers or Atlanta Falcons -- whoever wins the NFC South -- in the NFC's opening round of the postseason for Arizona's first playoff win in a decade.