Nothing about an NFL offseason is subtle. Hope gets loud fast, win totals get pushed around, and suddenly everybody’s acting like last year never happened. That’s exactly why the AFC’s most inflated projections stand out so much heading into 2026.
When you line up the over/under numbers with what these teams actually showed last season, four names jump off the page: the Chiefs, Ravens, Bengals and Titans. Some of them are getting respect because of past success.
Others are getting the benefit of the doubt because people want to believe. Either way, the numbers feel a little too rich.
The Tennessee Titans are the trickiest case because the market isn’t even fully aligned on them. Some books have them at 4.5 wins, others at 6.5.
The optimism has been there all offseason, and there’s still a pull to trust that instinct. But Cam Ward’s preseason showing is hard to ignore, and right now projecting Tennessee for seven wins feels like a stretch.
That would require more than doubling last season’s total, and that gets a lot harder if Ward is even a little erratic once the games count.
Cincinnati comes next, and the bar there is sitting at 11 wins. That’s a big ask for a team that hasn’t topped 10 wins since 2022 and has spent the last three seasons struggling to even clear nine.
Joe Burrow can talk all he wants about this possibly being the best team he’s had in Cincinnati, but the path to the over is narrow. The Bengals are in a division that won’t offer much breathing room, with the Ravens expected to bounce back and the Steelers coming off a division title.
The AFC is a grind on its own. Add in Burrow’s health, the offensive line issues, and the need to prove the defense can actually hold up, and 11 wins starts to look awfully ambitious.
Baltimore is getting the kind of respect that usually comes with a 12-win team, and that’s exactly the issue. The Ravens are tied with the Rams for the highest over/under in the AFC picture and carry the fourth-best Super Bowl odds in the league.
That kind of number makes sense if you’re looking at ceiling, but the floor matters too. This isn’t just about health anymore.
Jesse Minter is a rookie head coach, Declan Doyle is calling the offense for the first time, the interior offensive line is raw, and the secondary still has questions after a season in which Baltimore ranked 30th against the pass. They’re absolutely built to rebound from an eight-win year, but jumping straight to 12 feels aggressive.
And then there’s Kansas City, which is probably the easiest team for people to talk themselves into. The Chiefs are sitting at 10.5 wins, and plenty of people are already penciling them in for more.
They also have the sixth-best Super Bowl odds, which says plenty about how the league still views them. That reaction is understandable.
For most of the last eight years, this was the AFC standard, with five Super Bowl appearances and three titles. But this version of the Chiefs is not that version.
They won only six games last season, and even before Patrick Mahomes’s injury, they weren’t exactly cruising on a championship pace. With offensive line problems and a young defense, asking them to pick up five more wins than last year is a lot to swallow.
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