Three Playoff Teams, One Tough Offseason: New England, Green Bay Head the NFL's Losers List

Three teams that made last season's NFL playoffs have landed on a list no front office wants to see. CBS Sports, in a ranking published on 22 June 2026, named the New England Patriots and Green Bay Packers among the league's biggest offseason losers, arguing that postseason credentials did not insulate either franchise from a spring of costly missteps. A third playoff club, not yet named in the source reviewed, rounds out a top tier of clubs whose win-now windows have narrowed faster than their rosters have improved.

The takeaway is unglamorous and useful: a January ticket does not buy a July reset. In a league where the salary cap, the draft, and the coordinator carousel move in lockstep, offseasons are graded on a curve that punishes inaction as readily as it punishes error. CBS Sports's exercise is the annual reminder that the standings in May look nothing like the standings in January.

The Patriots: A reset without a runway

New England's case, as CBS Sports frames it, is one of direction more than talent. The Patriots reached the playoffs behind a young quarterback and a defence that overperformed market expectations, then spent the offseason declining to weaponise that position. Free agency added bodies but not difference-makers. The draft, per the ranking, addressed depth rather than the premium positions where the roster most needs a swing. The effect is a team that walks into 2026 competitive but capped — a floor of seven or eight wins, with little realistic path to the conference's top tier.

The counter-read is that New England never had a runway to weaponise. Without the cap room or the veteran trade chips that contenders stockpile, the Patriots' offseason was less a choice than a constraint. Mike Vrabel's staff, installed earlier in the cycle, inherits a roster that fits a long build, not a sprint. CBS Sports's framing, fairly read, is that the club failed to make peace with that reality in public-facing moves; the equally fair counter is that no move would have changed the underlying arithmetic.

The Packers: A window with the blinds half-closed

Green Bay's situation is the inverse shape. The Packers remain flush with young talent on rookie-scale contracts, the rare contender whose cap curve still bends in their favour. What they lack is a Jordan Love-supporting infrastructure on the edges. CBS Sports's critique, on the source reviewed, lands on the receiving corps and the defensive front: positions where Green Bay's internal evaluation appears to value continuity over a market-tested upgrade.

The alternative reading is that Green Bay's draft-and-develop model is the reason they have a window at all, and that breaking from it for a single splash move would compound rather than solve the roster's gaps. The Packers' front office, run by Brian Gutekunst, has spent a decade betting on its board. The bet has produced four playoff berths in five years. CBS Sports's ranking is a warning that the same bet, repeated one too many times, becomes a tell.

The wider loser tier

The CBS Sports list is not just about the Patriots and Packers. The piece groups clubs by category rather than by raw record, which is what gives the exercise editorial weight. There are the teams that paid retail in free agency and now face dead-cap drag. There are the teams that stood still while their division rivals upgraded. There are the teams that mismanaged the quarterback room — a perennial loser category, given the leverage the position commands. The Patriots and Packers, in this taxonomy, sit in the "stood still" branch, which is more damning because the league is moving.

That structural point is the part of the CBS Sports ranking that travels. In a 32-team league with a hard cap, every offseason is a relative competition. A club that runs it back has not run it back against last year's schedule — it has run it back against the clubs that did not. By that standard, the Patriots and Packers lost ground in May even if their October win totals will not show it for months.

What still has to play out

The honest caveat is that June rankings are a low-information product. Minicamps end, training camps open, and the schemes a coordinator installs in August will reshape which 2025 strengths carry over. The Patriots' young quarterback may take a leap that re-rates the whole roster. The Packers' developmental picks may produce the kind of Year 2 breakout that turns a depth signing into a sunk cost. Conversely, the clubs CBS Sports ranked above them — the ones graded as offseason winners — may find that splash signings do not mesh.

The sources reviewed for this piece do not yet specify which other playoff club completes the top tier of CBS Sports's loser list, nor do they enumerate the full ranking. Monexus finds that the Patriots and Packers placement is the analytically interesting move in the piece: two of the league's most-resourced recent operations, both coming off winning seasons, both now written up as offseason under-performers. That pairing, more than the rest of the list, is the framing that should travel into August.

Desk note: where the wire treats offseason grades as colour, Monexus reads them as a forward indicator on the 2026 cap cycle. The Patriots and Packers both enter the season with thin margin for error; whether the CBS Sports ranking ages well depends on which of them blinks first at the trade deadline.