Longest NFL Postseason Droughts Heading Into 2026
They'd already written Bryce Young off heading into last season. Practically eulogized him. The 2023 first overall pick, who couldn't protect the football, couldn't protect himself, and who got benched midway through 2024 with a completion percentage that looked more like a batting average. And then — somehow, inexplicably — he remembered exactly who he was and how he won that Heisman trophy back in 2021.
Young went 8-8 as a starter last season while the Panthers finished 8-9 overall. He cracked 3,000 yards for the first time in his entire career and, perhaps most impressively, somehow led Carolina to an upset NFC South title that nobody in Charlotte had come close to tasting since the days of Cam Newton. That divisional crown, claimed off the back of Young's 23 touchdown passes, snapped a seven-season playoff drought, and the Cats very nearly caused an even bigger stir when they went life and death with the heavily favored LA Rams in the wildcard round, eventually succumbing to a late 34-31 defeat.
That loss stings. The title doesn't. And the entire league noticed.
Because NFL playoff droughts end. Sometimes violently. Sometimes, when the player everyone gave up on flatly refuses to be consigned to the history books as a failure. But with the Panthers' streak well and truly snapped, what are the current longest postseason droughts heading into the 2026 season? Let's take a look.
Jets — 15 Season
Picture the scene. September 11, 2023. Monday Night Football. The most hyped quarterback arrival in Jets history — perhaps in franchise history, full stop. Aaron Rodgers, four-time MVP, hadn't taken a regular-season snap in green yet, and MetLife Stadium had been vibrating for six months in anticipation of finally, finally having their answer. Four snaps into his Jets debut, Leonard Floyd dragged him to the turf, A-Rod's left foot caught the grass at the wrong angle, and that was it. Season over. Era effectively over before it began.
He came back in 2024. They still couldn't crack .500. The Jets have now spent fifteen seasons in postseason exile, and the Aaron Rodgers chapter might be the cruelest single chapter in a saga almost too painful to catalog. What followed his departure was 3-14 in 2025. Joint-worst record in the league. Dead last in the AFC East. A four-year aggregate from 2022 to 2025 of 22-46 that recalls the franchise's darkest days in the late 1970s.
And yet, the 2026 offseason rebuild offers hope. Edge rusher David Bailey arrives as the second overall pick, while Minkah Fitzpatrick has made the move from divisional rivals Miami. Joseph Ossai signed for three years and $36M as a pass-rush investment. Geno Smith returns 11 years on from his drafting as a bridge quarterback from Las Vegas, while Breece Hall remains on a bumper three-year, $45.75M deal. The draft haul — Bailey, tight end Kenyon Sadiq at 16, Omar Cooper Jr. at 30 — is arguably the most impactful collection of first-round selections any franchise assembled in a single year.
But here's the kicker. The Jets have the longest postseason drought in the NFL, and online betting sites still make them the third least likely team to reach the playoffs next season. Popular Sportaza online sportsbook prices them as a +650 outsider to end their drought, with only Miami (+1000) and Arizona (+1800) considered less likely playoff teams. For all their years of rebuilding, the Green Machine has never been further away from the glory days.
Falcons — 8 Seasons
The 28-3 ghost doesn't leave. Nine years on, and it still haunts this franchise in ways that roster turnover simply cannot fix — because some wounds aren't about personnel; they're about identity. This team had everything in February 2017 and somehow gave it all away, and has spent nearly a decade trying to remember who they are without the weight of that unforgettable fourth quarter collapse to Tom Brady's New England Patriots at Super Bowl LI.
In January 2018, the Falcons were still good enough to beat the Rams 26-13 in the Wild Card round, with Matt Ryan and Julio Jones looking like a pairing that could carry them back to the Big Game. Then a 15-10 Divisional loss at Philadelphia — a franchise on the Super Bowl trajectory — ended it. That was the last time Atlanta sniffed the postseason.
What followed is almost darkly comic in its consistency of failure. Coaching cycles. Draft capital squandered. Kirk Cousins arrived in 2024 carrying the hope of a franchise that genuinely believed his steady efficiency could stabilize things... for all of two weeks, when they immediately drafted his replacement, Michael Penix Jr. Then there's the James Pearce trade: a first-round pick surrendered for an edge rusher who faced significant legal issues before he ever took a meaningful snap in Atlanta. A franchise-altering gamble that disintegrated before it even began.
And now Tua Tagovailoa on a veteran minimum — which is either the most inspired low-risk reclamation project in the NFC South this decade, or the clearest possible sign that nobody in Atlanta truly knows what they're doing at quarterback.
The 2025 season produced 8-9, with Cousins reclaiming the starting role only to then be released at the end of the season. A middling purgatory record that went 0-2 against the Carolina team nobody predicted would win the division. No first-round pick to reload with doesn't help their case for 2026 either.
Kyle Pitts has at least been franchise-tagged at $15.045M, while Jahan Dotson signed for two years and $15M. At +205, the Falcons remain outsiders to end their eight-year barren spell next term, but everything will need to go right if they are to begin trying to heal that deep 28-3 wound.