My bold and not-so-bold predictions for the 2023 NFL season

Maybe one or two of these will actually be right!

It doesn’t quite feel like fall to me yet. I mean, technically it won’t be fall until Sept. 23, but I usually consider the season to begin as soon as Labor Day comes and goes. Even with the start of college football and the pumpkin spice offerings throughout the land, it still feels like summer. 

Maybe that’s because the temperature where I am is projected to reach, ugh, 105 degrees again. Not exactly cozy weather! Or maybe it’s because the NFL season hasn’t begun. 

Thankfully, that will change when the Chiefs and Lions kick off the 2023 season on Thursday night. While you count down the minutes until the game, check out my predictions for how I think the season will play out, with my picks for award winners, stats leaders, and the Super Bowl LVIII matchup listed below. 

But first, a warning: Most of these will be wrong. It’s incredibly difficult to guess what will happen in any year of the NFL!

MVP: Jalen Hurts, Eagles

Whatever doubts I had about Jalen Hurts’ potential as an NFL quarterback, he answered in spades with his breakout 2022 season and gutsy performance in the Super Bowl. If he hadn’t missed a couple of games during the season, he might have challenged Patrick Mahomes more for the MVP award last year. As it were, Hurts finished as runner-up, at both the NFL Honors and in the championship game. That will assuredly motivate Hurts, whose hard work and dynamic play should keep paying dividends for Philadelphia.

Offensive Player of the Year: Christian McCaffrey, 49ers

Christian McCaffrey is coming off his first healthy season since 2019, when he led the NFL in scrimmage yards. Last year, split between stints in Carolina and San Francisco, McCaffrey put up 1,880 total yards and 13 touchdowns, good for third in the league behind Josh Jacobs and Derrick Henry. It didn’t take him long to get acclimated to the Niners, but now that he’s been with the team for almost an entire year, McCaffrey has full understanding of Kyle Shanahan’s scheme, which just so happens to fit the dual-threat back’s abilities to a T. 

Defensive Player of the Year: Micah Parsons, Cowboys

Micah Parsons won Defensive Rookie of the Year honors in his first season and finished behind Nick Bosa in the Defensive Player of the Race last year. Bosa knows that Parsons is on his heels and perhaps his biggest competition for the award this year. In his first two seasons, Parsons was named a first–team All-Pro and racked up double-digit sacks. While he’s been a disruptor from the first moment he stepped on an NFL field, he needs to take that next step and produce more consistently — Parsons had six two-sack games in 2022 but was held without a sack in nine other games. I think he can make that jump in his third year with Dan Quinn’s defense.

Offensive Rookie of the Year: Bijan Robinson, Falcons

Bijan Robinson is more than just a mustard mogul (trust me when I saw that his Bijan Mustardson is pretty great). He’s also more than just a running back, even though he’s heading into Week 1 as RB1 on the Falcons’ depth chart. Like McCaffrey, Robinson will be dangerous as a rusher and receiver, and even if Arthur Smith hasn’t figured out how to properly use Kyle Pitts yet, he’ll know how to take advantage of Robinson’s versatility .

Defensive Rookie of the Year: Will Anderson Jr., Texans

It’s not often that a high-profile award like this goes to a player on a bad team, but I think two things: 1) Will Anderson Jr. will be an immediate force in DeMeco Ryans’ defense and 2) the Texans won’t be good, but they’ll show progress and Anderson’s efforts will stand out. If the young pass rusher does take home the award, then he’ll be following in his head coach’s footsteps once again.

Comeback Player of the Year: Damar Hamlin, Bills

I know Damar Hamlin isn’t a starter and mostly plays special teams, and that likely won’t change in 2023. But his is the ultimate comeback story — and one that the NFL will want to champion.

Coach of the Year: Dan Campbell, Lions

This is partly wishful thinking but not entirely. The Lions are expected to be playoff bound this year, and based on what we saw in the second half of last season as well as the improvements to the roster they made this offseason, they will do just that. However, it’s hard to buy in completely knowing that these are the Detroit Lions we’re talking about, and the other shoe has to drop at some point. Which is exactly why if they do live up to the hype and get to the postseason that Dan Campbell should be rewarded. Besides, you know he’d give one helluva speech at the NFL Honors ceremony. 

Passing yards leader: Trevor Lawrence, Jaguars

The guy who throws for the most yards isn’t always on the best team. In fact, three of the last five quarterbacks to lead the league in passing played for a team that didn’t even make the playoffs that year. 

The Jaguars should get back to the postseason this year — Peter King predicts they’ll earn the No. 1 seed in the AFC, though I won’t go that far — and Trevor Lawrence should continue the trajectory he’s on from good to elite. And that will involve throwing for a lot of yards.

Receiving yards leader: Ja’Marr Chase, Bengals

It’s not often that the NFL’s leading passer and receiver are on the same team (the last time it happened was in 2014). I expect that trend to hold up this year. Lawrence will be able to spread the ball around to a bevy of playmakers (Calvin Ridley, Christian Kirk, Zay Jones, Travis Etienne). Less so for Joe Burrow. I mean, no offense to Tee Higgins or Tyler Boyd, who are good players in their own right. But Ja’Marr Chase is clearly Burrow’s No. 1 target and in a league of his own.

Rushing yards leader: Nick Chubb, Browns

I could definitely see Josh Jacobs repeating as the NFL’s rushing champ, but I’ll give the edge to Nick Chubb, who has rushed for at least 996 yards each season and will no longer have to share carries with Kareem Hunt. Currently, the only other backs on the Browns’ roster are Jerome Ford and Pierre Strong Jr., who have a combined 65 career offensive snaps. 

Super Bowl: Eagles over Dolphins

I’m not sure why I agonized about my Super Bowl pick because I never get it right this far in advance. Still, I thought long and hard about which matchup seemed most likely to happen, and went back and forth numerous times with my prediction. 

Then I stumbled on a Reddit thread that stuck with me: most Super Bowls, especially recently, feature at least one team that didn’t win a playoff game the season before. 

For the most part, the title game comes down to one obvious team and one less obvious team that makes sense in hindsight. In my mind, there are only five unambiguous Super Bowl contenders: the Chiefs, Bills, Bengals, Eagles, and 49ers. After that, there are the “maybe, if everything goes right” options, such as the Jets, Chargers, Jags, Cowboys, and the Dolphins. 

I decided I wanted to pick one from the former group and one from the latter. Super Bowl runners-up rarely come back and win it the next season, but the Eagles are built to be the exception to that rule. They had a strong offseason and have fewer questions (at quarterback, most notably) than the 49ers, their biggest competition in the NFC.

So that leaves me having to choose between one of the fringe playoff teams in the more loaded AFC. The Dolphins need a few things to work in their favor: Tua Tagovailoa to stay healthy, better protection from his OL, Jalen Ramsey to return as good as new, and the defense to bounce back under new DC Vic Fangio. If not, they could easily miss the playoffs altogether. But if it all comes together at just the right time, Mike McDaniel’s squad could be a surprise participant in the Super Bowl.

Alas, just like his former boss Kyle Shanahan, McDaniel will then come up short for the Lombardi Trophy.