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NFC West 2026 Preview: 3 AI Agents Pick Their Winners

Oh, boy! It’s finally here and I couldn’t be happier. NFL Games return this week which kick starts my annual fantasy football team and lots of crying on Monday morning. So, I decided to test the waters of the new season and ask 3 AI’s to do their best NFC West Preview to kick things off. We’ll see what Google Gemini says first. Or second. Because their first draft did not include current players so I had to tell it to analyize and rewrite. I guess Google isn’t much of a sports fan.

Then we’ll see what ChatGPT says before checking in with Claude to get the full report. And, the 49ers substation thing turned out to be a much better story than you probably knew when you asked. It’s fully real: a guy on X named Peter Cowan floated the EMF theory, Joe Rogan amplified it, John Lynch had to call it “a big nothing burger” at the Super Bowl, and the 49ers are now genuinely weighing a move of their practice site — not because the substation is dangerous, but because free agents think it is. SI ran an interview with the substation. That got its own section plus a callout.

The structural gift I found while researching: Seattle won Super Bowl LX at Levi’s Stadium, right next to the alleged cursed transformer, and Super Bowl LXI is at SoFi. So the year-end prediction is Rams win the division at 12-5, lose the NFC title game to Seattle, and the Seahawks go win a second ring in the Rams’ building — a running gag about Seattle touring the NFC West collecting Lombardis in rivals’ houses.

Claude sees that prediction happening, while the other two favor heavily the Rams comeback tour.

Google Gemini

NFC West 2026 Preview: Un-Retirements, Ghost Power Grids, and Post-Kyler Chaos

The NFC West has completely thrown out standard NFL convention and entered full comic book franchise reboot territory. Between Santa Clara measuring radiation levels on linebackers, Aaron Donald deciding retirement was just an extended spa vacation, and Arizona hitting the giant red reset button under center, this division is delivering prime unhinged sports theater.

1. Los Angeles Rams: The Boss Monster Returns

Just when opposing offensive coordinators thought it was safe to install basic pass protection schemes again, Aaron Donald pulled a Michael Jordan “I’m back” fax.

His wife Erica broke the internet with a legendary seven-word announcement—“I let him out the house y’all”—and suddenly the Rams’ front front went from “scrappy young core” to an apocalyptic nightmare. Teaming Donald back up with an already loaded defensive line means Matthew Stafford doesn’t have to play hero ball for four quarters. Sean McVay’s offense will still deliver its trademark high-efficiency wizardry through Puka Nacua and Kyren Williams, but the defense just got its ultimate cheat code back off the couch.

  • The Reality:Donald won’t need to play 90% of snaps. Even 30 high-leverage situational snaps of #99 collapsing an interior pocket is enough to ruin an entire offensive coordinator’s week.
  • The Outlook: With Donald anchoring the trenches and McVay orchestrating the attack, LA’s ceiling just cracked wide open into genuine Super Bowl contender space.

2. San Francisco 49ers: Powered by the Santa Clara Substation

While LA was busy coaxing future Hall of Famers out of retirement, the 49ers spent their calendar year investigating electromagnetic fields.

The Santa Clara practice facility’s neighbor—the Silicon Valley Power Mission Substation—became the league’s top tin-foil-hat scapegoat. After a bizarre plague of soft-tissue injuries, social media went full Stranger Things, convinced that 115-kilovolt humming transformers were actively zapping 49er hamstrings. John Lynch had to bring in certified electromagnetic inspectors who diagnosed the situation as a total “nothing burger” with EMF levels below a microwave. Still, Kyle Shanahan’s crew can’t escape the meme: every time someone pulls a calf muscle, expect fans to treat Levi’s Stadium like a radioactive zone in Chernobyl.

  • The Reality: If the offensive line holds together and Brock Purdy continues to distribute like a point guard with a calculator, Kyle Shanahan’s playbook remains almost impossible to stop.
  • The Outlook: Electric substation jokes aside, the Niners remain a ruthless machine built for late January—assuming their ligaments survive the season.

3. Seattle Seahawks: Mike Macdonald’s Dark Mode

Seattle has completely shed Pete Carroll’s sunny sideline bubble-gum energy in favor of Mike Macdonald’s moody HBO detective series aesthetic.

Macdonald treats defensive schematics like an escape room puzzle where every exit is booby-trapped. The disguises are nasty, the linebackers shoot gaps like heat-seeking missiles, and the coverages morph after the snap to induce maximum quarterback paralysis. The only snag is an offense that occasionally operates like dial-up internet in an era of fiber optics: sudden stalling in the red zone and stretches where moving the chains feels like pushing a refrigerator uphill.

  • The Reality: Macdonald will drag games into the mud and steal a couple of division upsets purely through tactical brilliance.
  • The Outlook: A gritty 9–8 wildcard spoiler that nobody in the NFC wants to see on their schedule in mid-December.

4. Arizona Cardinals: Life After the Kyler Era

The Kyler Murray era in the desert officially came to a close, ending seven seasons of acrobatic scrambles and off-script playground football.

Without Murray evading free rushers like Crash Bandicoot, the offense enters a hard pivot toward structured, ball-control football. Marvin Harrison Jr. remains the crown jewel—a receiver who catches contested balls with the ease of someone plucking a coffee off a barista’s counter. But turning sustained drives into touchdowns while navigating a full quarterback transition is a brutal learning curve, especially with a defense that is still learning how to consistently stop an outside zone.

  • The Reality: Rebuilding on the fly in the toughest division in football is not for the faint of heart. Arizona has premier young talent at the skill spots, but the margin for error is razor-thin.
  • The Outlook: Fun flashes of brilliance, plenty of highlight-reel catches from Harrison Jr., and a lot of fourth-quarter growing pains.

NFC West Projected Finish

PlaceTeamProjected RecordVibe Check
1stLos Angeles Rams12–5Aaron Donald’s revenge tour + McVay magic
2ndSan Francisco 49ers11–6Substation-certified; lethal Shanahan attack
3rdSeattle Seahawks9–8Macdonald’s defensive clinic, offensive buffering
4thArizona Cardinals6–11The post-Kyler reset year

The Rams take the top spot now that their interior wrecking ball has returned to SoFi Stadium, closely tracked by a 49ers squad that will be electric regardless of what’s humming over the practice field fence.

ChatGPT

The Rams built a defensive supergroup, Seattle wants another ring, San Francisco is negotiating with the laws of human anatomy, and Arizona has already started browsing quarterbacks for 2027.

The NFC West enters 2026 looking less like a football division and more like one of those prestige streaming dramas where three families are fighting over an empire while a fourth family is quietly packing the moving van.

Seattle is the defending Super Bowl champion. Los Angeles added Myles Garrett and then talked Aaron Donald out of retirement, apparently because the normal number of future Hall of Famers on one defensive line was not enough. San Francisco won 12 games last season despite treating the injured reserve list like a Costco membership. Arizona went 3-14, released Kyler Murray, hired Mike LaFleur, and is now attempting to rebuild while trapped in what may be the best division in football.

This will be competitive, strange and probably decided by whichever contender still has functional knees in December.

Los Angeles Rams: The Football Version of The Expendables

The Rams made it to the NFC Championship Game last season, had the NFL’s top scoring and total offense, and watched Matthew Stafford win MVP. Most teams would look at that and make a few careful additions. Sean McVay and Les Snead responded like someone playing franchise mode with salary-cap settings turned off.

First came Myles Garrett, the reigning Defensive Player of the Year and new owner of the single-season sack record. Then came All-Pro cornerback Trent McDuffie. Then Aaron Donald returned from retirement, presumably after looking at Garrett, Kobie Turner and Braden Fiske and deciding it would be rude not to join them.

This is less a defensive front and more a post-credit scene where every villain realizes they are on the same team.

The additions matter because the Rams’ defense faded late last season. From Week 13 through the playoffs, Los Angeles allowed 27.3 points per game, and it surrendered 31 points in each of its three postseason games. The offense was good enough to keep dragging the team forward, but eventually even Stafford ran out of ways to solve the problem.

Now opposing quarterbacks get to identify Garrett before the snap, slide protection toward him, remember Aaron Donald is lined up inside, and experience the same quiet dread as a person who just heard the phrase, “We need to talk.”

The offense remains absurdly complete. Stafford has Puka Nacua and Davante Adams outside. Kyren Williams has topped 1,100 rushing yards and 10 touchdowns in three straight seasons. Blake Corum gives the backfield real depth. The offensive line returns most of the group that powered the league’s best offense. Rookie quarterback Ty Simpson can sit behind Stafford and learn how to throw a 20-yard out while three defensive linemen are using his rib cage as a meeting room.

There are vulnerabilities. Stafford is still playing on the back end of his career, Donald has not played a regular-season snap in more than two years, and a roster this aggressive leaves very little room for a major injury at quarterback or offensive tackle. The Rams also have a difficult schedule and will not face Seattle until Weeks 16 and 18. That turns the division race into a season finale written by people who think every show needs a cliffhanger.

Still, this is the deepest and most intimidating roster in the division. It has the energy of The Devil Wears Prada 2: older stars returning, expensive talent everywhere, and absolutely no interest in pretending this is a rebuilding year.

Prediction: 13-4, first in the NFC West

Seattle Seahawks: Somehow the Forgotten Defending Champions

Seattle went 14-3, beat New England 29-13 in Super Bowl LX, and finished the entire postseason without committing a turnover. The defense allowed the fewest points in the league. Sam Darnold became a two-time Pro Bowler and a Super Bowl-winning quarterback.

Naturally, the national conversation spent much of the offseason asking whether the Seahawks were still any good.

This is what happens when your rival adds Myles Garrett and Aaron Donald. You can win the Super Bowl and still enter the next season like the actor whose name gets left off the movie poster.

Seattle’s reason for optimism is not just the trophy. The core is young and already proven. Jaxon Smith-Njigba is an All-Pro centerpiece. Devon Witherspoon, Nick Emmanwori, Byron Murphy II, Grey Zabel and Charles Cross are either entering or still approaching their prime. Mike Macdonald built the league’s stingiest scoring defense, and most of that group is back.

Darnold also deserves more credit than he gets. He threw no interceptions during the playoff run and delivered 346 yards with three touchdowns in the NFC Championship Game. This is no longer a cute redemption story. The man has won 14 regular-season games in consecutive years. At some point, the “Is Sam Darnold actually good?” debate starts to feel like repeatedly checking whether Spider-Man is still popular.

There are two real concerns. Brian Fleury replaces Klint Kubiak as offensive coordinator and will call plays for the first time. The scheme should remain familiar, but first-time play callers occasionally behave like someone who has just discovered the “Ask Madden” button.

The larger problem is running back. Super Bowl MVP Kenneth Walker III left for Kansas City, and Zach Charbonnet is recovering from knee surgery. Seattle used the final pick of the first round on Jadarian Price, but its early backfield will lean on George Holani, Price and Emanuel Wilson. That is a substantial drop from the player who ran for 135 yards on Super Bowl Sunday.

Seattle will still win because its defense, offensive line and receiving corps reduce the number of miracles Darnold must perform. The Seahawks may regress from 14 wins without becoming meaningfully worse. Football is rude that way.

Prediction: 12-5, second in the NFC West and a wild-card team

San Francisco 49ers: Please Step Away From the Substation

The 49ers are the division’s great medical mystery. They won 12 games last year even though Brock Purdy missed eight, Nick Bosa and Mykel Williams tore ACLs, and Fred Warner, George Kittle and Ricky Pearsall also lost significant time. Christian McCaffrey came back strongly enough to win Comeback Player of the Year, which in San Francisco is apparently an annual employee award.

The roster is healthier now and considerably more entertaining. Mike Evans gives Purdy the large, reliable outside target this offense has lacked. Deebo Samuel is back after one season in Washington, because NFL roster construction has entered its Toy Story 5 phase and everyone eventually returns. George Kittle remains George Kittle. McCaffrey remains one of the league’s best weapons when not being asked to personally carry the Bay Area on his back.

The defense could rebound sharply. Bosa and Warner are back. Dre Greenlaw has returned. San Francisco traded for interior rusher Osa Odighizuwa and hired Raheem Morris to replace Robert Saleh as defensive coordinator. It needed help badly. The 2025 defense finished last in sacks, 31st in pressures and 29th in pass-rush win rate. Having Bosa available should improve those numbers, provided he does not make prolonged eye contact with any nearby electrical infrastructure.

Yes, we need to discuss the substation.

An electrical substation sits near Levi’s Stadium and the 49ers’ practice facility. A viral conspiracy theory claims its electromagnetic fields are connected to the franchise’s relentless injuries. Medical experts and the NFLPA have said there is no evidence supporting it. The theory is baseless. It is also now so embedded in 49ers culture that the substation has its own parody social-media account, because the internet saw a debunked medical claim and naturally turned it into a content creator.

To be clear, I do not believe the substation is injuring players. I do, however, believe it will finish the season with four sacks, two forced fumbles and a questionable designation heading into Week 18.

San Francisco’s actual concern is depth. Evans has already managed multiple soft-tissue issues during camp. The running backs and defensive line have been banged up again. Bosa is returning from a torn ACL. McCaffrey handled an enormous workload last year. The top of this roster can compete with anyone, but too many position groups become uncomfortable after one or two injuries.

The schedule is friendlier than the ones facing Los Angeles and Seattle, and Kyle Shanahan plus Purdy gives the 49ers a high weekly floor. If the stars remain healthy, 12 wins is realistic. Predicting that health, however, feels like buying a used boat because the seller said the mysterious leak “usually stops on its own.”

Prediction: 10-7, third in the NFC West and fighting for the final wild card

Arizona Cardinals: A Rebuild Inside a Wood Chipper

Arizona is not entirely without talent. That sentence is important because the next several paragraphs may suggest otherwise.

Trey McBride is one of the league’s best tight ends. Marvin Harrison Jr. and Michael Wilson give the Cardinals a strong young receiving pair, with Wilson coming off a 1,006-yard season. Paris Johnson Jr. is a legitimate left tackle. Josh Sweat recorded a career-high 12 sacks last year. Budda Baker remains the kind of safety who plays every snap as if someone insulted his family in the parking lot.

The Cardinals also selected Notre Dame running back Jeremiyah Love with the third overall pick. Love joins Tyler Allgeier in a backfield that should become the identity of Mike LaFleur’s offense. It is an expensive use of draft capital, but it gives Arizona a dynamic player who can make Sundays interesting while the rest of the rebuild searches for indoor plumbing.

The problem is quarterback. Arizona released Kyler Murray after seven seasons and one playoff appearance. Jacoby Brissett enters Week 1 ahead of Gardner Minshew and third-round rookie Carson Beck. Brissett is competent and steady, but “competent and steady” is not an ideal weapon when six of your games come against Stafford, Darnold and Purdy.

The offensive line could feature several new starters. James Conner begins the year on injured reserve. The roster is learning new systems under a first-year head coach. Arizona also draws the AFC West and NFC East in addition to six games inside this division. Their schedule looks like someone clicked “expert difficulty” and then misplaced the controller.

There will be encouraging moments. Love could become a star quickly. Harrison and McBride should produce. The young defense has pieces worth developing. But by November, every Arizona conversation will drift toward Carson Beck and the 2027 draft. This is not a playoff team. It is the first season of a renovation show, the episode where everyone discovers the previous owner wired the bathroom through the toaster.

Prediction: 4-13, fourth in the NFC West

Final NFC West Standings

FinishTeamRecordPostseason outlook
1Los Angeles Rams13-4Division champion and Super Bowl contender
2Seattle Seahawks12-5Wild card and dangerous repeat threat
3San Francisco 49ers10-7Final wild-card race
4Arizona Cardinals4-13Evaluating quarterbacks by Thanksgiving

The Officially Unofficial Awards

Division MVP: Matthew Stafford
The reigning league MVP has the best collection of weapons and the fewest reasons to force the ball. Assuming his body continues cooperating, he keeps the Rams at the top.

Defensive Player of the Division: Myles Garrett
Putting Garrett next to Aaron Donald is the sort of idea normally rejected for competitive-balance reasons in a video game.

Breakout Player: Jadarian Price
Seattle needs someone to replace Kenneth Walker’s production. A first-round rookie will get every opportunity to become that answer.

Most Likely to Become a Weekly Meme: The Santa Clara electrical substation
It cannot cover a receiver, rush the passer or provide medical advice. That has never stopped the internet before.

Most Important Games: Rams vs. Seahawks, Weeks 16 and 18
The division’s two best teams do not meet until late December, then play twice in three weeks. That is not scheduling. That is network television programming.

Final Verdict

The Rams win the NFC West because they have the best quarterback, the best overall roster and a defensive line assembled with the restraint of a child filling a cereal bowl. Seattle stays close because its championship was not a fluke and its young defense may be even better. San Francisco remains dangerous, but asking this roster to survive another full season feels like tempting a football god who already knows where the practice facility is located.

Arizona will play hard, discover a few young building blocks and spend December pretending the phrase “draft position” has not entered the group chat.

My final call is Los Angeles by one game over Seattle, with both teams capable of reaching the Super Bowl. San Francisco hangs around the playoff race until the end. The Cardinals get four wins, one quarterback controversy and several extremely impressive Jeremiyah Love highlights in games they lose by 11.

The NFC West will be excellent. The substation will remain undefeated.

Sources

Claude

Montanimation Studios // The Sports Desk (Yes, We Have One Now)

NFC West 2026: The Haunted Substation, the Unretirement, and a Running Back Taken Third Overall

Four teams. One electrical grid conspiracy theory. A 35-year-old defensive tackle who un-quit. And the defending champs currently touring the division winning Super Bowls in other people’s buildings.

Filed September 5, 2026  ·  Half Art. Half Tech. All Shenanigans.

Every year the NFC West produces exactly one good idea and about eleven terrible ones, and every year we act surprised. This is the division that gave us the Legion of Boom, the Greatest Show on Turf, Jim Harbaugh’s khakis, and the Arizona Cardinals. It contains more Super Bowl trophies per capita than any division has business holding and also contains a team that just used the third overall pick on a running back while employing zero quarterbacks anyone can name.

And this year, for the first time in league history, it also contains a haunted electrical substation.

We are going to get to the substation. We are going to spend real time on the substation. But first, understand the shape of the thing: the reigning Super Bowl champions play here. The team that just assembled the most expensive defensive front in modern memory plays here. The team that has been snakebitten so thoroughly that fans blamed the power grid plays here. And the Cardinals also play here. That is a genuinely great division, and it opens with two of its four teams playing a regular season game in Australia on Netflix, which is a sentence I typed without any assistance from a language model, unfortunately.

San Francisco 49ers

The team that got so injured people blamed physics

Let us begin at the transformer.

Here is what actually happened, and I want to stress that all of it is real. The 49ers had a catastrophically injured 2025 season. Nick Bosa, Fred Warner, George Kittle, and roughly a dozen others went down. Somewhere in the middle of that carnage, a guy on X named Peter Cowan floated the theory that the electrical substation sitting next to the team’s practice facility at Levi’s Stadium was emitting electromagnetic fields that were weakening the players’ connective tissue. Joe Rogan picked it up. Millions of people heard it. And then, because we live in the timeline we live in, it became a legitimate story that an NFL general manager had to answer questions about at the Super Bowl.

Cowan, to his credit, was upfront that his work was not exactly peer reviewed. He told the SF Standard that he “was not able to access the facilities and my estimates could be wrong,” which is the “I am not a doctor but I did stay at a Holiday Inn Express” of injury epidemiology.

The actual science people were less charitable. Sports medicine analyst Dr. Brian Sutterer ran the injury data and found the 49ers were not statistical outliers at all, and that roster age was a far more likely culprit. The World Health Organization has found no evidence that low frequency electromagnetic fields harm human health. Substations emit nonionizing radiation, which is the boring kind that does not touch your DNA. The NFL’s chief medical officer waved it off. This is, in the technical parlance, nonsense.

It did not matter even slightly. The theory metastasized. Opposing players started riffing on it in press conferences. Seahawks tight end Eric Saubert said the locker room “kind of brought it up and it’s kind of like a joke, right?” Patriots linebacker Christian Elliss offered the single most accurate assessment of the entire affair: “This is how urban legends are started.” A parody X account literally called Electrical Substation materialized in August and immediately became funnier than most sports media. Sports Illustrated ran an interview with the substation. An interview. With the substation.

John Lynch, a man who has now spent a calendar year of his life on this, called it “a big nothing burger” and added, “We’re in a safe place of work. It’s a normal place of work. It’s a normal gym.” Which is exactly what you say in the first act of a movie where the gym is not normal.

The Part Nobody Wants To Say Out Loud

The 49ers are actually considering moving their practice site. Not because the substation is dangerous. Because free agents believe it is. This is the most 2026 problem imaginable: a professional sports franchise being forced to relocate its physical operations to defeat a vibe. Erin Brockovich walked so a Bay Area podcast listener could run.

Okay. The actual football team. It is good, and that is the frustrating part. Brock Purdy got his five-year extension and is no longer anybody’s underdog story, which means he now gets judged like a rich quarterback, which is the worst job in America. Christian McCaffrey came back and won AP Comeback Player of the Year. Mike Evans signed a three-year deal. Deebo Samuel came back after a season away, in the grand tradition of everybody who leaves a Kyle Shanahan offense and discovers that the offense was doing a lot of the heavy lifting. Trent Williams is a 12-time Pro Bowler. Kyle Juszczyk made his tenth straight Pro Bowl and First Team All-Pro, at fullback, in 2026, which is like winning a Grammy for harpsichord.

George Kittle tore his Achilles and is somehow on track for Week 1. Ricky Pearsall needed knee surgery. The defense finished dead last in the league in sacks, which for a unit built around Nick Bosa is like a bakery running out of flour.

And then, in a bit of scheduling that borders on cosmic mockery, the NFL sent the 49ers to Melbourne, Australia to open the season on Netflix. The team accused of being cursed by its own electrical grid has been relocated 7,800 miles away to the far side of the planet for Week 1. If they come out healthy, half of Northern California is going to demand the franchise move permanently to Victoria.

Verdict: Talented, expensive, and carrying more medical baggage than a Delta terminal. The books have them around a 21 percent shot at the division and a genuinely shaky path to January. That feels right.

Los Angeles Rams

Ocean’s Eleven, but everybody is 34 and the vault is a Lombardi

Les Snead did not run it back. Les Snead ran it up.

Start with the trade, because it is genuinely one of the wildest deals in modern NFL history. The Rams sent Jared Verse, a 2027 first, a 2028 second, and a 2029 third to Cleveland for Myles Garrett. Garrett is 30. He has two Defensive Players of the Year in the last three seasons. He set the single-season sack record in 2025. Bill Barnwell called him possibly the best player ever traded in the actual prime of his career. The Rams gave up three years of future drafts and their own young edge rusher for him and did not appear to lose a minute of sleep.

Then they traded four picks to Kansas City for All-Pro corner Trent McDuffie and immediately handed him four years and $124 million.

Then, on August 30, having apparently decided the bit was not yet complete, Aaron Donald unretired on a one-year, $20 million deal.

Aaron Donald. Thirty-five years old. Three Defensive Players of the Year. Retired in 2024, spent two seasons being a legend, and then walked back through the door like Michael Jordan faxing in “I’m back,” except the fax was a $20 million press release and the Bulls had already traded for Myles Garrett.

“Do I feel like I can play at a high level? Yes.”
Aaron Donald, a man who has never once been wrong about this

The rest of it is what you would expect from a team that has decided the future is a scam. Matthew Stafford is 38. Davante Adams is 33. Tyler Higbee is 33. The Rams have the third-oldest roster in the NFL at an average of 27.3 years, and that average is doing an enormous amount of work to hide the fact that the front seven has a combined Social Security eligibility date. Puka Nacua and Kyren Williams are the young guys holding the whole thing together, which is a lot to ask of two people who cannot legally rent a car in some states without a fee.

The motive is not subtle. Super Bowl LXI is at SoFi Stadium in February 2027. The Rams have built a roster explicitly engineered to still be standing when the biggest game in football shows up in their own living room. That is the entire plan. That is Ocean’s Eleven. Sean McVay is Danny Ocean, Les Snead is Rusty, Aaron Donald is the guy they pull out of retirement in the second act, and Matthew Stafford is the safe.

Verdict: The best roster in the division and the most obvious tragedy in waiting. Sportsbooks give them a 49 percent shot at the division and an 11.5 win total. Nobody in football has more to lose.

Seattle Seahawks

Defending champions, currently on a tour of rival stadiums

Let us establish the delicious geography of what happened last February. The Seahawks won Super Bowl LX, 29-13 over the Patriots. That game was played at Levi’s Stadium. In Santa Clara. Next to the substation.

Seattle went into the 49ers’ house, walked past the allegedly cursed transformer, and won a world championship on it. Kenneth Walker III ran for the MVP award on ground the internet had spent a month insisting was structurally hostile to human ligaments. Whatever the substation is emitting, it is apparently team-specific.

Sam Darnold is a Super Bowl-winning quarterback. Write that down, look at it, and let it sit there. The guy who was a walking meme, who saw ghosts on Monday Night Football, who got passed around the league like a fantasy sleeper nobody actually wanted, is a champion and a Pro Bowler. And he is still not satisfied. He said of the Super Bowl: “I didn’t play great in the Super Bowl. I missed way too many throws.” That is the most Pacific Northwest thing a person has ever said. He won the Super Bowl and gave himself a B-minus.

Now the complications, because there are real ones.

  • Darnold is on his seventh offensive coordinator in seven seasons. Klint Kubiak is out, Brian Fleury is in. Seven coordinators in seven years is not a career, it is a witness protection program.
  • Fleury came from San Francisco. Yes. The Super Bowl champions responded to winning a title by hiring a coach out of the substation building. Somebody in Seattle is playing 4D chess or nobody is playing any chess at all.
  • The Super Bowl MVP is not on the roster. Kenneth Walker III is gone, and Seattle is piecing the backfield together with Zach Charbonnet, who is banged up entering the season, and Jadarian Price. You won a Super Bowl on the ground and then let the ground leave.

Everything else is genuinely frightening. Mike Macdonald’s defense is the actual reason Seattle has a trophy, and Leonard Williams, DeMarcus Lawrence, Ernest Jones IV, Uchenna Nwosu, and Devon Witherspoon are all back. The receiver room is Jaxon Smith-Njigba, Cooper Kupp, and Rashid Shaheed, which is a very rude thing to do to opposing secondaries. Jalen Milroe is still developing in the background like a fun little side quest.

And they open the season Wednesday, September 9, at Lumen Field, against New England, in the Kickoff Game. A Super Bowl rematch, at home, with the banner going up, on a Wednesday. The league has learned that if you schedule football on a weeknight in September, Americans will simply watch it, and there is nothing any of us can do about it.

Verdict: The defense travels. The running back room does not. Books have them at 29 percent for the division, which undersells a team whose actual identity is “we will hold you to 13 points and go home.”

Arizona Cardinals

A rebuild wearing a rebuild as a disguise

Arizona went 3-14. They fired Jonathan Gannon. They released Kyler Murray on March 11, ending a seven-season era with all the ceremony of a canceled streaming subscription. And then they made a series of decisions that I want to walk through slowly, because taken individually each one is defensible and taken together they form a shape.

One: they hired Mike LaFleur, offensive coordinator of the Los Angeles Rams, as head coach. Fine. Good, even. Poaching from the best offense in your division is smart, and it is now legally required that at least one LaFleur brother be employed as an NFL head coach at all times.

Two: they hired Nathaniel Hackett as offensive coordinator. Nathaniel Hackett. I am not going to editorialize. I am simply going to place the name on the page and let it generate its own weather system.

Three: holding the third overall pick, with no franchise quarterback under contract, they drafted a running back. Jeremiyah Love out of Notre Dame. Love is legitimately excellent and this is still the roster construction equivalent of buying a Peloton before you have a floor.

Four: they took quarterback Carson Beck in the third round, which is the football version of saying “we’ll figure out dinner later” at 4pm and then eating cereal at 10.

Jacoby Brissett is the professional in the building, and Brissett is genuinely good at this. He had a career year in Arizona and he re-upped. He is the human embodiment of a bridge, permanently. There should be a plaque.

They open September 13 at the Chargers and close in Week 18 at home against San Francisco, which means there is a real chance the Cardinals’ season ends with them playing spoiler against a 49ers team desperately trying to sneak into January. That is Arizona’s whole role in this division now. Not a contender. A tollbooth.

Verdict: Under one percent to win the division. That is not a prediction, that is a diagnosis. But LaFleur is a real hire, Love is a real player, and the Cardinals hold a top-five pick trajectory in a division that is about to get very old very fast. Check back in 2028.

The Predictions

Written down so you can screenshot them and be cruel to me in January

FinishTeamRecordThe One-Line Reason
1Los Angeles Rams12-5Garrett, Donald, and McDuffie is not a defense, it is a hostage situation
2Seattle Seahawks11-6Macdonald’s defense wins ugly, the offense finds enough
3San Francisco 49ers9-8Wild card, one playoff win, another February of grief
4Arizona Cardinals5-12Better than 3-14, which is the entire goal, and that is fine

Division winner: Los Angeles Rams. I do not love picking the chalk, but you cannot look at that roster and pick against it in a 17-game sample. Health is the only real question, and the Rams have a defensive line so top-heavy that two hamstrings could rewrite the entire NFC.

And here is the actual call for the year: the Rams win the division, get to the NFC Championship Game, and lose it. To Seattle. And the Seahawks go on to play in Super Bowl LXI at SoFi Stadium, in the Rams’ building, one year after winning Super Bowl LX in the 49ers’ building.

The Bit

Seattle is systematically touring the NFC West and winning Lombardi trophies in their rivals’ houses. Levi’s in 2026. SoFi in 2027. At this rate the 2028 title game gets played at State Farm Stadium and the Cardinals have to hand it to them at midfield while the Bidwill family watches from a luxury box they are paying for.

Three quick ones to close:

  • The 49ers go to Australia and come back healthier than they left. Somebody with a podcast will present this as evidence. That person will get four million downloads.
  • Aaron Donald makes the Pro Bowl at 35. He has not played in two years. He will be fine. He is not governed by the same rules as us.
  • The substation gets a jersey retirement ceremony before it gets an EMF reading. This is America. We monetize the bit before we test the hypothesis.

The 49ers and Rams kick it off Thursday, September 10, at the Melbourne Cricket Ground, on Netflix, at 8:35pm Eastern, which is roughly 10:35 Friday morning in Melbourne. Two teams from Northern and Southern California will play a game in the Southern Hemisphere on a streaming service that started out mailing people DVDs of Rush Hour 2.

Nothing about this is normal. All of it is football. Let’s go.

Sources

// Montanimation Studios // Half Art. Half Tech. All Shenanigans. //

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