One of the basic realities of life in the NFL is that each team is assigned to a division with three other teams, permanently. (Until there’s a reason to realign, which last happened in 2002.) And whether a team is in a good division or a bad division controls much of a team’s success, or not, in a given year.
Of the 17 games played, six of them are determined by the division to which it is assigned. If the other teams are really good, it makes it harder for an otherwise good team to be as good as it can be. If the other teams aren’t very good, it’s easier.
The fact that this is so obvious shows how fundamentally unfair it is. It can give some lesser teams a shot at hosting a playoff game. It can give the one good team in an otherwise bad division a chance to win enough games to emerge as the top seed in a conference (for example, the Patriots throughout most of the 2010s).
This year, the teams of the AFC and NFC North will each have a tougher road to whatever their best-case scenario could be, based simply on membership in a predetermined division. All of them are over .500 through five weeks.
Via NBC Sports research, a full division has been above .500 after six weeks only three times since 2002 (the 2025 NFC North, the 2024 NFC North, and the 2005 NFC East). Depending on how this weekend goes, both the AFC North and NFC North can turn that list of three into five.
The Vikings, Lions, and Bengals are off, so the six-week hay is in the barn as to each of them. To complete the feat, the 3-2 Browns need to beat the 4-1 Ravens, the 3-2 Bears need to beat the Falcons, the 3-2 Packers need to beat the Cowboys, and the 3-2 Steelers need to beat the Buccaneers.
If the Bears and Packers win, it’ll be the third straight year that every team in the NFC North is above .500 through six weeks. Which will make it harder for each of them to get to wherever they want to be.
That will likely change when the NFL expands the regular season to 18 games and seeds the playoff tree without regard to whether a team has won its division. That still won’t solve the problem, and it will bolster the argument that there should be no divisions at all. Or, alternatively, that the two games per year against each of the other teams in the division should become one game per year.
The point for now is that each of the four teams in the AFC North and NFC North could end up being objectively playoff-worthy in 2026, but playing six games against those other teams will make it harder to qualify. Meanwhile, someone from the NFC South will be winning the division and hosting a playoff game — even if (like last year) none of them ends up at or above .500.
The entire approach makes it harder for the NFL to honor sports’ most basic, longstanding message: “May the best team win.” Given the way the NFL arranges its teams, the best team could end up with roadblocks that the not-best team won’t have to navigate. Which could make it easier for the not-best team to win the Super Bowl.
The Vikings have been the league’s stingiest defense through the first five weeks of the season and they remained in fine form during last Sunday’s 23-13 win over the Saints.
Cornerback Byron Murphy played a leading role in the effort. Murphy had two interceptions of Saints quarterback Tyler Shough, including one with just under three minutes left to play that allowed Minnesota to run out the clock on their fifth win in five tries.
Murphy also had three tackles and a tackle for loss in the win. The NFL announced on Wednesday that they have named him the NFC defensive player of the week in recognition of that effort.
It’s the second time that Murphy has been named the conference’s player of the week. The first came while he was playing for the Cardinals in 2021.
The 49ers continue to have injury issues at the receiver position. And the Vikings have a current surplus of receivers that includes a player who had spent his first five seasons with the 49ers.
On Tuesday, Ian Rapoport of ESPNFL floated the possibility of Jauan Jennings being traded to the 49ers, in the coming days.
It would not be a surprise. As we explained after the Vikings signed Odell Beckham Jr. last week, OBJ’s arrival seemed to be a message to Jennings, who has two catches for nine yards in four 2026 appearances with two starts.
As the Vikings enter their bye, it’s a perfect time to assess the roster and to see if any moves can be made, either by adding a player or subtracting one. The Vikings seem to believe Beckham can still play, and the Vikings seem to be perplexed by Jennings’s inability to contribute to the passing game.
In lieu of simply cutting Jennings, there’s a possible deal to be made that would get the Vikings something of value in exchange for the balance of his one-year contract, which included a $4.5 million signing bonus with a $1.63 million base salary and nearly $100,000 per game in active roster bonuses and incentives tied to playing time and receptions.
If the 49ers are interested in bringing Jennings back, they could wait for the Vikings to potentially release him. But with Deebo Samuel joining the list of the substation’s victims (again) with a hamstring injury, time could be of the essence for the 49ers.
Or maybe Jennings gets the wakeup call, and it works. Either way, the clock is ticking. And continuing to hit the snooze button isn’t a viable option.
The Browns have made a couple of moves at running back and on the practice squad.
Cleveland announced the club has placed running back Raheim Sanders (hip) on injured reserve.
As a corresponding move, the club has signed running back Audric Estime to the 53-man roster off of Minnesota’s practice squad.
Sanders was injured in Sunday’s loss to the Jets. He served as the primary kick returner for Cleveland, averaging 29.3 yards per return.
Estime appeared in seven games with one start for New Orleans last year, rushing for 198 yards with a touchdown. He caught 12 passes for 103 yards. He previously appeared in 13 games for Denver in 2024.
Additionally, Cleveland signed tight end Devin Culp and guard Vershon Lee to the practice squad and released cornerback Myles Bryant and receiver James Proche II from the practice squad.
The document that the NFL and search firm Korn Ferry did not want the public to see has now been revealed.
The item is attached to a supplemental complaint filed by Flores against the Miami Dolphins, in his lawsuit that was first filed in February 2022.
The document in question, which is attached as an exhibit to the supplemental complaint, contains a summary of Flores’s “strengths and weaknesses,” as prepared by Korn Ferry.
The document includes this assessment as one of seven bullet points in the “weaknesses” category: “Needs someone strong at the top to reign [sic] in some of his worst behavior. He once threatened violence to his GM and made irrational demands during an ownership meeting. One long-time senior team executive said, ‘He may have changed since, but he was the worst hiring decision we’ve ever made.’ Another President of a club refused to talk about him.” (Emphasis added.)
Another bullet point says this: “Ongoing litigation may be a distraction.” (Emphasis in original.)
The Raiders, who received that assessment from Korn Ferry, did not interview Flores for the team’s head-coaching vacancy on which Korn Ferry was consulting.
The supplemental complaint filed by Flores accuses the Dolphins of making the statement calling him “the worst hiring decision we’ve ever made.”
Flores’s lawyers at the firm of Wigdor LLP and Elefterakis, Elefterakis & Panek issued a statement on Tuesday, a copy of which PFT has received.
“The recently unsealed documents demonstrate two unfortunate, but unsurprising, realities,” they said. “First, that Mr. Flores’ decision to hold the league and its teams accountable for systemic race discrimination has been met with unlawful retaliation. Second, discrimination continues to play a significant role in the hiring process for NFL Head Coaches, as evidenced by the fact that the candidate profile prepared for the Raiders leans heavily on racial stereotypes. We and Mr. Flores are committed to eradicating the institutional racism and retaliation that permeates the league, its teams and their partners.”
In our view, characterizing Flores as “the worst hiring decision we’ve ever made” makes it much more difficult for Flores to get a head-coaching job, and it opens the door to the question of whether that assessment was motivated in whole or in part by Flores exercising his prerogative to challenge the decision to fire him via the filing of a lawsuit.
Given the casual manner in which these statements appeared in a formal summary of Flores prepared by Korn Ferry, it’s fair to wonder how many other breadcrumbs his lawyers will uncover in the discovery process — especially once they get their hands (and eyes) on informal communications among owners and executives, such as emails and text messages.
