NFL Defense Rankings: All 32 Teams Ranked for 2026

Defense wins championships in the NFL.

So goes the old adage, and if the man with his name on the Super Bowl trophy thinks defense is paramount, who are we to argue?

The modern NFL is about offense — that's all the more reason defense is so important. Defense is reactive by nature, but today's great defensive units are learning to be proactive.

This era's defensive innovators have their units on the attack, taking the game at the opponent instead of sitting back and letting it happen to them. Last decade's positionless tweeners are flexible weapons now, the defensive version of "skill players."

Unlike offense, where quarterbacks carry an outsized weight of the overall unit measure, defensive positions are mostly weighted evenly — with a slight bonus to corners and edge rushers to value the modern passing game.

That also makes defense far more volatile and harder to predict than offense since defenses are not particularly sticky from one year to the next. It's a fool's errand to attempt to rank them — but I'm doing it anyway with my NFL Defense Rankings for 2026.

Last year, we were ahead of the curve on the Seahawks' defensive breakout. The year before, we were on the Browns and Texans' leaps early.

Yesterday, we ranked offenses. Today is about defense, though these rankings are less about 1-to-32 and more about the probability of finishing near the top or bottom, in tiers as always.

Be sure to check out the whole NFL rankings series:

NFL Defense Rankings

Tier 1 — Just Like Last Year

1. Houston Texans (Last Year: 1)

2. Seattle Seahawks (6)

3. Philadelphia Eagles (5)

If you watched any football at all last year — and what are we doing here, if not? — none of these three teams should surprise you.

The Texans were my choice last year to be the top defense in the league, and I don't see any reason not to run it back.

Houston finished top-3 in DVOA both overall and against the run and pass for a second straight season, and it's not hard to see why.

The Texans are top-3 in the NFL at both edge and corner, the two most important positions defensively. Will Anderson Jr. is an obvious Defensive Player of the Year candidate — he's flanked by Danielle Hunter and Jadeveon Clowney (in a part-time role), and Derek Stingley Jr., Kamari Lassiter, and Jalen Pitre shut things down on the back end.

Head coach DeMeco Ryans is pretty good at this defense thing, it turns out. His philosophy is basically just "our guys are better and play harder than yours."

That's pretty fun, and it also leads to less volatile results, making Houston the most likely team to finish at the top.

The Seahawks live by another philosophy altogether. Mike Macdonald is the best defensive playcaller in the world, and he is not about to sit back there and let the game come to home. Macdonald's unit attacks, bringing the game to the opponent and dictating from the jump.

It helps to have maybe the best secondary in the league, led by two key weapons in Devon Witherspoon and sophomore Nick Emmanwori, who Macdonald moves all over the field like chess pieces.

Seattle also has a deep and loaded defensive front, with Leonard Williams the star but plenty of names like DeMarcus Lawrence and Byron Murphy II surrounding them.

Seattle doesn't necessarily have elite individual pass rushers, but the Seahawks create their pass rush in the aggregate, and they ranked top of the league in Defensive DVOA both against the run and the pass last season.

Per Aaron Schatz, the last 10 such defenses to lead the league finished top-10 in eight of the following 10 seasons, with a median finish at 5.0. The Seahawks are really, really good, and are here to stay.

The Eagles put that stat into action last season.

After leading the league in Defensive DVOA two seasons ago, Philadelphia dropped to "just" 7th last year under Vic Fangio but still had an outstanding season.

Quinyon Mitchell and Cooper DeJean proved they were not one-year wonders at corner, and Riq Woolen enters the CB room as an X-factor.

Philadelphia also sports Zack Baun and Jihaad Campbell, two unique pass-coverage weapons, at linebacker. Jonathan Greenard joins the talented defensive front next to Jalen Carter, Jordan Davis, and the rest of the crew and it's easy to fall in love with this defense.

The Eagles have a real weak spot at safety with Andrew Mukuba and Marcus Epps back there, and Fangio isn't quite the attacker that some of these other top defenses are. That might limit their ceiling just a touch — still, it should also mean another year safely near the top.

Tier 2 — All the Talent in the World

4. Baltimore Ravens (4)

5. Los Angeles Rams (19)

6. Pittsburgh Steelers (2)

If you're surprised to see the Ravens near the top, maybe you shouldn't be.

Baltimore has finished top-10 in DVOA in eight of the last 10 years, and the only two misses were disastrous injury years. One of those misses was last season when the team was ravaged by injuries on the defensive line and in the secondary, had no run defense or pass rush for stretches, and still finished … 17th — right at league average — in a disaster year.

Enter new head coach Jesse Minter.

Minter is already one of the league's finest defensive playcallers, and he inherits a ton of talent.

Baltimore will be ecstatic to see the healthy return of Nnamdi Madubuike on the line, and now NT Travis Jones has broken out next to him. On top of that, the Ravens finally got their marquee pass rusher in Trey Hendrickson and added veteran stalwart Calais Campbell — this should be a deep and dangerous front.

And then there's Kyle Hamilton, the linchpin of the entire thing.

Hamilton is a heat-seeking missile and the best safety in the league — if he even counts as a safety. Baltimore has consistently used Hamilton to be its solution for whatever problem pops up, and you can bet Minter will find more than a few ways to unleash Hamilton as a weapon.

If things go wrong for Baltimore, it'll likely be because of the aging CB room, particularly Marlon Humphrey and Chidobe Awuzie. But if things go right, this is a defense that could be as good as any in the entire NFL.

I want to be skeptical of this Rams defense, but there's just so much talent there.

DC Chris Shula's defense was already top-5 in DVOA last season — and that was before it went out and got Myles Garrett, Trent McDuffie, and Jaylen Watson. When a top-5 defense adds the DPOY plus two corners from a good defense, that should have our attention.

It's worth at least pausing before we pencil those new names in for immediate greatness, though.

Garrett's record-breaking season came as a wide nine in Jim Schwartz's scheme, and it's something else entirely playing as a 3-4 edge in a defense that's been built fully around speed.

As for McDuffie and Watson, they've been great for the Chiefs but may have already been optimized by the great Steve Spagnuolo. It's not uncommon to see corners move from one team or system to the next and fail to live up to their previously established high level of play.

Here's the thing, though — the Rams could get slightly worse versions of Garrett and McDuffie and still have a great defense because this unit is loaded from top to bottom.

It's a top-heavy defense — like the rest of the Rams — so it will need to stay healthy and Shula still needs to show he belongs among the top playcallers in the league.

One, and just one, more thing. It still looks pretty darn likely that this defense will add all-everything DT Aaron Donald at some point this season — you know, the best defender of the century? Seems pretty good, especially since I'm ranking them top-5 even without Donald.

The Steelers have been near the top of defensive rankings for decades now.

Under Mike Tomlin, Pittsburgh's defense ranked top-14 in a remarkable 17-of-19 seasons, incredibly above average for basically two decades straight. This unit ranked top-9 against the pass in five of the last seven seasons and top-7 against the run in 6-of-8.

What's weird, though, is that all of those good defenses were rarely truly great. Tomlin had a top-8 defense only seven times, and that's where new DC Patrick Graham comes in.

Graham had huge success with under-talented Raiders rosters the last couple seasons — he represents a new unknown ceiling and upside for an already loaded defense.

It's not like the Steelers needed much help.

T.J. Watt, Alex Highsmith, and Nick Herbig remain as deadly as any pass rush trio in the league, and Connor Heyward is still one of the NFL's finest in the trenches 15 years later.

Pittsburgh added Jamel Dean to a deep group of corners that includes Joey Porter Jr. and Asante Samuel Jr., and that should allow Jalen Ramsey to move back into the slot where he can be more valuable.

This is an older defense, so there are age and health risks as always, but it sure looks like the Steel Curtain has yet another good defense.

Tier 3 — The Rest of the Top 10

No, you didn't miss anything. There are no teams in Tier 3, which I'm calling The Rest of the Top 10.

I'd really rather leave the last four spots blank.

The truth is that I feel awesome about the top-6 defenses, but it's a huge drop to anyone else on my list.

To wit: it's as big of a drop from No. 6 to 7 in my rankings model as it is from No. 7 all the way to No. 28.

Basically, the NFL this season looks like it has six elite defenses and then everybody else.

So let's get to everyone else now, but don't forget how far the rest of these teams are below those top-6 teams.

Tier 4 — Trust the Playcallers

7. New England Patriots (10)

8. Kansas City Chiefs (13)

9. Denver Broncos (8)

10. Minnesota Vikings (13)

11. Tampa Bay Buccaneers (20)

The Patriots had ranked top-10 in Defensive DVOA for 4-of-5 seasons before plummeting to 30th and bottoming out in 2024. They then bounced back to 4th best in PPG and really hit their stride as the defense — not Drake Maye — carried New England all the way to the Super Bowl.

New England added a ton of floor-raising veterans to the defense last season but never really got the unit healthy til that late-season rise. Now the Patriots add S Kevin Byard, and with corners Christian Gonzalez and Carlton Davis III, New England might well have the best secondary in the league.

That top-6 group above is not only my most talented six by a wide margin, those teams are also buoyed by great playcalling. After those six, the Patriots might be the next most talented defensive unit.

This will be the first full season for DC Zak Kuhr calling plays, but he was terrific late. If he can be a top-10 DC, this unit can make the leap.

The rest of this tier is full of defensive playcallers everybody knows, and that starts with the Chiefs and DC Steve Spagnuolo.

Spags has had this Chiefs defense around league average in two of the past four years and around the 75th percentile in the other two. That means a high, reliable floor, and it usually means finding the right buttons for this Kansas City defense to peak heading into the playoffs.

The big change this season is at corner with Trent McDuffie and Jaylen Watson gone, but Spags has had great success finding and replacing corners in this scheme.

L'Jarius Sneed is back after a truly terrible stint in Tennessee, but he was outstanding in this scheme. The Chiefs also paid a heap to trade up for Mansoor Delane, and second-year CB Nohl Williams looks ready to break out.

Add in rookies Peter Woods and R Mason Thomas on the defensive line next to star Chris Jones, and this defense should find its way again once those cornerbacks settle in.

Most pundits have a top-5 set of defenses this year. Four of those five were in my top-5, but the Broncos are the fifth, which means I'm slightly low on Denver, relative to the masses.

I remain a bit skeptical of DC Vance Joseph.

Prior to these two top-5 years with Denver, Joseph had never had a top-10 PPG defense in eight years calling plays and only once in top-10 yardage. His run defense ranked 20th or worse in 6-of-8 seasons before leaping to elite in Denver.

Is that just personnel?

It could be, but I'm a bit skeptical about this Denver personnel, too. Nik Bonitto is a fun pass rusher but contributes little outside of just pinning his ears back and getting after the QB, and the Broncos lost a couple key names on the defensive front and could still lose Jonathon Cooper to suspension.

Joseph runs an aggressive attacking system that relies on great corner play with plenty of man-to-man coverage, otherwise exposing the back-end of the defense, and that's a pretty good fit when you have former DPOY Patrick Surtain leading the way.

Denver saw a breakout season from Ja'Quan McMillian next to Surtain and is still waiting for last year's first-round pick, Jahdae Barron, to step forward.

This was the league's third-healthiest defense last season, so if injury regression comes right as the team gets thinner, that could lead to a step back. For now, I'll stay a bit skeptical on Joseph, Surtain, and Bonitto and make Denver prove it once again.

The Vikings play a similarly hyper-aggressive defensive style, but unlike the Broncos, Minnesota has a clear lack of talent.

On sheer defensive talent alone, the Vikings actually sit bottom-10 in my rankings. This then is a pretty huge bet on DC Brian Flores taking that collection of talent and making them a top-10 unit instead — but it's not like he hasn't done it before!

Minnesota has moved on from a number of veterans. Jonathan Greenard is gone, along with Javon Hargrave and Jonathan Allen up front, and the Vikings really need Dallas Turner to step up and show his pass-rushing prowess.

Minnesota also needs FA signing James Pierre to prove he can lead the CB room after a smaller role last season, and rookie Caleb Banks will need to play big minutes on the line.

Flores is as aggressive as any defensive playcaller, blitzing and conjuring pressure whenever he can. That leaves his teams volatile and exposed, and this is a team that might not have the talent to cover those gaps at times.

Don't be surprised if Minnesota runs up its defensive numbers against bad offenses but looks just as bad at times against the great ones.

It used to be that Todd Bowles was one of the league's most aggressive defensively, and maybe he'll get his chance with the Bucs this season.

Tampa Bay has largely rented out its pass rushers for years but may finally have a premium pass rusher in Rueben Bain Jr., and the Bucs also added MLB Josiah Trotter in Round 2 of the NFL Draft.

We already know the Buccaneers will be great against the run — they've ranked 6th-to-13th in five straight seasons with the recently re-signed Vita Vea stuffing everything up the middle — so the pass defense will tell the story, particularly the weaker CB group after the departure of Jamel Dean.

Still, Bowles is a proven commodity defensively and his teams have finished 13th-to-18th in Defensive DVOA in each of the past four years, even as the team has seen a heap of injuries and aged out many of its players.

If that's the floor and Bowles can find anything extra, then top-10 could be in sight once again.

Tier 5 — Better Than You Thought

12. Detroit Lions (15)

13. Jacksonville Jaguars (25)

14. New Orleans Saints (30)

15. Chicago Bears (7)

The Lions ranked dead last in adjusted injury games lost defensively last season — they finished top-10 anyway after going top-13 each of the previous years with a slew of injuries.

That could be the story once again in 2026, because Detroit looks like it will start the season without star safeties Brian Branch and Kerby Joseph for the foreseeable future, leaving the team pretty short-handed.

Once Branch and Joseph are back on the field, this becomes an easy top-7 roster defensively on talent alone, especially when you consider the return of Alim McNeill in the trenches and the continued rise of Aidan Hutchinson as one of the best defenders in the league.

This is a Lions defense that could start the season slowly while they try to get healthy, but they could push into the top-10 or better by late season.

The Jaguars actually finished 6th in Defensive DVOA last season — a huge leap from 31st the year before — with a defense that was much more than the sum of its parts under DC Anthony Campanile.

Jacksonville will have to replace Devin Lloyd at LB but that's Campanile's positional specialty, and most of the other names are running it back, but it's fair to think some regression is in order either way.

The Jaguars saw 41% of their defensive snaps against backup QBs last season, and they also leapt from last in takeaways in 2024 all the way to second last season, a 22-takeaway difference.

That sort of turnover luck tends to regress to the mean the following season, so the Jaguars will need to prove the defense can be as good without all the turnover luck.

Many thought Jacksonville's leap last season came from its offense, but it was the defense that took the bigger step forward — so too of the late-season Saints push.

DC Brandon Staley was outstanding elevating this unit from one of the league's worst rushing defenses to one of its best, and now adds second-round NT Christen Miller to its cause.

New Orleans will have to replace Demario Davis, but safeties Justin Reid and Julian Blackmon are healthy and should be a strength on the back end.

Like the rest of its roster, New Orleans will face big injury question marks — from those two perhaps, but especially up front with Cam Jordan and Chase Young showing their age. Still, like the other teams in this tier, New Orleans was better than you thought defensively last season.

The Bears were also like the Jaguars, in that Chicago benefited from a heap of turnovers last season.

The Bears actually led the league in both takeaways and fewest offensive turnovers, a margin that will surely regress in 2026, and Chicago was also No. 1 in fumble recovery rate.

All that obvious turnover regression has many ranking the Bears near the bottom of the standings, but it's fair to point out that the team should see some serious injury luck regression too, in a good way.

Chicago got basically lost seasons from corners Jaylon Johnson and Kyler Gordon last season, and DC Dennis Allen needs top corner play for his defensive scheme to work but ran out of bodies last year.

With those two back, plus first-rounder Dillon Thieneman in the secondary, the Bears could offset their pending turnover regression and still end up somewhere around the middle of the pack defensively.

Tier 6 — Change We Can Believe In

16. Dallas Cowboys (22)

17. New York Giants (12)

18. New York Jets (18)

It's pretty easy to get excited about a Cowboys defense that can really only go up after finishing last in Defensive DVOA last season.

It starts with new DC Christian Parker, a hot name everyone's been waiting on for years. He comes from the Vic Fangio tree with plenty of success with defensive backs in particular.

That makes first-round pick Caleb Downs especially intriguing as an obvious weapon for Parker in the Derwin Jones role, and it's easy to imagine Downs being played all over the field.

Dallas also traded for Quinnen Williams last season and saw an immediate bump in its metrics. Williams is a stud that makes the entire defense better, and now Dallas adds veterans like Rashan Gary, Dee Winters, Von Miller, and Jalen Thompson to the mix while also waiting for a healthy season from young LB DeMarvion Overshown.

Parker's upside is unknown and unproven, but it could be a dramatic swing from Matt Eberflus calling plays last season. The Cowboys can also only improve at red-zone defense, where they ranked last a year ago. And lest we forget, this was a top-5 defensive unit for three straight seasons as recently as 2023.

Top-5 is surely too far this year for the Cowboys, but this defense has retooled after trading away Micah Parsons and looks ready to compete.

It's New York, New York to round out this tier of defenses with upside worth believing in, so let's start with the Giants.

Similar to their division rival Dallas, the Giants finally moved on from the centerpiece of their defense by trading Dexter Lawrence, but New York has retooled quickly, adding a heap of veteran names penciled in as starters with D.J. Reader, Shelby Harris, Tremaine Edmunds, and Greg Newsome II leading the way.

The Giants had the worst run defense in the league last season, and Reader has always been a great run stopper, so he and Harris could be an immediate swing there.

New York hopes first-round LB Arvell Reese will also help, and the real upside on the team comes from the outstanding pass-rushing trio of Abdul Carter, Brian Burns, and Kayvon Thibodeaux.

Carter didn't necessarily pop in the counting stats last season, but the underlying metrics paint him as a future star.

The Giants never really fit Shane Bowen's scheme, so new DC Dennard Wilson could also be a big positive swing. If this Giants' pass rush lifts off, this unit could look a lot different than last year's.

If you're surprised to see the Jets up here near the middle of the pack, so am I.

Most analysts seem to have left the Jets for dead near the bottom of their rankings, and that makes sense with names like Sauce Gardner, Quinnen Williams, and Quincy Williams no longer on the roster.

But the Jets added Demario Davis, Minkah Fitzpatrick, and David Onyemata in their stead, and they'll hope first-round pick David Bailey is the pass rusher this team has been missing up front.

There's a surprising amount of talent on this roster, maybe even top half of the league, and now head coach Aaron Glenn is taking back playcalling duties. He calls that his "superpower" and it's hard to argue with the results he found in Detroit.

The Jets were second worst in red-zone defense last season and somehow managed to record zero interceptions all year, finishing with a -19 turnover rate.

Even a little luck should send those metrics back in New York's favor, and this could be a middle-of-the-pack defense as a result.

Tier 7 — A Lot Has to Go Right

19. San Francisco 49ers (9)

20. Los Angeles Chargers (23)

21. Tennessee Titans (29)

Stop me if you've heard this before: the 49ers struggled with injuries last season.

San Francisco will hope to get healthy seasons from Fred Warner and Nick Bosa this season, and those two superstars can change everything. Healthy seasons from those two alone probably make this ranking a floor, and Osa Odighizuwa could be a key addition up front for DC Raheem Morris.

The truth, though is that health is far from a guarantee for those two at this point, especially Bosa, and that the rest of this defensive roster badly lacks talent and pedigree. This looks like the worst secondary of any contender.

The 49ers need to stay healthy, but they also need the young guys to develop around the stars in a hurry.

The Chargers ranked top-10 defensively each of the past two seasons, but they did that under Jesse Minter.

New DC Chris O'Leary is a Minter disciple, but he's going to have to prove he can do what Minter did and elevate this island of misfit toys to a unit that far outperformed its talent the past couple seasons.

Derwin James is a unique weapon when he's healthy and on the field, but the rest of the talent here is lacking and sometimes got exposed against top offenses. This unit has finished below average against the run in nine straight seasons, and there's a real floor here if some of the talent gets exposed.

For the Titans, this ranking would mostly be a return to normalcy after one terrible season near the bottom.

Tennessee ranked between 17th and 19th in Defensive DVOA for three years straight before dropping to 29th last season, even with a DPOY-caliber year from DT Jeffrey Simmons.

The Titans added five new starters in free agency like John Franklin-Myers and Alontae Taylor, along with head coach Robert Saleh, who will call plays, and that should raise the floor of this unit back up toward league average where it's been in recent seasons.

Tier 8 — Bad News for Contenders

22. Indianapolis Colts (14)

23. Green Bay Packers (17)

24. Buffalo Bills (11)

25. Cincinnati Bengals (28)

The Colts have been a relatively predictable defense for awhile now. This unit has finished somewhere between 14th and 20th in Defensive DVOA for four straight seasons, basically about as average as it gets.

Indianapolis tried to change that trajectory last season by trading for Sauce Gardner but never got to see he and Charvarius Ward play together, so that's the ceiling DC Lou Anarumo will try to build around.

There's a relatively safe floor here with Grover Stewart and DeForest Buckner up front in the trenches, but the Colts haven't shown they can tap into a ceiling.

It's virtually impossible to rank the Packers properly until we know if and when Micah Parsons will take the field.

Parsons is still the best defensive weapon in football for my money. In his absence, this looks like a bottom-5 unit, but when Parsons is on the field, it lifts the entire defense and should be league average or better.

This ranking is a bit of a hedge right in the middle.

Evan Williams and Xavier McKinney are strengths at safety, but Parsons is the queen of the chessboard and has to be out there for this to work. DC Jonathan Gannon plays far too passive a system for the general lack of talent without Parsons.

For years, the Bills have ranked reliably near the top of the league defensively. Until finishing 20th in DVOA last season, Buffalo had finished top-12 in seven consecutive seasons under Sean McDermott.

Well, McDermott is gone now, and everyone seems really excited for new DC Jim Leonhard, and for good reason.

But Leonhard has big shoes to fill for a coach that consistently got the most of the talent on the roster, and by talent alone, this looks like a bottom-10 defense on paper.

Where is the ceiling?

The only position with a serious case to be above average is at edge, and that's only if Bradley Chubb hits next to Greg Rousseau. But some of the names that brought tantalizing, albeit unreliable, upside for years like Joey Bosa and Matt Milano are long gone now, and there's just not a ton of high-end talent left.

Sometimes in life, you take a step or two back to take another step forward. That's what the Bills are trying to do here defensively, and some think that forward step may already be here. But with the lack of talent, I fear this season may be much more of a step back defensively while Leonhard finds what works.

It shouldn't be too surprising to see the Bengals toward the bottom.

Cincinnati has ranked bottom-10 in passing by DVOA in five of the last seven seasons and bottom-10 in rushing six of the last eight. This unit was downright terrible for the early part of last season before finding a few answers late.

But the Bengals finally made a real push to solve that issue, trading the No. 10 pick for Dexter Lawrence and adding a slew of talent around him, with Boye Mafe and Jonathan Allen on the line plus breakout S Bryan Cook behind them. Of course, they also finally moved on from  Trey Hendrickson to free up the cash for those moves.

DC Al Golden didn't have a ton to work with in Year 1 with the Bengals, and he's got his work cut out in his sophomore season.

Tier 9 — Sorry, Nothing to See Here

26. Cleveland Browns (16)

27. Washington Commanders (27)

28. Arizona Cardinals (21)

29. Carolina Panthers (32)

30. Atlanta Falcons (26)

31. Las Vegas Raiders (31)

It's pretty bleak here down at the bottom, and Browns fans know just how far they have to fall after trading Myles Garrett.

Any team losing the DPOY would obviously see a huge downgrade, but it's not just Garrett. The Browns also lost stud playcaller Jim Schwartz, whose scheme had this unit flying high twice in the last three years, and losing that duo together could be devastating.

Jared Verse looks great in camp, and Quincy Williams adds a punch up the middle next to Carson Schwesinger, but it's impossible to overstate how far down this can fall without Garrett and Schwartz around, even if there's still talent left in their wake.

There's optimism for new Commanders DC Daronte Jones, a former defensive backs coach with the Vikings that should come with a heavy dose of aggression a la Brian Flores and Mike Zimmer.

That's the sort of defensive scheme that fits the league meta currently, but it's also the type of defense that can look really, really bad if the talent isn't there to back it up.

Jones will need to find quick success with new veteran corners Rasul Douglas and Amik Robertson, and Washington will hope Sonny Styles is an immediate hit out of the first round.

Still, this defense has ranked bottom-10 three years running, so it could take Jones some time to find answers.

The Cardinals decided to retain DC Nick Rallis even after a head coaching change. Rallis has done some creative stuff — he just doesn't have a ton of talent to work with yet.

Will Johnson and Garrett Williams could be an intriguing young corner duo if the two can stay healthy, and Walter Nolen looks ready to break out in his first full season.

But no position on this team is even league average right now, so there's only so much Rallis can do.

The Panthers have some serious names on their defense.

Derrick Brown is a star on the line and Mike Jackson has played well at corner. The team invested big in Jaelan Phillips and Devin Lloyd, hoping to take the next step under DC Ejiro Evero.

This unit jumped from worst in the NFL to 22nd last season, but that shouldn't come as a big surprise. Carolina has finished somewhere between 22nd and 26th in DVOA in six of the last eight seasons. That's right on par with about where the offense is too, at this point — just enough to not be terrible, but not much more interesting than that.

The Falcons hoped for a better outlook, but that was before things went sideways on last year's double first-round investment in edge rushers Jalon Walker and James Pearce Jr.

Walker (torn ACL) is out for the season and Pearce (suspension) will miss the first eight games — that leaves Atlanta right back where it started, without the speedy pass rush it established last season.

That really only worked against particular opponents anyway, but without that pass rush, there's just not much left for DC Jeff Ulbrich outside of star S duo Jessie Bates III and Xavier Watts.

The Raiders finished around league average the past couple seasons, but that looks like the work of now departed DC Patrick Graham.

There's not a ton of talent on this roster — outside of Maxx Crosby, of course — and I don't love the new LB duo of Quay Walker and Nakobe Dean.

Someone's gotta finish near the bottom of the rankings, and the Raiders look like a relatively safe bet.

Tier 10 — Somehow Even Worse Than the Offense

32. Miami Dolphins (24)

The Dolphins appear to be tanking, which has them at or near the bottom of any number of the rankings we've done, but this might somehow be the worst ranking of the entire bunch.

Miami's defensive roster is absolutely barren. It's the least talented roster in the league by margin, with a defense that could be starting three or even five rookies, and the secondary is particularly young and weak, especially at safety.

It's full rebuild mode for Miami, and Jeff Hafley has his work cut out for him.

It looks like it could be a long year.

5 Key Takeaways for Bettors

1. Things look a bit more defense-first in the AFC.

Six of the top nine teams in my defensive rankings come from the AFC, with at least one top-10 team in each of the four divisions.

Four of those six teams made the playoffs last year, and the other two dealt with Patrick Mahomes and Lamar Jackson injuries.

If you want to make an AFC run, you better have a top defense — or an offense that can outscore all of them.

2. Only three teams ranked top-10 in both my offensive and defensive rankings — the Rams, Ravens, and Chiefs.

The Rams come as no real surprise and are Super Bowl favorites for a reason. Los Angeles actually ranks top-5 on both offense and defense.

The other two names may be more of a surprise though.

Everyone seems so ready to write the Chiefs and Ravens off after both teams missed the playoffs last year, but in a world where everyone thinks the AFC is wide open, why wouldn't the teams that have been at the top for years just step right back in to fill the void at the top?

Then again, there's one other AFC team that only just missed the cut — last year's AFC champion, the Patriots.

Over in the NFC, the Rams are the only team that's top-10 on both offense and defense, but expand that to top-13 and two more squads join the list.

Could the Vikings or Bucs be surprise contenders in the NFC?

3. The three teams in the top tier are best in the league at defense, but they're all ranked average or worse on offense.

We already know defense-first teams can win the Super Bowl. The Seahawks just did it, and the Eagles did before that.

But those teams weren't defense-only.

Seattle finished 10th in Offensive DVOA last season, and Philadelphia's offense was above average, too. Elite defense can sometimes lift the offense by providing it with easy field position off turnovers and favorable game scripts.

Those three teams look like defense-first playoff contenders, but who else could join them?

The Steelers are an obvious pick, and one we've seen play out in recent years.

Could a team like the Saints, Giants, or Jets be a deeper sleeper with a defense-forward team?

4. Two divisions are particularly clustered at the top defensively, creating opportunity.

In the AFC West, the Broncos and Chiefs both sit just inside the top-10. And over in the NFC North, the entire division ranks between 10th and 15th, outside of the Packers.

Clustering creates opportunity, because football is a high-variance game. That means long-shot opportunities for bettors, and it means those clustered defenses could see some separation from the unit on the other side of the ball.

The Broncos sit a ways behind Kansas City offensively, while the Chargers trail both teams defensively, so that could set up the Chiefs to retake the AFC West.

And in the NFC North, all four teams rank 15th or better on both offense and defense — with one glaring exception.

That's the Packers defense, especially early in the season without Micah Parsons, and that should give futures bettors huge pause before deciding to invest in Green Bay stock early.

5. There was bad news for four contenders in Tier 8 near the bottom of the rankings — but the Bills should be most worried.

The Packers were one of those teams, but they should get Parsons back sometime this season.

The Bengals are used to playing with a shoddy defense, and the Colts are, frankly, just happy to be included among the contenders.

The Bills are the one contender that could have a serious red flag defensively.

Buffalo could see a dip in offensive line play, and the Bills still don't have standout skill positions. The new coaching staff is green and unproven, and the special teams could rank near the bottom of the league.

That doesn't leave much room for error, and if this defense really ranks closer to the bottom-10 than the top-10, that could leave Buffalo seriously shorthanded. Even with the Bills ranked as my No. 2 offense, I still have Buffalo bottom-half of the league in my overall ranks.

Could Buffalo shock the NFL world and miss the playoffs altogether?!