New Arizona Cardinals head coach Mike LaFleur is on a practice field in the desert right now, watching Jacoby Brissett — still unsigned, still technically holding out — run routes with Gardner Minshew while Carson Beck stands fifteen yards away, wondering if any of this is real. That’s where the Cardinals are, three months from Week 1. And that’s before the spread comes up.
The offseason that produced this chaos has also recently produced two seismic trades that reshuffled the entire landscape. Myles Garrett — 23 sacks, the outright owner of the NFL single-season sack record — is a Los Angeles Ram, costing the Rams Jared Verse and a first-round pick and giving them the pass rusher their near-miss season was missing. A.J. Brown is a New England Patriot, giving Drake Maye the alpha receiver he spent all of 2025 without.
Both moves landed post-June 1st. Both have changed the picture. And the bookies have responded in kind. The latest NFL odds boards have seen prices on the Rams lifting the Lombardi next February slashed down to a mightily short +525, the clear favorites. The Patriots have also been cut to +1800. But that’s the futures board; what about week one?
Well, while the Rams and the Patriots both have lofty expectations for 2026, these three teams certainly don’t. They have the toughest tests of anyone in Week 1. But who are they, and do any of them truly have any hope of a shocking upset win to kick off the campaign?
Arizona Cardinals — 10.5-Point Underdogs @ Los Angeles Chargers
Three wins. Fourteen losses. A franchise-worst .176 winning percentage, the worst since the team played in Chicago in 1959. They opened 2-0, made it feel briefly plausible, then dropped five straight by one score — including a home loss to a winless Titans team. James Conner lasted three games. Kyler Murray landed on IR in a move that felt as much like a soft benching as it looked. Jonathan Gannon was fired the morning after the season ended, leaving a 15-36 record behind.
What LaFleur has built in its place has a certain defiant clarity. Notre Dame’s Jeremiyah Love went third overall — a franchise planting a flag, saying this is how we get out, through the ground game. Isaac Seumalo signed on a three-year, $31.5 million deal to rebuild an offensive line that was historically deficient. Murray is gone, off to the Vikings on a one-year deal. What remains at quarterback is perennial backup Brissett, knowing that his best-ever chance of being paid like a starter comes by holding out now, with Minshew and Beck waiting in the wings should the front office refuse to be bullied.
The Chargers, Arizona’s Week 1 opponent, are a different conversation: back-to-back eleven-win seasons under Jim Harbaugh, new OC Mike McDaniel, Joe Alt and Rashawn Slater returning from injury. SoFi Stadium in September against a first-year head coach who doesn’t know his starting QB yet.
The bookmakers don’t set 10.5-point spreads by accident. But the line still feels a point or two fat — if Love and a retooled line can make it ugly and slow in the first half, this could be a contested fourth quarter. Arizona won’t win. They might not embarrass themselves either.
Cleveland Browns — 7.5-Point Underdogs @ Jacksonville Jaguars
The Browns traded away the one player who made any of it watchable. Myles Garrett carried that franchise’s dignity on his back for years — 23 sacks on a team that finished 31st in the league at 16.4 points per game — and now he’s gone. What’s left is Deshaun Watson’s $80.7 million cap hit, a ghost in the final year of a fully guaranteed deal, competing with Shedeur Sanders for a starting job. Sanders went 3-4 as starter in his rookie 2025 season with a 68.1 passer rating, second-worst in the league.
Todd Monken has built something real around that question mark: Spencer Fano ninth overall, Elgton Jenkins at center, Zion Johnson, Tytus Howard, receivers KC Concepcion and Denzel Boston. The offensive line overhaul is genuine. But they’re opening in Jacksonville against a Jaguars team that went 13-4 last year and, crucially, retained both coordinators — one of only three playoff teams to do so.
Prediction markets price Jacksonville at 71%. The Jaguars haven’t beaten Cleveland since 2017. Stranger things happen in Week 1. But with Trevor Lawrence under center, a healthy Travis Hunter, and a rebuilt roster that no longer has to scheme around Garrett, take Jacksonville.
New Orleans Saints — 7.0-Point Underdogs @ Detroit Lions
Tyler Shough took over in Week 9 of a 6-11 season and went 67.6% completions, 2,384 yards, ten touchdowns, a 91.3 passer rating, and won four of his final five games. Now, Travis Etienne is in New Orleans on a four-year, $52 million deal — a legitimate ground threat Shough never had in his rookie year.
Jordyn Tyson arrived eighth overall alongside Chris Olave. David Edwards upgrades the interior line. And Kellen Moore’s coaching staff is almost entirely intact, meaning Shough enters Year 2 knowing every concept, every protection, every signal. That continuity is rarer than it sounds, and it matters enormously for a young quarterback still building confidence.
Detroit, though, is a legitimate Super Bowl contender: 10.5 projected wins, their most favorable schedule in years, Jared Goff, Jahmyr Gibbs, Aiden Hutchinson, and Dan Campbell in Year 6 with scores to settle after last season’s shocking playoff miss.
Ford Field in September is as hostile a road opener as the NFC produces. But 7 points? If Shough picks up where he left off, if Etienne gives this offence a dimension it hasn’t had, if Moore’s scheme makes Goff uncomfortable early — there won’t be a blowout. The Saints probably don’t win outright, but they certainly have enough about them to cover.