NFL Insider Jason La Canfora Speaks With Executives and Reveals His Top Picks for 2026/27 Divisional Winners

There will be a few interesting trades in the NFL between now and Week 1, and a few quality free agents remain unsigned.

But the bulk of the heavy lifting in terms of fortifying rosters and building a team for the 2026 season is already behind us. Which means NFL executives and advance scouts are starting their own self-scouts for the upcoming season and starting to devour depth charts and statistics of their upcoming opponents. The precise schedules have not yet been released by the league office, but teams know who they are playing and whether it’s home or road … just not when they are playing them.

Everyone is sizing up everyone else. And in conversations with NFL executives about the upcoming season, and which teams are best positioned to win each division, certain teams kept coming up over and over again. And some of those teams are not necessarily the current favorites in the sportsbooks. There is potential value in several of these markets in looking past the odds-on winner and projecting which franchises are poised to make a real leap.

AFC East – Buffalo (-130): The Patriots are going to regress. They will face one of the toughest schedules in the NFL after facing one of the easiest for any team to reach a Super Bowl. NFL’s don’t buy their pass rush or ability to protect the quarterback. "The quarterback gets hit too much, the left tackle got exposed in the playoffs and they didn’t really do anything about it," one personnel exec said. GMs have likened what the Pats will experience as a hunted team now to what Washington experienced last year and Houston the year before that.

The Bills still have some areas of concern with a rookie head coach and a pass rush that hasn’t been good enough. But Josh Allen is a perennial MVP candidate and they take care of business at home and the Jets and Dolphins are deep in a rebuild.

AFC North – Bengals (+210): Vegas loves the Ravens and annually lists their win totals too high and gave you plus money on Ravens to miss playoffs all last season as their year unraveled and Lamar Jackson got hurt and the head coach was on his way to getting fired and the defense stunk. The Bengals defense should be markedly better, they are loaded on offense and the Ravens now have the rookie head coach and 30-year-old offensive coordinator who has never called a play. Derrick Henry is age 32, when all running back career expire, and there are major issues about the offensive line.

"The Bengals have a real shot to win that division," another high-ranking team official said. "Baltimore doesn’t have a center. The left tackle is at the end. (MVP QB) Lamar (Jackson) tends to get hurt. The coaching staff is very inexperienced. There’s a lot of question marks there."

AFC South – Jaguars (+210): No one loved their draft and expectations will be much higher this season. But CJ Stroud has been in steady decline for Houston and the scope of that offense hasn’t expanded. The Texans defense is legit but for this kind of return, the Jaguars just won the division and that young staff flashed real schematic muscle a year ago. Houston still has major offensive line concerns, too. "Jacksonville’s coaching staff is special," one AFC personnel exec said. "I think that’s the difference."

AFC West – Chiefs (+160): Yes, it’s chalky, but this is a nice price. Everything we hear about superstar QB Patrick Mahomes is incredibly positive about his return from season-ending knee surgery. The Chiefs leaned heavily into rebounding their defense in the draft. This is a historically significant head coach/QB combo who, for the first time since they got together, are not coming off a division title. They kept their super star coaching staff intact. Denver will have difficulty repeating what it did a year ago and questions persist about QB Bo Nix. The Chargers will be a problem, and might make major gains on offense, but we don’t like the price versus the KC price (+190).

NFC East – Cowboys (+225): Maybe the Eagles change at offensive coordinator won’t be the elixir some expect. The locker room issues and Jalen Hurts’s unsound future might not be resolved simply by trading disgruntled WR AJ Brown next month. Dallas added vital pieces to each level of its defense and scoring points isn’t a problem. It took 20 years for a team to win this division two years in a row, and now we think Philly can threepeat? "Dallas looks like a playoff team to me," one personnel executive told me. Whether they are a division winner or not remains to be seen, but it’s hardly out of the question. The Eagles OL might be aging quickly.

NFC North – Packers (+190): They stick to their foundational philosophies in team building and it serves them well every year. "Loved their draft, love how they operate," is how one GM put it to me. The Bears might be candidates for some of that regression we mentioned with New England. Detroit has not been the same since former offensive coordinator Ben Johnson left to take over the Bears. Green Bay slipped up at home last season, but it would be rare for that to occur two years in a row.

NFC South – Buccaneers (+165): A healthier Baker Mayfield behind a solid offensive line should be enough here. Carolina repeating as division champs would be a stretch and Atlanta had a weird offseason all around. New Orleans might be poised to take a jump, but evaluators I trust are still skeptics on QB Tyler Shough. The Bucs were riddled by cluster injuries a year ago. "Mayfield will be much better," the GM said.

NFC West - Seahawks (+160): The Rams defense could not stop this deep-ball attack a year ago and after using their top draft pick on a back-up QB, that might remain the case again in 2026. Seahawks coach Mike Macdonald is the rare defensive mastermind who can match wits with Sean McVay. Rams are the betting favorites but Matthew Stafford’s back has been an issue in the past, too. Neither team has major offseason defections and the Rams additional of star CB Trent McDuffie will be big, but Seattle had their number last year and has one of the premier home field advantages in the NFL. "I think Macdonald is in their head a little bit," is how the GM put it. We’ll lean that way.