Why the 2025 NFL Season Feels So Weird — Even Though Nothing Has Changed

Parity is higher than usual, yet so is predictability... and somehow both can be true at once.

If the vibes seem weird — not necessarily off, just weird — this NFL season, this might explain why.

Much has been made of the fact that every team has already lost 2 or more games thus far, which is the first time that’s happened through Week 9 in 15 years, and just the fourth time we’ve seen it since the 1970 AFL merger. But within that, nine of 32 teams (or 28 percent of the league) have exactly 2 losses — easily a post-merger record — and 15 (nearly half the league) have either 2 or 3 losses, which is also a record.

In other words, there are a lot of good-but-not-great teams in the NFL right now, at the midpoint of the 2025 regular season. And that’s reflected in the Super Bowl odds as well, where no team is above 14 percent in either of my power ratings models — whether the points-per-game or Elo version — or the Polymarket futures, and only three teams are in double-digits in each of the forecasts as well.

Odds via Polymarket.

That’s parity for you, and it may even help explain the flurry of trade-deadline moves that played out on Tuesday in the style of an MLB or NHL deadline (and somewhat uncharacteristic for the NFL, which always had a reputation for a boring deadline until recent seasons). With so many teams that have a shot, there’s more motivation than usual to just go for it this year.