The 2025 NFL Playoffs are underway and while the fantasy football season is over, we can still gather intel based off performances in the playoffs for 2026. Yahoo analyst Matt Harmon shares what each team eliminated in the Divisional round has to do this offseason to improve.
Buffalo Bills: Get serious about pass-catchers
General Manager Brandon Beane put himself in the crosshairs of the Bills fanbase after berating a pair of local radio hosts who dared to question his approach to building the wide receiver room for the 2025 Bills.
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Few things have aged more poorly for an NFL decision-maker over the past few months, as it was obvious from early in the season that the pass-catcher group was a problem for Buffalo. It predictably came back to bite it in its final game of the season. As the internet raged in debate over whether Brandin Cooks did or did not catch his final target of the game, we lost sight of the fact that Josh Allen was throwing to Brandin Cooks — who wasn’t getting looks (targeted on 8.8% of his routes) for a two-win Saints team before being cut in November — in a do-or-die moment in overtime.
Even if Cooks gave the Bills some decent moments down the stretch, the fact that you needed him as desperately as you did is the ultimate sign of failure at this position. It wasn’t the only problem for the 2025 Buffalo Bills and the wide receiver room didn’t make Allen turn the ball over four times on Saturday, but a room that was set up to fail ultimately did just that.
The Bills elected to fire Sean McDermott in the wake of the Divisional Round loss. While this didn’t feel like the “correct” year to call for McDermott’s job based on what he got out of the pass defense late in the season, especially, I understand if this team feels like they need a change of voice at the top after running into the same ending season after season. However, that only really makes sense if you’re also overhauling the front office.
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Buffalo did not do that. In fact, it gave Beane a promotion.
That is … interesting.
The 2025 Bills, to me, were not a good roster on either side of the ball as some of their biggest moves ultimately didn’t work out. Perhaps there wasn’t understanding between what the coaching staff wanted and the players Beane was selecting. Yet, if we’re focused on the wide receiver position, Beane’s own insistence that Keon Coleman was an X-receiver for this team was a smoking gun in relation to how little he grasped the prospect profile of the player and what his roster needed, considering Coleman needed to play inside and their best receiver, Khalil Shakir, is a slot-only option.
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It was obvious at the time of the 2024 NFL Draft that this wasn’t going to work. It didn’t. To date, Coleman has been Beane’s only wide receiver selection in the top-100 draft picks.
There always seems to be a temptation to cut corners and not credibly invest in pass-catchers when you have a Tier 1 player behind center. Your hope is that this player can elevate everyone around him. A fair ask of an elite quarterback but you also need to clear a minimum player-quality threshold. It’s quite apparent that the Bills have not come close to that in the last two seasons, especially in 2025. That must change in order for this team to get where it wants to go and for this to be an offensive ecosystem we want to invest in in fantasy football.
Considering the track record, I’m skeptical that this front office can put aside its hubris and recognize what needs to be done. The best hope is that they change some of what they’re looking for at pass-catcher since the organization is already headed for a coaching staff makeover.
San Francisco 49ers: Officially turn the page
Usually, playoff losses, especially as we get deeper into the postseason, inspire some long think pieces about why a team fell short and what it says about their operation. For the 49ers, no such analysis is necessary, despite the blowout nature of their Divisional Round loss. This was simply an inferior team, largely thanks to a bounty of injuries, that punched above its weight all season but finally ran out of gas against the best team in football.
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While San Francisco and Kyle Shanahan must grapple with Mike MacDonald — who has his finger on the pulse of systematically breaking down the offenses that sprout from this tree — and the Seahawks defense lurking in their division for the long-term, the 49ers aren’t going anywhere. They have their head coach and quarterback established and locked in; that’s a fantastic starting point for consistent contention.
However, it’s worth watching how the offense specifically — finally — turns the page to a new era in the offseason.
The 49ers have been slowly moving away from the model and some of the pieces that carried the offense in the early years of Shanahan’s tenure. The 2026 season will likely mark the full move into a new era with Jauan Jennings heading into free agency, George Kittle a long shot to start the season after tearing his Achilles last week, Trent Williams another year old and Brandon Aiyuk already mid-way through a messy divorce with the franchise.
In terms of established skill-position players available for Brock Purdy, the only ones locked in right now are Ricky Pearsall, who is excellent but struggled with injuries in 2025, and Christian McCaffrey. Even with CMC, this team has to be at a point where they need to consider dialing back his workload, especially as a rusher, to preserve what he brings to the table as a one-of-one receiving weapon at his position.
Yet, the 49ers have never been able to resist using McCaffrey at ungodly rates when he’s been available. That’s the point here. It’s time to look to the future and make some alterations both on the margins — like getting a real complement to McCaffrey, who saw his rushing efficiency dip this season, anyway — and from a bigger picture standpoint. The wide receiver room is completely barren outside of Pearsall and they won’t have Kittle to fall back on at tight end. Even if Kittle makes it back next season, he’ll turn 33 years old this year and it usually takes much longer than one year to return to peak performance, if you ever do, for athletes coming off a torn Achilles.
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As mentioned, as long as Shanahan is the head coach and architect of the offense, this will be a good ecosystem worth investing in. The fact that they made it this far with this banged-up roster is proof. People still have big feelings about Purdy but he had some excellent moments late in the season once he got healthy and shook off the rust. That’s a great foundation combination. We can just expect the pieces orbiting the head coach and quarterback to look different as the 49ers continue to turn the page from their excellent past toward a future that they hope will feature many more contending teams.
Houston Texans: Fix C.J. Stroud
Don’t ever let anyone gaslight you or provide incorrect hindsight analysis; C.J. Stroud’s rookie year was excellent. We can acknowledge that and still flatly admit that he has not gotten better; in fact, he has regressed from the player he was in 2023 the last two seasons. Progression isn’t always linear and players don’t just steadily climb on an annual basis. However, you’re not supposed to go backward.
Stroud has undeniably done just that and the playoffs this season have been a low watermark in his career, with his performance in the Divisional Round being one of the worst in recent NFL history.
It’s easier to diagnose the symptoms of Stroud’s decline than it is the root causes. Without excusing his play, we can acknowledge that we might be watching a player withering under the weight of poor circumstances the last two seasons.
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The offensive line improved as the season went on but it’s still not a good pass protection group and Stroud plays like a quarterback with scar tissue from being under siege most of 2024. Houston also ranks 31st in rushing success rate since 2023. The next time it features a consistent ground game that keeps it in positive down and distances, it’ll be the first in the Stroud era. Nico Collins is an elite NFL receiver and was missed on Sunday but this team has failed to develop another counterpunch alongside him to replace an injured Tank Dell — emphasis on “develop,” as they drafted two rookies this season but at no point did the coaching staff ever empower either Jayden Higgins or Jaylin Noel to be full-time players.
Still, Stroud has too often made a middling situation worse, especially in big contests. The superpowers of his game as a rookie were his poise, intelligence and ball placement. Those attributes have not been present in his arsenal the last two weeks or much of the last two seasons.
It’s a full-court press to get the quarterback back on track this offseason. DeMeco Ryans and key defensive players like Will Anderson Jr. were quick to come to Stroud’s defense after the game and offer words of affirmation. Actions speak louder than words. Ryans and General Manager Nick Caserio can’t take half measures to try and get the offense back on track this coming season. That was the approach in far too many capacities last offseason. The team needs to come away with a serious solution to the running game and along the offensive line, in addition to making a serious effort to develop young players like Higgins and Noel.
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All of that might not be enough to fix Stroud but you can’t come away from this offseason without knowing you gave it your best effort.
Chicago Bears: Continue to grow
Typically, these surprise playoff teams, especially those who make their bones in one-score games and late in the fourth quarter, are prime regression candidates for the following season. The Chicago Bears certainly fit that mold, but unlike some of those teams in the past, they are an extremely young and should be an ascending team. That is especially the case on the offensive side of the ball.
The Bears have a rookie at tight end, running back and wide receiver playing significant roles in the offense late in the season. Their second-year quarterback and wideout barely got any usable NFL experience in their first seasons. You can argue that their veteran pass-catcher had the lowest moment of the game in overtime, as DJ Moore’s “loose” style of play with details came back to haunt the team on a risky throw from Caleb Williams:
Anyone with even a mildly objective point of view can admit that all of those first- or second-year offensive players were not consistent players from wire-to-wire this NFL season. Each of them had their share of forgettable moments in the playoffs.
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However, all of them showed at different points of the year when they were fully healthy that they have the talent to be high-quality starters for a good offense. In other words, exactly what you’d expect from a young but inexperienced group of skill-position players learning a complicated offense under the watch of a demanding coaching staff. That was the exact type of flow I predicted for the Bears this season — volatility to start but real tangible highs by the end — the only difference is that they won way more games than I expected. Even if some of the late-game heroics and defensive turnovers that fueled this run aren’t sustainable, the fact that they came away with those wins is a testament to the culture Ben Johnson is building and the grit of these players. That will matter going forward.
The biggest variable in fighting off that regression is indeed the youth of the offense. Progress isn’t guaranteed for young players, but if all or multiple of Williams, Luther Burden III, Rome Odunze and Colston Loveland improve in their second year under Johnson, the passing game has a shot to be one of the most dynamic in the league in 2026. The run game was already a staple for this team and should return almost all of the offensive line starters and the running back duo.
It will be interesting to see how the fantasy hivemind treats this offense going forward. There will be some too scared about the potential for a crowded target tree to get too bullish on any, although Loveland feels most likely to break through to the elite status relative to his position. For me, I’m going to be quite in on this passing game, taking the next step in Johnson’s second year with these players. All of them are talented with some correctable flaws to work out of their game.
