10 Biggest Mistakes That Cost These NFL Teams Their 2025 Season
This article was originally published on Total Pro Sports.
We’re not talking about bad luck. We’re not talking about injuries nobody could’ve predicted. And we’re talking about front office decisions so baffling, so inexplicably stupid, that you have to wonder if some of these GMs even watch football.
From quarterback decisions that made zero sense to trades that look worse by the week, these are the ten biggest mistakes that cost NFL teams their entire 2025 season.
Let’s get into it.
What are the biggest mistakes of these 10 NFL teams?
The Buccaneers Let Liam Coen Walk
Tampa Bay had looked like it had lightning in a bottle with the epic Baker Mayfield reclamation project, but it turns out they let go of the magic ingredient in his return to prominence.
In 2024, offensive coordinator Liam Coen built one of the most productive offenses in Buccaneers history.
This team ranked among the best in the NFL in yards per game and in points.
Week after week, the offense was humming. Baker Mayfield was thriving. Everything was clicking.
Then Jacksonville came calling with a head coaching job. Coen initially said no—he even verbally accepted an offer to become the highest-paid coordinator in NFL history to stay in Tampa. But the Jaguars kept pushing, and Coen reversed course.
Here’s where it gets painful for Bucs fans: the organization could have fired Todd Bowles, a long-tenured, but generally mediocre head coach, and promoted Coen.
There were even rumors that surfaced that Tampa legitimately considered it.
But, alas, Coen left. And now look at the results.
The Jacksonville Jaguars are sitting on top of the AFC South, and their new quarterback, Trevor Lawrence, is looking like a changed man and playing some of the best ball of his career.
Meanwhile, Todd Bowles is still in Tampa, still posting his usual lackluster results, and watching his team slide out of contention.
Tampa Bay had the architect of their dynamic offense, a rising star who clearly had head coaching chops, and they let him walk out the door because they didn’t want to move on from a coach who’s proven he can’t get them over the hump, and it cost them massively.
New Orleans Should’ve Started Tyler Shough All Year
New Orleans was a hot mess coming into the season following the shocking retirement of quarterback Derek Carr.
People were quick to pile on, tabbing the Saints as a surefire candidate to get the first pick in the next year’s draft.
After all, they had no answer at quarterback—not to mention a rather dire salary cap situation across the board.
But after seeing how this season played out—especially after seeing how meh the rest of the NFC South was… it looks like the Saints might’ve been able to contend for a division title after all… New Orleans had their answer sitting right there on the bench. They just refused to use him.
They’d just drafted Tyler Shough, a rookie quarterback with real upside. The smart play was obvious: start the rookie from Week 1, let him take his lumps, and find out what you have.
If not Week 1, fine, but somewhere in the first month of the season!
Instead, the front office trotted out the likes of Jake Haener and Spencer Rattler. Two guys everyone in the building knew weren’t the future, taking meaningful snaps while their actual prospect collected splinters on the bench.
By the time this NFL team finally gave Shough his shot, the season was already too far gone.
Sure, they probably weren’t going to make a real playoff run, but there is no denying that they wasted weeks they could have used developing their young quarterback—on retreads who had no business starting in the NFL.
The Saints were always going to struggle this year. But they could have at least gotten something out of it. Instead, they got nothing—just another ugly, wasted year.
The Chiefs Waited and Watched Their Dynasty Crumble
This one is tough because it seems like it was so preventable.
All offseason, we heard about the Chiefs’ issues, and at every turn, the front office decided to cross its fingers and hope that Patrick Mahomes could hold it all together for them.
But what we saw was exactly what we expected coming into the year, with the way that Kansas City ignored its obvious need at wide receiver. Dropped passes. No depth.
Not to mention, an offensive line that was hanging on by a thread all year.
But did they fix any of it? NOPE. Not really.
The ultimate insult to injury—or in this case… injury to insult came in Week 15 when Patrick Mahomes went down with a torn ACL against the Chargers, officially putting the nail in the coffin for this year and worse yet—putting next year into question.
The team that made five of the past six Super Bowls is watching January football from their couches for the first time forever.
But hard not to feel like they got what they deserved in this case… The Chiefs knew they had problems. They ignored them. And now the dynasty might be over.
The Lions Said Goodbye to Ben Johnson
Detroit went 15-2 last year. They were the best team in the NFC, and everyone and their mother’s Super Bowl favorites coming into this season.
But not only did they fall out of the race for the NFC North in shocking fashion… they ended up missing the playoffs entirely.
Injuries happened, sure. But the Lions’ problem wasn’t just that guys got hurt—or that they didn’t have the right guys behind them.
It was that they didn’t have an offensive genius as OC anymore.
Yes, the Lions did well to keep Ben Johnson in town as long as they did… and yes, he probably always had ambitions to become a head coach, so a massive contract to remain a coordinator might not have done it…
But after seeing what Johnson was able to accomplish with the Bears and Caleb Williams in his first season in the Windy City, it is clear that Dan Campbell and the Detroit front office should’ve tried to do anything that they would have to make sure that he stayed in Mo Town, calling plays and orchestrating that high-powered offense.
Building a championship roster is one thing… and of course, you need depth to survive the grind of the NFL season, but the obvious missing ingredient in this team’s failed run this year was Ben Johnson. Full stop.
The Cowboys Traded Micah Parsons
You know when something looks like a bad idea… everyone says it’s a bad idea—then someone goes and does it anyway—and it blows up in their face?
That is exactly what happened in Dallas this year.
Jerry Jones looked Micah Parsons in the eyes. They shook hands. They had a deal.
And then Parsons’ agent tried to squeeze a little more money out of Jerry, and the whole thing blew up. Jerry shipped Parsons to Green Bay for two first-round picks and Kenny Clark.
Needless to say, it has been an absolute disaster for Dallas, which had one of the worst defenses in the league all season—one that killed their playoff hopes despite having one of the more explosive offenses in the league this season.
With Parsons, this NFL team had serious potential, but now, the defense has become the reason they’re watching the playoffs from home.
That’s 30 consecutive years without reaching the Super Bowl. And now there’s speculation they might cut Kenny Clark after just one season, which would mean they got basically nothing for one of the best defensive players in football.
Jerry’s ego cost Dallas its best defender. And the results speak for themselves.
Raiders Hired Pete Carroll
Leave it to the Raiders to live up to their city’s reputation and take a bad gamble on their new head coach coming into this season.
Las Vegas was desperate to turn things around and somehow arrived at the decision that the answer was bringing in a 73-year-old head coach who hadn’t won a playoff game since 2014.
We all know that Pete Carroll won a Super Bowl with Seattle, but that was over a decade ago… Since then, it’s been a whole lot of nothing. And somehow, Mark Davis looked at that track record and thought, “That’s my guy.”
You have to wonder what this NFL team was hoping for here. Did they think a septuagenarian coach running the same schemes from a decade ago was going to unlock something new and impactful enough to change the course of an eternally struggling franchise?
From our seat, it just seems like Davis watched Seattle’s gradual decline and thought, “I want that”!
The Jets Cut Aaron Rodgers
Here’s the thing about Rodgers’ 2024 season with the Jets: it wasn’t actually that bad, statistically.
He threw for 3,897 yards and 28 touchdowns. Both of those numbers are third on the Jets’ single-season list.
But the Jets still went 5 and 12—and in their defense, the noise around the franchise was pretty unbearable.
And despite having no real contingency plan, the Jets decided that enough was enough, and it was time to move on.
They released Rodgers in February 2025, and after a long deliberated free agency period, the Hall of Famer signed with the Steelers and led the legendary franchise to a divisional championship
Meanwhile, the Jets are still the Jets… and had their season blow up in humiliating fashion.
Maybe next time the Jest front office should look at the defense… Or the coaching. Or in the mirror!
Raiders Traded for Geno Smith
And speaking of recreating the Seahawks…
Pete Carroll wasn’t content just bringing his philosophy to Las Vegas. He wanted his quarterback, too. So the Raiders traded a 2025 third-round pick—the 92nd overall selection—to Seattle for Geno Smith.
Then they signed him to a two-year extension worth up to $85.5 million. Again—this is for Geno Smith. In 2025.
To say that the results have been a disappointment is a massive understatement.
Carroll immediately started trying to recreate his old Seahawks teams. He brought in familiar faces. He installed his system. And he acted like it was still 2023.
The results have been catastrophic. Smith threw more picks than any Raiders fan cared to count, and the team was amongst the worst in the league all season.
Clearly, Geno is washed up. It’s not clear what Mark Davis was thinking, trying to recreate a mediocre Seahawks team—only older and with a worse supporting roster.
He must have missed the memo that nostalgia doesn’t win games.
Vikings Choose J.J. McCarthy Over Sam Darnold
This might be the most frustrating decision of the entire offseason.
The Minnesota Vikings went 14-3 last year in large part because Sam Darnold played at a Pro Bowl level.
Sure… his end to the season was disappointing. There is no doubt about that. But the roster around him was stacked with veterans ready to win, but Minny tried to get cute and save a couple bucks by letting Darnold walk and handing the keys to sophomore quarterback J.J. McCarthy.
McCarthy missed games this season with three separate injuries—and when he did play, he was… not good. Plain and simple.
The Vikings overestimated McCarthy’s floor and completely whiffed on their backup plan. They had Daniel Jones as insurance, but let him walk too, as he signed with the Colts and outperformed McCarthy as well.
Things got so bad that at one point, they had to turn to Carson Wentz, who proceeded to need season-ending shoulder surgery, to win games.
Minnesota wasted an immensely talented veteran roster because it swung and missed at the most important position.
Darnold proved last year he could run this NFL team’s offense. The Vikings had a Super Bowl window. And they slammed it shut because they wanted to see what a second-year quarterback could do.
Browns Passed on Jaxson Dart
This is probably the biggest mistake of the 2025 NFL season, and based on what we’ve seen so far—and the Browns’ history at the quarterback position, it might haunt Cleveland for the next decade.
Going into April’s draft, the Browns had the second overall pick. They needed a quarterback. Everyone knew it. And Jaxson Dart, the electric Ole Miss signal-caller, was sitting right there.
Instead of taking him, Cleveland traded back from second to fifth overall, where they took Mason Graham, who, in their defense, has been impressive.
Okay, fine. Maybe they had a plan. Maybe they were going to use the extra draft capital to trade back UP and get their guy.
According to NFL insiders, the Browns wanted Dart… and what makes it all the more frustrating for Browns fans is that they had the ammunition to get back into the first round and select him.
But… They didn’t.
The Giants, who had been picking way later, traded UP to grab Dart at 25, and Cleveland opted for the spray and pray method, using two later picks on quarterbacks—Dillon Gabriel and Shedeur Sanders—and picking up a couple of vets of the scrap heap, hoping that one of them hit.
Sanders has shown the most promise out of any of them, but the prospects are still bleak.
Meanwhile, Dart has been sensational. He led the Giants to upset wins over the Chargers and Eagles. He looks like a franchise-changing talent at quarterback.
Cleveland had the pick. the intel, the draft capital… And they wanted Dart.
But they still managed to miss on a quarterback yet again!
