The AFC's Great Reset: How Mahomes and Jackson Could Reshape a Conference in Flux

The 2025 NFL season will be remembered as a seismic moment in AFC history, one of those rare years when the fundamental assumptions about power and hierarchy get turned upside down. Patrick Mahomes and Lamar Jackson, the two most dominant forces in the conference over the previous half-decade, both missed the playoffs. Not by inches, not through bad luck or a single devastating injury, but through a combination of roster construction, coaching challenges, and the brutal randomness that playoff football demands. It is tempting to write both franchises off as teams in decline, to assume that the window has closed and that new powers have emerged to claim the AFC's crown. But that would be to misunderstand the nature of greatness, the way elite quarterbacks and organizations can recalibrate, adjust, and come roaring back with a clarity and hunger that often looks nothing like what came before.

The 2026 AFC landscape will tell a story that is still being written in the present moment. Some teams that made the playoffs in 2025 will discover that their success was built on a foundation of sand, that injuries, age, and the regression to the mean will catch up with them in ways they did not anticipate. Other teams, built around players in their prime and organizations that know how to win, will have enough resilience to maintain their status. But the teams that made the deepest impression on scouts, coaches, and analysts during the 2025 season are not necessarily the ones that will dominate in 2026. That is the beautiful chaos of the NFL, the way the draft, free agency, and the football gods conspire to keep the game in constant motion. This is the moment to separate the teams that are genuinely positioned to thrive from those that benefited from favorable circumstances and a narrow playoff window.

Let us start with Kansas City, because the Mahomes question is the most important one to answer if we want to understand the AFC's future. For years, the Chiefs have operated with a championship-or-bust mentality, with an organization so completely aligned around winning that failure felt almost incomprehensible. They had won three Super Bowls in five years. They had developed a culture of excellence that was the envy of the league. But 2025 revealed that even the most stable organizations can hit a wall, and sometimes that wall is constructed from salary cap constraints, aging supporting cast members, and the simple fact that other teams caught up. The Chiefs' offense looked pedestrian at times. Their defense, once a point of pride, became a liability. Their special teams had lapses that should never happen in an Andy Reid system. So when we look ahead to 2026, the question is not whether Mahomes can return to form. He absolutely will. The question is whether the Chiefs' front office can construct a roster around him that is fundamentally better than what they put on the field in 2025.

The blueprint for a Mahomes-led bounce back is actually already visible in recent NFL history, and it comes from an unexpected place. After the 2019 season, when the Patriots missed the playoffs for the first time in nearly two decades, everyone assumed that era was finished. But New England's front office made a series of moves that were not flashy but were absolutely purposeful. They brought in weapons, they bolstered the defense, they made smart decisions in free agency and the draft. By 2020, they were competitive again. Now, the Patriots that season did not reach the Super Bowl, but they were in the conversation. For Kansas City to follow a similar trajectory, they need to get serious about adding offensive weapons, particularly in the backfield and along the wide receiver position. They need to supplement their defensive roster with hungry younger players who can make an impact in Year One. Reid is brilliant enough to adapt his offense to whatever personnel he has, but even a quarterback of Mahomes' caliber needs playmakers around him. If the Chiefs spend this offseason and the draft with the same intentionality that got them to three Super Bowls in five years, there is no reason they cannot be a serious playoff contender by September 2026.

Baltimore presents a different sort of challenge for Lamar Jackson and the organization he plays for. Unlike Kansas City, which had sustained success and then hit a plateau, Baltimore's 2025 collapse felt more like a team whose supporting cast finally gave way to age and attrition. The Ravens have been one of the most consistently well-run organizations in the NFL under John Harbaugh, but even the best front offices cannot overcome the cumulative damage of years without significant upgrading. Lamar is still in his prime, still the kind of generational talent who can impose his will on a game in ways that few quarterbacks can. But he needs help. The question for Baltimore is whether they have the resources and the will to overhaul enough of their roster to get back to being a real threat in the AFC North. The good news is that Baltimore has shown an ability to draft well, particularly on the defensive side of the ball. If they can add meaningful offensive weapons and reinvigorate a secondary that became a liability, there is a legitimate path back to contention. The bad news is that window is narrowing. Lamar will not be playing at this level forever, and every year that passes is a year where the Ravens are not building toward another Super Bowl run.

Now let us turn our attention to the teams that made the playoffs in 2025 and ask the harder question: which of them will fall off in 2026? This is where the story gets really interesting, because there are at least three or four franchises that benefited from a favorable schedule, injury luck, or performances that are unlikely to repeat themselves. The Denver Broncos, for instance, had a resurgence that looked real in the moment but feels fragile upon deeper inspection. They had a young quarterback making strides, but did they really have enough talent around him to sustain that? The Indianapolis Colts seemed to find something in the second half of the season, but Anthony Richardson is still a work in progress as a franchise quarterback, and the supporting cast is not exactly loaded with established elite talent. There will be regression. That is a law of football physics. Teams that overperform their expected win total in one year are typically followed by seasons where they underperform. The trick is figuring out which teams did the work necessary to sustain their success and which ones just got lucky.

The teams that are most likely to maintain their playoff status in 2026 are the ones that have sustained excellence across multiple years and have quarterbacks who are in their prime. The Buffalo Bills, for all their recent playoff disappointments, have Josh Allen and a front office that has shown the ability to learn and adapt. The Cincinnati Bengals have Joe Burrow, and even though that organization can be volatile, there is real talent there. Houston has emerged as a threat with C.J. Stroud and a defense that is turning into something special. These are the franchises that have foundation-level excellence in place. They might not win the Super Bowl in 2026, but they will be in the conversation. They will be the teams that other organizations have to prepare for and gameplan against.

What makes the AFC so fascinating right now is the genuine uncertainty about how the conference will stratify once the 2026 season begins. We have seen before what happens when elite teams get back to full strength. The Patriots, the Steelers, the Cowboys, the Eagles, the 49ers: great organizations with great quarterbacks find ways to right the ship and return to prominence. Kansas City and Baltimore are no different. They will be back. Whether they are back in 2026 is a different question. That answer depends on the next few months of roster construction, on the draft picks that hit and the ones that miss, on injuries and luck and a thousand other variables that we cannot fully predict. But the foundation is there. The quarterback play is elite. The organizations know how to win. In a conference that just saw its two biggest powers stumble at the same time, that might be the most important thing of all.