Is This the Most Parity the NFL Has Ever Seen?

So, What’s Really Going On This Year?

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The short answer is no, this isn’t the most parity the NFL has ever seen. The 2010 and 2017 campaigns serve as proof. However, things are more wide open than usual, which adds to the sense of parity.

And if the 2025 season has felt even more open than ever, there are reasons for that. One is the reality that the playing field probably has been more level early in the season.

As Buccaneers head coach Todd Bowles recently explained, early-season sloppiness can serve as an equalizer.

“There’s a lot of parity in this league right now,” he said, per Rob Maaddi of the Associated Press. “Without a lot of people playing in training camp, these first five weeks are really preseason ball games as far as penalties and getting everybody on the same page and doing those types of things.”

Mistakes and inefficient play have played roles in some of the upsets we’ve seen this season. Last Thursday, for example, the Steelers committed three more penalties than the Bengals and lost the turnover battle 0-2. In a game that was ultimately decided by two points, that’s big. In the Packers’ upset loss to Cleveland, Green Bay committed a whopping 14 penalties.

Coincidentally, the Steelers and Packers aren’t part of the five-win club.

If, as Bowles theorized, teams have taken a month or more to get on the same page, we may see good teams limit mistakes and start to pull away over the final 11 weeks of the season.

The early schedule has probably played a role too. Possibly in an effort to spice up the Thursday night slate, the NFL scheduled five divisional games in the first six weeks of Thursday Night Football. Short-week road games against familiar opponents are always ripe for the upset, and we’ve seen favorites go just 2-3 in those five divisional TNF games.

Other upsets in prime time, such as the Jacksonville Jaguars’ win over Kansas City in Week 5, have boosted the general perception that a lot of teams are on par with one another. As noted, though, there’s a substantial gap between the league’s playoff contenders and its bottom tier.

The other factor to consider is that some of the top teams are those fans didn’t expect to be great. If the Chiefs and Eagles were the league’s two 5-1 teams entering Week 7 instead of the Indianapolis Colts and Buccaneers, the parity discussion might be a lot quieter.

If the Bills were leading the AFC East instead of the Patriots or if the Bills were 6-1 instead of the Colts, the conversation would probably look a lot different too.

Could we see a preseason dark horse win it all in 2025? Sure. Have the close games, wild finishes and handful of tight-at-the-top divisional races made the early season unexpectedly entertaining? Absolutely. However, none of that means the NFL’s bad teams are close to its good teams or that the league is even close to true parity.

In fact, the NFL may still feature even less parity than other major sports leagues; and for most fans, that’s OK. It’s the unpredictable, “any-given-Sunday” nature of football that makes us love it anyway.

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