NFL fans are spoiled when it comes to dynasties this century. Just as Bill Belichick’s New England Patriots ran out of gas after two decades of dominance, along came the Kansas City Chiefs to replace them. But the manner in which the Eagles destroyed those Chiefs in this year’s Super Bowl – and the way in which general manager Howie Roseman has apparently set-up Philadelphia for long-term success – has called Kansas City’s dominance into question. Here are a few candidates for the NFL’s next dynasty.
Kansas City Chiefs
What they have: Let’s start with the Chiefs, who may not be done quite yet. Yes, the Eagles utterly outplayed them in the Super Bowl, but one game (or one season) is a small sample size. The Chiefs, after all, have head coach Andy Reid, defensive coordinator Steve Spagnuolo, and Patrick Mahomes. That’s three future Hall of Famers, which is a nice place to start. If Travis Kelce returns for his 13th NFL season, that’s four guys who will eventually have busts in Canton. The Chiefs also have defensive lineman Chris Jones, who is on a Hall of Fame track too. Reid’s team have an unusual knack for pulling the right things out at the right times to win one-score games. That’s enough to put them right back in the running for their sixth Super Bowl appearance in the last seven years, which is just as unprecedented as it sounds.
General manager Brett Veach has done masterful work in teaming with Spagnuolo to create a defense that is top-notch at every level, and it’s young enough to sustain itself over time. Also, 2024 first-round receiver Xavier Worthy started to come on near the end of his inaugural campaign as the deep threat he was supposed to be.
Related: Our 2024 NFL predictions revisited: the Chiefs weren’t inevitable after all
What they need: A better and more consistent foundation beyond the Hall of Famers and good fortune. While the Chiefs have plenty going for them, there’s also the matter of an offensive line that has alternated between problematic and horrible over the last couple of seasons. The Eagles didn’t blitz the Chiefs once in that Super Bowl demolition – and still sacked Mahomes six times – a damning indictment of KC’s pass protection. The run game could also use a boost, and there’s the matter of Mahomes’s targets not named Kelce and Worthy – especially if Kelce, who admits he is not the player he once was, decides to move on from football.
In the 2024 season, Mahomes was the NFL’s worst deep passer by any metric you care to choose – he had a completion rate of 29.6%, and a passer rating of 78.7, on throws of 20 or more air yards, and that includes the 158.3 passer rating on deep throws he put together in the fourth quarter of the Super Bowl when the Eagles’ defense was in celebration mode. Mahomes had never been remotely as bad a deep passer before, and it’s time for Veach and Reid to get reinforcements to help him out.
They could also use a jump start at edge-rusher, but the offense has most of the problems here. There’s only so much Mahomes can do, and the wear was showing long before what happened in New Orleans on 9 February.
Philadelphia Eagles
What they have: The Super Bowl champions have Saquon Barkley, who set the single-season NFL record for rushing yards (including the postseason) with 2,507. Had the league’s MVP been taken after Super Bowl LIX, Barkley may well have have won it. The Eagles also have the NFL’s best offensive line, and run game coordinator/offensive line coach Jeff Stoutland is starting to look like one of the best assistant coaches… well, ever.
Speaking of legendary assistant coaches, the Eagles have defensive coordinator Vic Fangio, who took the players he had and created perhaps the most dominant defensive performance in Super Bowl history. They also have three top-tier targets for Jalen Hurts in AJ Brown, DeVonta Smith, and Dallas Goedert. Finally, they have Roseman, who has been the NFL’s best personnel and salary cap guy for a while. This team is locked and loaded from top to bottom, and there shouldn’t be any talk of fluke around this Lombardi Trophy.
What they need: The primary thing the Eagles need is the version of Hurts who turned the Chiefs’ defense out after it loaded up to stop Barkley. Hurts was named Super Bowl MVP with a bravura performance after a regular- and postseason in which things were not as stable in the passing game as they should have been. If the Hurts we saw in his last game is the Hurts we get from now on, stopping Philly from repeating will be exceptionally tough. But Hurts still needs development when it comes to reading the field, and that process may be affected by the loss of offensive coordinator Kellen Moore, who is now the New Orleans Saints’ head coach.
Baltimore Ravens
What they have: Lamar Jackson, the two-time NFL MVP, who could easily have won the award again in 2024. Jackson’s running ability has always been one of one, and he’s improved exponentially as a pure passer throughout his NFL career. Then there’s Derrick Henry, who set every opposing defense on edge in 2024, because now, they had to deal with Jackson’s known abilities and Henry’s intelligent smashmouth style. Pair that with an outstanding group of pass-catchers in tight ends Mark Andrews and Isaiah Likely, along with receivers Zay Flowers and Rashod Bateman, and this offense is built to both grind and bomb opponents into submission. Unless Henry starts to fade after a career full of workload worries, and there isn’t an impetus to either re-sign or replace left tackle Ronnie Stanley, who may test the market in free agency, there isn’t a ton to worry about on this side of the ball.
What they need: Last season, the Ravens had two edge defenders, Odafe Oweh and Kyle Van Noy, who exceeded expectations, and not much else. Baltimore have an outstanding interior line rotation led by Nnamdi Madubuike, but you have to worry a bit about the edges. Perhaps it may be time to look at linebacker as well; the Ravens missed Patrick Queen, who signed with the Pittsburgh Steelers, Baltimore’s AFC North rival, before the 2024 season. Neither Roquan Smith nor Queen were quite as good on their own. The secondary took a major step forward halfway through last season when the Ravens placed Kyle Hamilton and Ar’Darius Washington as the deep safeties; that should continue. The cornerback rotation is solid with youngsters Nate Wiggins and TJ Tampa, as well as veteran Marlon Humphrey, who can play everywhere. This is one of the NFL’s most consistent franchises from year to year; they may be just a few tweaks away from dominance.
Buffalo Bills
What they have: Josh Allen is the NFL’s reigning MVP, and with good reason. Since the 2018 season when Allen became Buffalo’s starting quarterback, the Bills have 77 regular-season wins, third in the league over that time behind the Chiefs (90) and the Ravens (78). And no other team this successful in that era has placed more responsibility on their quarterback.
Under offensive coordinator Joe Brady, the Bills have also finally developed an outstanding and multi-faceted run game led by James Cook, who may be the league’s most underrated running back. The offensive line has really solidified under Brady, and when everybody on defense is healthy, head coach Sean McDermott and defensive coordinator Bobby Babich have outstanding talent from front to back.
What they need: Of course, the Bills need to start winning enough in the postseason to actually get to the Super Bowl. Buffalo’s 7-6 postseason record with Allen is far from being entirely his fault, but you know what they say about quarterbacks getting too much credit and too much blame.
What Allen needs more than anything else to high-step over the Chiefs and Ravens and all other AFC contenders is a true No 1 receiver. Including the postseason, no Bills receiver had a 1,000-yard season in 2024. Khalil Shakir is the closest thing Allen has to an alpha, but he is mostly a slot man. 2024 rookie Keon Coleman has potential, but it’s too early to say exactly what standard of player he will be. Mack Hollins and Amari Cooper are impending free agents, and probably replaceable in the draft or free agency. And it’s probably time to see more from tight end Dalton Kincaid. If the Bills can get the kinds of targets around Allen who can really scald defenses, and continue with their strong run game and a potentially great defense, they have a recipe for success.
Washington Commanders
What they have: The Commanders are a long-shot but they have a quarterback who may have put up the best rookie season in NFL history. Jayden Daniels had the league on a string through most of the season. The Eagles’ defense turned him out in the NFC championship game, but as the Eagles’ defense did the same thing to Patrick Mahomes two weeks later, let’s not hold that against the kid. Daniels was transformational in the pass and run game, and that should play forward. Offensive coordinator Kliff Kingsbury choosing to stay with the team rather than looking at head coaching opportunities elsewhere is another boost.
The Commanders also have an excellent head coach in Dan Quinn, who knows how to get maximum buy-in from his players, and the fulcrums of the defense in linebackers Bobby Wagner and Frankie Luvu, although Wagner is 34 so won’t be around in the long-term. And they have a very nice receiver corps led by Terry McLaurin, who deserves all his current good fortune after surviving Washington’s QB Purgatory from his 2019 rookie season until Daniels’ arrival.
Related: Patrick Mahomes was chasing Super Bowl history. He left humbled and harassed
What they need: While Brian Robinson is a good running back, you’d like to see someone perhaps a bit more dynamic in the backfield, especially because Kingsbury did a brilliant job last season in designing Washington’s Pistol Pony run game. There are needs along both lines, especially at offensive tackle and edge-rusher. Dorance Armstrong and Dante Fowler Jr were decent pressure providers from the edge, but more is needed, and Fowler is due for free agency.
Quinn, who is a defensive mastermind, will also need to preside over a rethinking of the secondary, though 2023 rookie cornerback Mike Sainristil, who was thought to be just a slot defender when he came out of Michigan, can do more, and would seem to be the fulcrum of that rebuild. Of all the teams on this list, the Commanders are the one who progressed the most from 2023 to 2024, and with the right moves, they’re the one with the capacity for another giant leap in 2025.
Post-imperial chaos
Of course, dynasties aren’t required for any sport to be great – in fact, some would say that open competition is the ideal. If the Chiefs can’t put their offense back together, if the Eagles regress to the mean, if the Ravens and Bills just stay where they are, and if the Commanders don’t take that next step, we could be in for a relatively long stretch of non-repeat and new Super Bowl winners, which we had from Super Bowl XLIII (the Pittsburgh Steelers at the end of the 2008 season) through Super Bowl 50 (the Denver Broncos at the end of the 2015 season). When looking back at that era, there was nothing less special about the time – it’s just that there was no clear and obvious ruler of the NFL.
