Why Last Year's Division Champs Are Sitting Ducks This Fall, Plus What's Really Going On With A.J. Brown

Here's something I've learned after watching football for more years than I care to count: winning a division is not the same thing as being a good football team. Now, I know that sounds crazy coming out of my mouth, a guy who believes winning is the only thing that matters. But follow me here, because we're sitting at a moment in late May where a bunch of division champions from last year are looking at 2024 like they're standing in front of a mirror and don't recognize the face staring back. This is the kind of stuff that happens in football all the time, but it's worth understanding before we get to September, because the folks who don't pay attention to the blueprint are going to be real confused come October.

Let me tell you what I mean. A division winner from last year doesn't necessarily mean you won a lot of football games. It means you were the best bad team in your bad division. Now, that's not always true. Sometimes you get a really good division and the winner is legitimately excellent. But other times, you get a division where everybody stumbles around like a Saturday night in a small town, and somebody just happens to fall down last. That somebody gets to call themselves a champion. That's just how football works in a divisional format, and anybody who tells you different is selling something.

The thing about winning your division is that it gets you into the playoffs, which is great. But it doesn't give you any of the things you really need to stay on top. It doesn't give you better players. It doesn't give you better health. It doesn't give you smarter football minds. What it does give you is the assumption that next year will look like this year, and in football, that's about the most dangerous assumption you can make. Because unlike baseball, where a hundred and sixty-two games tend to even things out, football is just sixteen games of chaos and violence and fortune. One season to the next is like comparing two different movies that happen to have the same title.

Take a step back and think about this for a minute. Every single year, somebody who was great falls off. Every single year, somebody who was terrible figures it out. That's not pessimism, that's mathematics. The league has parity built into it like steel beams in a skyscraper. When you draft based on how bad you were, when you trade based on your draft picks, when free agency moves guys around, you're constantly pushing teams up and pulling teams down. The idea that the San Francisco Forty-Niners or the Kansas City Chiefs or whoever won their division last year will just cruise to another title is beautiful thinking, but it's not how the game works.

Here's what really matters when you're looking at whether a division champion can repeat: did they win because of structural advantages that are still in place, or did they win because of things that are temporary? Did they win because they have the best quarterback in the world and great coaching and a culture that's built over years, like some teams have? Or did they win because their best receiver stayed healthy when he almost never does, or their running back had a career year at age thirty-two, or their defense got a little bit lucky on third down conversions? This is the difference between a team that's built to last and a team that had a good year.

The quarterback situation tells you more about repetition than almost anything else. If you've got a young quarterback who's playing great football and making good decisions and the organization believes in him, you're probably fine. If your division winner is being carried by a quarterback who's basically hanging by a thread, or whose arm is held together with coaching tape and hope, then you're looking at a team that's one injury away from not winning jack. I've seen this picture before, and it never changes. The quarterback gets hurt or gets old, and suddenly the whole thing collapses. That's just how it goes.

What about the roster around that quarterback? Can they afford to keep the guys who made them good, or are they going to have to let people walk because of salary cap trouble? This matters more than anybody wants to talk about. You can have the best defense in football, but if you can't pay the guys who make that defense work, then next year you're starting over. Free agency and the draft can help, but there's no draft pick that can replace a guy who's already proven he can play at a high level. Continuity is a thing in football, and when you lose continuity, things get shaky fast.

Now let me get to something that's been bouncing around like a loose football in the backfield, and that's this A.J. Brown situation. You know, I've been watching wide receiver negotiations for a long time, and I've learned that these things are never really about one thing. They're about a whole bunch of things all mixed together, and what sounds simple on the surface is usually complicated underneath. When a guy like A.J. Brown starts talking about his contract or his future or anything else, you can be sure there are about fifteen different conversations happening at the same time in a lot of different rooms.

The thing about A.J. Brown is that he's a legitimately elite football player. I'm not talking about potentially elite. I'm not talking about could-be elite. I'm talking about a guy who lines up and plays receiver at the highest level in the National Football League. He makes the guys around him better. He creates advantages. He does the things that NFL scouts dream about at night. When you've got a guy like that, you want to keep him, because you know that finding another guy like that might take you five years and three draft picks, and there's no guarantee you ever get there.

But here's what happens in these negotiations, and it always comes down to money and years. A.J. Brown thinks he should be making top-five money because he plays like a top-five receiver. The team thinks they already paid him a bunch of money not too long ago, and they want to see how long he's going to play that way. Both sides have got a point, but only one side gets to actually decide. The team gets to decide. That's the business side of football, and it's ugly sometimes, but it's how it works. The team controls the cards, and the player has to decide whether he's going to fold or take what's being offered.

What's really going on here is that both sides are probably right about something. A.J. Brown probably is worth top-five money if you're talking about what he produces on the field. But the team is also probably right that they've already invested a ton of money in him and they need to see if there's going to be a long-term payoff. These things always take a while to work out because they're both true at the same time. This is going to get worked out one way or another, probably, because neither side really wants to blow it up. But it's going to be messy, and it's going to take some time, and there's going to be a lot of people offering opinions who don't know anything about what's actually happening in the negotiations.

This brings me back to something I started with, which is how fast things can change in football. A guy like A.J. Brown is still young and still playing great, but we're already starting to talk about what happens next. In the NFL, you're always thinking about next. You're always thinking about what happens after this season, and the season after that, and the season after that. That's how the best organizations work. They're not just trying to win now. They're trying to build something that can win over and over again. The division winners who don't have that kind of thinking behind them are the ones who are going to fall off.

If I had to pick the division winners who are going to have the hardest time repeating, I'd look at the ones who got lucky last year and know it, the ones who lost significant players because they couldn't afford to keep them, and the ones whose quarterback situation is built on sand. Those are the teams that are going to find themselves fighting for the playoffs this year instead of sitting on top of their division. It's not a knock on them. It's just how the game works. You win one year, and the whole league adjusts to you. Your draft picks are lower. Free agents don't want to come to you because they think you're set. The salary cap squeeze gets tighter. And pretty soon you're the underdog.

For the fans of these teams, this is actually a pretty exciting time. This is when you find out what your organization is really made of. Can they adapt? Can they adjust? Can they stay on top despite all the headwinds that come with being on top? That's what separates the dynasties from the one-hit wonders. That's what separates the Kansas City Chiefs from the Miami Dolphins. One of them found a way to keep winning even when the whole league was trying to knock them down. The other one had a good year and disappeared. Which one is your team going to be? That's the real question, and we're going to get the answer soon enough.