Kansas City’s offseason hasn’t been bedazzled with big signings. Instead, the Chiefs dodged two major bullets by keeping a pair of All-Pro caliber players on the second-ranked defense that carried them to the Super Bowl. Chris Jones, unquestionably the league’s best interior defensive lineman following Aaron Donald’s retirement, re-signed for five years and nearly $160 million (with $60 million guaranteed that effectively makes it a two-year deal if necessary). L’Jarius Sneed was franchise tagged and will stick around at least one more season.

That’s good, but the team addressed another major issue when it signed the second-best available wide receiver in this year’s market, Marquise Brown. Brown is two years removed from his only 1,000-yard season, but he’s an intermediate range receiver who fills a glaring need in the Kansas City passing game.

Patrick Mahomes’ air yards per throw were the third-lowest in the NFL last season, which is a wildly un-Mahomes stat. Adding Brown allows Rashee Rice to continue to thrive as a short-range target, brings in a proven receiver 10-15 yards downfield and allows the Chiefs to target a deep threat in this year’s draft — where burners like Xavier Worthy and Troy Franklin may be waiting with the 32nd overall pick.

Baltimore held on to Justin Madubuike following his breakout 2023. With Aaron Donald retired, he may be a top two interior pass rusher in the NFL. That’s great!

But several other key starters from the team with 2023’s best regular season record have departed. John Simpson, endemic to the team’s running success inside, is a New York Jet. Morgan Moses is too. Patrick Queen left for the Pittsburgh Steelers. Geno Stone went to the Cincinnati Bengals. These guys didn’t just move on; they went to conference and division rivals.

Kevin Zeitler remains on the market. The most important free agent to re-sign with the Ravens, after Madubuike, may be Nelson Agholor.

It’s possible this was planned. Baltimore sputtered out in the postseason for the fourth time in the Lamar Jackson era and changes needed to be made. But even with Derrick Henry in tow to test the team’s running back injury curse (30 years old and coming off his least efficient season as a pro) it’s tough to explain how this roster is more talented than 2023’s.

Something needed to change. Hoooo buddy, did it ever.

The Steelers have perpetually been too good to land a franchise quarterback at the NFL Draft but not good enough to be a realistic Super Bowl threat, leaving few options to replace Ben Roethlisberger as he aged into his noodle-arm era, then retirement. Pittsburgh hasn’t had its own top 12 pick since selecting Roethlisberger in 2004. The team also hasn’t been a player when it comes to the scant few free agent starters worth spending for.

That will change in 2024. The Steelers brought in two high-variance quarterbacks who could either lead the team to its first playoff win since 2016 or fail its way to the top of the 2025 NFL Draft class. Russell Wilson was still a top 20 quarterback last season and cost just $1.2 million to sign after the Broncos paid him handsomely to sever all ties with the franchise. Justin Fields went 10-28 as a starter in Chicago but plays like someone taped a bunch of knives to a spinning top and let it loose on the field.

These players could thrive in a system used to mediocre quarterbacks. Or they could fail in a lineup with not-quite-trustable blocking and a receiving corps that, as it currently stands, has some combination of Calvin Austin and Van Jefferson as WR2/WR3. But failure is fine! Failure starts a new chapter for the franchise that’s been trapped in a cycle of being just good enough that no one actually cares about it.

The Bills faced a reckoning this winter. The check came due on a veteran roster. In order to clear salary cap space, Buffalo had to release veteran stars like Jordan Poyer, Tre’Davious White and Mitch Morse. Leonard Floyd, Dane Jackson, Gabriel Davis and Tyrel Dodson left as free agents. There was significant turnover from a team that already had questions to answer after rallying from a 6-6 start last season.

At the same time… Buffalo did pretty well to fill gaps with a limited budget. Curtis Samuel doesn’t fix the team’s need for a WR2 alongside Stefon Diggs, but he’s a versatile third wideout who creates new pages in the playbook. Daquan Jones re-upped, and having him and Matt Milano healthy will be a rising tide for a defense breaking in a handful of new starters. Dion Dawkins signed an extension and A.J. Epenesa returns on a reasonable deal to add situational pass rushing and maybe more.

Then there’s the rest of the AFC East. The Miami Dolphins were flawed to begin with, then lost Christian Wilkins, Robert Hunt, Andrew Van Ginkel and Jerome Baker. The New England Patriots need more than one year to fix (gestures broadly). The New York Jets have been held hostage by a 40-year-old quarterback coming off a torn Achilles and destined to replace his on-field legacy with whatever he’s doing off it.

So, the Bills are probably fine.

Caleb Williams is likely coming to town and will have D.J. Moore and Keenan Allen to throw to — the kind of safety net most rookie quarterbacks can only dream of having. Each came to Chicago in deals that, so far, absolutely seem to have broken in the Bears’ favor.

That veteran wideout duo will give Williams the kind of support Fields never got; two players who can get open on their own after years of trying to make players like Dante Pettis, Equanimeous St. Brown, Velus Jones, N’Keal Harry and, sigh, Chase Claypool work.

Chicago also retained the services of Jaylon Johnson, who was a breakout star in a season where the Bears fielded the league’s third-best defense after acquiring Montez Sweat before the trade deadline. The team has a top 10 draft pick to deploy behind Williams, which should create the leverage to select another blue chip wideout, or an edge rusher, or a cornerback who can contribute immediately.

The NFC North will be a tough place to play in 2024. The Bears have put themselves in position to contend for a playoff spot, even with a question mark behind center.

Last winter, Bears fans had hopes of returning second and fourth round picks in exchange for Fields, the franchise quarterback who never quite put things together. He’d led Chicago to a 4-2 record to close out 2023 and, despite a glitchy passing game, remained one of the league’s most electric dual threat players. Surely someone would be willing to pay up in hopes of fixing a player with Pro Bowl potential?

Well, no. Fields lingered on the trade market long after non-stars like Mac Jones, Desmond Ridder and Sam Howell were dealt. He was shipped to the Pittsburgh Steelers at a lower return than the Philadelphia Eagles paid to land Kenny Pickett. All it cost was a sixth round pick, which could become a fourth rounder if Fields plays at least 51 percent of the team’s snaps next fall.

So either the Bears get a pick in the middle of Day 3 for a player they once hoped was the future, or they gave the Steelers a starting quarterback for the bargain price of a fourth round selection. That’s tough.

There’s also a pricy deal for D’Andre Swift — who has proven he’s worthy of $8 million annually in just one of his four NFL seasons to date — and a two-year flier on Kevin Byard, who was decidedly not the Eagles’ savior at safety last season. Justin Jones may not be worth what the Arizona Cardinals paid for him, but he was an underrated part of last year’s defensive success thanks to his tone-setting, blocker-occupying play up front (3.5 sacks, nine QB hits over the team’s late-season surge). And, as always, you’ve got the lingering cloud of a franchise that’s drafted exactly one quarterback who’s made it to the Pro Bowl as a Bear since Jim McMahon (it was, oof, Mitch Trubisky) hanging over this year’s top overall pick.

Things are undoubtedly better in Chicago. They won’t qualify as good until we see how 2024 unfolds.

There’s no getting around the hole Aaron Donald leaves behind up front. Even in his 10th season he was an All-Pro wrecking ball capable of the kind of destruction primitive civilizations would have chalked up to a demigod.

But, man, this has been an incredibly productive free agent run for a team that, for the first time since 2016, is set to make a first round draft pick. The Rams not only kept Kevin Dotson, one of the league’s best available guards, but added Jonah Jackson to what’s becoming an excellent pass-blocking unit.

Darious Williams returned to Los Angeles after allowing just a 63.9 passer rating in coverage last year. A market loaded with young safeties allowed general manager Les Snead to pick up Kamren Curl for two years at least than $9 million total. Colby Parkinson’s $7.5 million salary looks pricy for a second tight end (and is!), but his 61.8 percent success rate in 2022 was fourth-best among NFL tight ends and shows just how useful a security blanket he can be alongside an aging Tyler Higbee.

The Rams exceeded expectations and rallied from 3-6 to the playoffs. Now they’re primed for even bigger things, as long as Matthew Stafford stays healthy. And if he can’t, well, at least Jimmy Garoppolo knows the NFC West pretty well.

40 percent of Dak Prescott’s offensive line has left. Jayron Kearse and Stephon Gilmore, who each took more than 75 percent of the team’s defensive snaps in the secondary, remain free agents. The Cowboys have only signed one outside free agent — 32-year-old linebacker Eric Kendricks — and even after restructuring Prescott’s contract only have about $9 million in salary cap space remaining. The only team comparable to Dallas this spring is the perpetually-in-cap-hell New Orleans Saints (and even *they* are having a better time).

That’s a problem! The Cowboys had no room to manuever after yet another playoff disappointment, leaving Mike McCarthy in position to once again guide his team to double-digit wins and a perplexing postseason departure.

You knew it had to end here, right? Sure, Atlanta is a franchise for which nothing goes right and it’s putting its eggs in one basket delicately balanced by a soon-to-be 36-year-old quarterback with one playoff win to his name and a surgically repaired Achilles. But signing Kirk Cousins was a status move, a signal the Falcons were finally ready to take things seriously after shrugging and rolling the dice with mediocre-to-bad quarterbacks in the post-Matt Ryan era.

Cousins will have the tools to thrive even if he doesn’t return to what was arguably his career-best 2023 form. He’s got two catch radius monsters in Drake London and Kyle Pitts, and fellow 2024 signee Darnell Mooney has elite ball tracking and route adjustment skills, clearing the Atlanta passing game for takeoff (Rondale Moore is also there to screen pass opponents to death). Bijan Robinson and Tyler Allgeier form one of the league’s best running back platoons.

Most of the key starters on a top 12 defense return and general manager Terry Fontenot can buttress them with the eighth and 43rd picks in this year’s draft. The NFC South remains winnable; the Falcons may have shot themselves to the top of the pecking order.