In Part 1 we built the first preseason Trench Report projection — 2025 player grades/metrics on current 2026 rosters — and ran it against all 272 games. The headline facts: the Rams project to win the trench battle in every game they play, Cincinnati projects to lose it in every game they play, and a handful of schedules are shaped very differently than the market realizes.
Today we put that map next to the futures board. These aren't locks — they're the spots where our data and the market's number genuinely disagree, which is the only place a futures bet is ever worth making.
The Flagship
This is the single loudest disagreement on the entire board. The market sees a double-digit-win team with (by conventional metrics) the second-easiest schedule in football; the trench map sees a team that projects to lose the line battle in all 17 games — their best week of the season still grades −1.37, at Miami. And this is after adding Dexter Lawrence, whose 57.0 run-defense grade is somehow the best interior run grade on the unit (his elite 84.5 is a pass-rush number). Jonathan Allen at 45.4 against the run, a linebacker room grading 34.4/50.0/50.5 — the problem is structural. Conventional SOS measures opponents’ records; it can’t see that Cincinnati’s trench road is actually the 10th-toughest in the league. A team that never wins the line has to win every week the hard way — and 10.5 is a lot of hard ways.
Elite quarterback play papers over bad trenches better than anything else in football, and Cincinnati has that kind of quarterback. If the passing game is historic, the under dies with a smile on its face.
The Fades
The market is buying the name and the pass rush. Fair on the second part — the Parsons-led rush projects top-5 (+1.07). But it’s the only good unit up front: Green Bay ranks 30th overall in the trenches, bottom-five in both pass protection (−1.84) and run defense (−1.48). Their Week 12 trip to Los Angeles grades −9.17 — the second-biggest single-game trench mismatch on the entire 2026 schedule. One elite unit and three bad ones is a 9-win profile being priced like a 10-win one.
Pass rush is the most valuable of the four trench categories, and it’s the one Green Bay has. If the rush creates enough turnovers, it can subsidize the other three.
Nothing here disputes what Seattle did last season. But two facts about this season: they own the sharpest back-loaded schedule in the league — a gentle road through November, then the hardest closing stretch of any team in football (+0.61), including the Rams twice in Weeks 16 and 18, both grading −5.94 against them. And the trench roster gave bodies to the exodus — Boye Mafe now starts on Cincinnati’s line in our own data. Champs at full price with a December that projects like a wall: whatever Seattle’s record says at Thanksgiving, the schedule is designed to take wins back late. The under lives in Weeks 13–18.
They’re the champs, the core stayed largely intact, and 10.5 gives them room to be very good and still cash the under only narrowly. This is a schedule-shape bet as much as a talent bet.
The collision course of the season, priced at playoff-team money. Dallas fields the worst pass protection in the projection (−2.33) — poor tackle grades on an otherwise decent interior, which is the worst version of the problem because pass protection is a tackle-weighted business. Their reward: the second-toughest pass-rush slate in football (+0.31), and a schedule that gets harder after September. The worst unit meets the hardest test seventeen times, and the market wants nearly ten wins out of it.
Elite skill talent can outrun a bad line in bursts, and one September hot streak plus a soft opener (their easiest phase) could bank enough early wins to survive the collapse we’re projecting.
The Overs
The most complete front in football — the only team top-10 in all four trench categories — attached to the league’s sharpest front-loaded schedule: hardest tests immediately, then the softest December in the NFL (−0.42), featuring the Raiders twice at +7.30 each and Miami at +7.02 — three of the six biggest mismatches on any 2026 schedule. If Denver is anywhere near the race in November, the schedule finishes the job for them. And if they start slow against the early gauntlet, don’t panic — that’s the design, and it’s also your second entry point at a better number midseason.
The front-load is real risk, not just narrative: an 0–3 September against that opening slate puts genuine pressure on a 10-win season regardless of how soft December is.
Minnesota is the purest schedule story in the league. Their front projects exactly league-average — 13th overall, the most unremarkable number in the dataset — but they drew the third-softest trench road in football, which vaults an average team to a top-10 talent-vs-schedule score. Average teams on soft roads beat their win totals; that’s the entire history of this bet type. Nobody is pricing Minnesota’s schedule, because nobody else is measuring schedules this way.
The bet leans on Kyler Murray staying upright all season (see Play 8) — average everywhere plus a soft road works, but only with the quarterback on the field.
Quietly the fifth-best front in football, built on the league’s No. 2 pass rush (+2.38) and No. 3 run defense. Here’s the stat that sells it: Houston projects to lose the trench battle exactly once all season — at Philadelphia in Week 16 — and even that grades just −1.84. Sixteen weeks of winning the line, priced at 9.5. The front also opens against Cincinnati in Week 2 (+6.62, one of the six biggest mismatches of the year), which is a fast-start setup.
Houston’s own pass protection projects bottom-10 (−1.00) — the one soft spot. If their quarterback takes punishment early, the elegant defensive math stops mattering.
The Awards Window
The schedule map wrote this ticket. Murray lands in Minnesota behind a top-12 pass protection — and the Vikings face the second-softest pass-rush slate in the entire league (behind only Detroit’s). A quarterback with everything to prove, kept clean, on the exact soft road we flagged in Part 1 as the league’s purest schedule story. This is also why Play 6 (Vikings Over 8.5) exists: the two bets are the same thesis at two different windows. If Minnesota beats its number, the comeback narrative writes itself — and narrative is what this award pays.
The award requires the season to actually happen: sixteen-plus starts. Murray’s health is the entire bet, and comeback voting can chase a sentimental story elsewhere even if he delivers.
We’re not paying +450 for the favorite when the schedule hands us this instead. Chubb arrives in Buffalo, in a revamped 3-4 built to turn him loose — and the Bills’ pass rush draws the second-softest collection of pass-blocking units in football (behind only New England’s slate). He’s posted 19.5 sacks across his last two full healthy seasons; DPOY is a sack-counting award, and this slate is a sack-counting machine. Full honesty per our own report: Buffalo’s rush unit projects modestly — this is an individual-volume dart, not a unit thesis. At 75/1, that’s exactly what you want a dart to be.
Health, again — the seasons between those healthy ones are the reason for the price. And longshot DPOYs need a monster sack number plus a winning-team narrative; Buffalo provides the stage, but 75/1 is 75/1 for a reason.
We usually hunt disagreements; this is the rare favorite whose price the trench map explains rather than disputes. Detroit fields a top-seven run-blocking unit on the third-softest run-defense slate in football — the softest overall trench road in the league, as we showed in Part 1. Add the backfield math: no more David Montgomery timeshare, meaning the volume finally matches the talent. Elite blocking, soft fronts, consolidated touches — that’s the structural recipe for the gaudy counting stats this award votes on. The market got here first, but it got here for the right reasons.
Favorite prices leave no room for the unexpected — a committee re-forming, an early injury, or a quarterback-driven offense stealing the touches. You’re paying for probability, not value, and that trade should be sized like it.
What the Market Already Knows
Honesty section, because transparent means transparent: the three worst fronts on our board with no schedule relief — Arizona (3.5), Miami (4.5), and Las Vegas (5.5) — are already priced like it. Those totals are so low there's no value left in chasing the unders; the market beat us to them. Arizona's misery is better expressed at the game level anyway: their bottom-four run defense faces the Rams' and 49ers' top-two run-blocking units four times a year, which is where opponent team-rushing overs live once weekly lines post. Same story for Baltimore's twice-yearly gift against Cincinnati (Weeks 7 and 17, both +5.19) — circle them for game-week props rather than forcing a season number now.
And the Rams? Priced to Perfection.
The team our projection loves most is the team the market loves most: Super Bowl favorite around +550, division favorite at +100, an 11.5 win total. There's no disagreement to exploit — the Garrett trade moved every number before we could. What the trench map adds is conviction about the floor: a front that projects to win all 17 line battles doesn't have the collapse scenarios that usually lurk under short prices. If you hold Rams positions, the data says sleep fine. The sharper expression of Rams dominance is on the other side of their games — it's a large part of the Seattle fade, the Green Bay fade, and Arizona's game-level unders.
The Card
| Play | Price | Type |
| CIN Under 10.5 | −140 | Flagship |
| GB Under 9.5 | +110 | Fade |
| SEA Under 10.5 | −105 | Fade |
| DAL Under 9.5 | −140 | Fade |
| DEN Over 9.5 | −115 | Over |
| MIN Over 8.5 | −110 | Sleeper |
| HOU Over 9.5 | −125 | Over |
| Kyler Murray CPOY | +550 | Awards |
| Bradley Chubb DPOY | +7500 | Dart |
| Jahmyr Gibbs OPOY | +650 | Awards |
Lines move — these were the numbers at publish time; shop your book. Every one of these gets graded publicly at season's end, wins and losses alike, because that's the whole point of this place.