Welcome back to the worst of the worst and the bottom of the barrel.
The All-Keep Choppin’ Wood Team is our annual attempt to sift through the debris of the season that was, pulling out the prime examples of bad contracts, boneheaded decisions and out-and-out terrible play that the league so kindly provides to us. After all, how can we properly appreciate the skill and talent we see in the best teams in the league if we don’t spend time savoring the very worst?
The team itself is named after a hairbrained motivational attempt gone wrong from 20 years ago. Jack Del Rio, then a rookie head coach with the Jacksonville Jaguars, placed a stump of oak and an ax in the locker room, as a symbol for his players to “keep choppin’ wood” – to keep at it, and keep putting the work in, and so on and so forth. Pro Bowl punter Chris Hanson immediately showed what a bad idea it was to have an ax just sitting around, injuring himself when he attempted to swing the ax at the stump, only to have the blade bounce off and gash him in the foot. And every year since, we’ve picked a team of Woodchoppers.
What this isn’t is just a list of the worst players in the NFL, though yes, being really bad at football remains a classic way to get onto this list. It also includes overpriced veterans, free agent acquisitions that immediately caused regret, and talented players who made asses of themselves off the field. This is for the disappointments, flops and embarrassments as much as it is for the truly terrible. A highly-touted star flubbing his parts counts more than a rookie trying to get used to life in the NFL, or a third-stringer forced to take a bigger role than anyone had planned for.
As usual, we have picked starters by position, along with a full coaching staff. So, without further ado…
All-Keep Choppin’ Wood Team
Offense
Quarterback
I don’t like putting rookies onto this team, because transitioning to the NFL is hard. We’ve seen plenty of rookies play terribly for some, or even all, of their rookie season before it finally clicks. The rookie year, especially for a quarterback, is often an on-the-job learning experience, where you have to accept some struggles as they get acclimated. It’s more fitting to pick a veteran who’s floundering, which is why Geno Smith was penciled into this slot even through the end of the conference championships.
Then the NFL announced that Shedeur Sanders was making the Pro Bowl as an alternate and … no! No, no, no.
Sanders finished dead last with -659 passing DYAR. Brady Cook made a ferocious late-season charge but couldn’t quite get there. Sanders also was last among qualified passers with a -59.6% DVOA. That’s the fifth-worst passing DVOA in history, stretching back to 1978 – worse than Josh Rosen, worse than Ryan Leaf, worse than David Carr, you name it. The only rookie to put up worse numbers than Sanders was 2016 Jared Goff and his all-time worst -74.8% passing DVOA, so one bad season does not a rookie write off, but this was an all-time terrible year. He was last in the league with a 5.7% turnover-worthy throw percentage – J.J. McCarthy just squeaks past him in actual interception rate, but Sanders put the ball in danger more frequently. He was the least-accurate quarterback by our charting, had second-lowest success rate and the fourth-lowest highlight throw rate, the fifth-highest sack rate and the sixth-highest QB fault sack rate. And all of this, all of this, was after he ate up the offseason – a contender for the No. 1 overall pick who tanked his interviews, declined to meet with some teams outright, and bristled when challenged.
Worst Passing DVOA, 1978-2025 (min. 200 passes)
Year
Player
Team
DVOA
DYAR
Pass
Yds
TD
INT
Sk
2016
Jared Goff
LAR
-74.8%
-881
230
876
5
7
26
1992
Kelly Stouffer
SEA
-72.7%
-837
218
670
3
9
26
1998
Bobby Hoying
PHI
-66.1%
-900
260
762
0
9
35
2009
JaMarcus Russell
OAK
-62.0%
-834
278
1081
3
10
33
2025
Shedeur Sanders
CLE
-59.5%
-659
253
1400
7
10
23
2007
Trent Dilfer
SF
-55.4%
-681
244
983
7
11
27
2018
Josh Rosen
ARI
-53.7%
-1145
439
1943
11
14
45
1997
Heath Shuler
NO
-53.2%
-553
225
1136
2
14
21
2007
Alex Smith
SF
-52.8%
-553
208
779
2
4
17
1999
Donovan McNabb
PHI
-52.0%
-636
246
729
8
7
28
1998
Ryan Leaf
SD
-51.6%
-657
269
1131
2
15
22
2000
Akili Smith
CIN
-51.4%
-701
304
1006
3
6
36
2024
Deshaun Watson
CLE
-51.1%
-597
249
1148
5
3
33
And now he’s going to a Pro Bowl, and in 20 years, people will look at his Pro Football Reference page and think that he must have been doing something right. No! It just turns out that almost everyone in the AFC is either hurt, already in the Pro Bowl, or in the Super Bowl. The Pro Bowl does not need more help looking like a joke, but here comes Sanders, joining the likes of Mike Boryla as the most embarrassing Pro Bowlers of all time. Beg Trevor Lawrence or C.J. Stroud to accept an invite; call up Philip Rivers and tell him he’s got one more game to play; yank Tom Brady out of retirement. Just… not this, please.
Running Back
It may be the end of the line for Alvin Kamara. Kamara was last in rushing DVOA at -24.6%, and second-last behind Bucky Irving with -89 rushing DYAR. Yes, he was fighting through an ankle injury and had his season end prematurely with an MCL sprain, but at a certain point, your numbers become just too bad to justify your roster spot, much less $10 million cap hit. 3.6 yards per carry doesn’t cut it. Kamara also got phased out as a receiver, which was what made him special in his prime – career-lows in DVOA (-21.7%), targets, receptions, yards per target and yards per reception, the works. Kamara carries an $18 million cap hit next season and will turn 31 in July. He says he wants to continue his career in New Orleans and made it clear he did not want to be traded this season, but he may have played himself out of any sort of role for the Saints in 2026.
Wide Receivers
Brandon Aiyuk is our team captain for achieving rare excellence in the field of Not Showing Up. After tearing his ACL in October of 2024, it was understood that Aiyuk would likely not be ready to start 2025 – rehab for these things takes about a year, give or take. And so it went mostly without notice that Aiyuk was working off by himself, getting himself slowly into game shape, with Kyle Shanahan and John Lynch occasionally shooting out guesses for his return – mid-October, Week 10, “within a few weeks”, and so on and so forth. But behind the scenes? Oh, it was a mess. The 49ers voided Aiyuk’s guarantees during training camp for failing to live up to the terms of his contract, not meeting his rehab responsibilities. That’s $25 million in guaranteed money Aiyuk let go – money he fought for during a prolonged 2024 hold-in and then didn’t fight for this offseason by choosing not to file a grievance against the team. That’s not to say Aiyuk didn’t still have personal grievences, mind you! Aiyuk has essentially ghosted the team, refusing to answer any phone calls, and the 49ers have responded by placing him on the left squad list and voiding the rest of his guarantees. And it’s not like Aiyuk has vanished off the face of the earth, either – he filmed himself going 111 MPH past the stadium and flipping it off and entered a feud with his Instagram fan page over not paying the administrator. This isn’t the craziest crash out we’ve ever seen – Antonio Brown remains the all-time king, and Terrell Owens made it a bi-annual rite – but it is one of the more inexplicable, with no communication from Aiyuk about what the hell is going on to anyone on any level. That’s precisely the kind of attitude we’re looking for at the Keep Choppin’ Wood team; an air of mystery and frustration makes you our star wide receiver.
DK Metcalf was a tough call, but he does join our corps. The two-game suspension at the end of the year for punching a fan pushes him over the line, especially when it was in a situation where the Steelers needed to win one of those last games to make the postseason. I worry, a little, that this comes across as “white man tells black man how to respond to racially tinged abuse.” And yes, from all publicly available information, it appears the Lions fan in question is a massive tool who did not enjoy the “find out” part of his FAFO lifestyle. Still – at some point, walking way away from the bench area and punching a guy has to be over the line, right? Metcalf also ended the year with a 1.9% DVOA and 118 DYAR, which are mildly disappointing first-year results from a four-year, $132-million extension. But middling results (and significantly better results in Route DVOA, mind you, because it’s not like the Steelers had an all-world passing attack, more on that later) wouldn’t make this team. Punching a guy takes you over the top.
Darnell Mooney needs much less of an explanation. He caught only 44.4% of his targets! That’s bad! Worst-in-the-league bad! Mooney also ended up in the bottom 10 in DVOA, DYAR, yards per route run, success rate and so on and so forth. He’ll blame his soft tissue injuries for some of the lack of production compared to his near 1,000-yard season a year ago, but you gotta catch the ball, Mooney.
Tight End
The Steelers divvied their tight end targets pretty evenly among three players, and two of them came out alright. Then there’s Jonnu Smith. Smith sits at the bottom of our tables with -116 DYAR and a -41.0% DVOA, way below Pat Freiermuth and Darnell Washington. Arthur Smith practically begged to bring Jonnu in for his all-tight end, all-the-time offense, and he just provided nothing of note. He had the fewest yards per reception of his career. In fact, his 5.8 yards per reception is a new all-time low for a tight end with at least 30 catches. Some of that comes from dinking-and-dunking Aaron Rodgers, for sure, but Smith made sure he got the very least out of all those short routes. With Arthur Smith now the offensive coordinator at Ohio State, Jonnu is frantically checking to see if he has any eligibility left.
Offensive Tackles
Jawaan Taylor has become a regular on these teams, because few people draw flags quite like he does. The damage this year is 13 flags, one off the league high – six holding, four illegal formation, two false starts and a face mask. And remember – Taylor missed five games this year, so while his total flag total was down, his penalty rate has stayed the same. Since arriving in Kansas City in 2023, Taylor has drawn 55 flags, or an average of one every 53.2 snaps. He’s drawn 12.9% of the Chiefs’ flags over the past three years. And remember, he had the highest cap hit of any right tackle in the league in 2025! We’ll reunite him with ex-Jaguars teammate Cam Robinson on the left side, who came to Cleveland in an early-season trade to replace the injured Dawand Jones and showed just why the OL-needy Texans found him expendable. Eight sacks allowed in 400-odd pass blocking snaps is inexcusable, as is a 5.1% blown block rate.
Offensive Guards
Accusations that I’m putting Patrick Mekari and Mekhi Becton on this list together because I keep mixed up their names is a spurious rumor. Spurious, I say. Becton has been complaining about the Chargers offense all season, saying he was uncomfortable in Greg Roman’s system and complaining about how Los Angeles handled injuries, all while finishing with the fifth-highest blown block rate among guards. Mekari was better overall, but he just signed a three-year, $37.5 million contract this offseason and spent the first half of the season looking … rather dreadful, actually. His pass protection improved as the year went along, though he still allowed 34 pressures on the year. His run blocking? Not spectacular – the Jaguars averaged 3.7 yards running behind right guard, fourth-lowest in the league, with a success rate of just 41.3%. He also drew 10 flags; only John Simpson had more among guards. Mekari was far from the worst guard in football, but for someone touted as the “one-man toolbox” who would fix all of Jacksonville’s offensive line problems? Eh, not so much.
Center
There were quite a few Titans who could have ended up on the offensive line list, but we’re going with Lloyd Cushenberry III, a likely cap casualty in Tennessee’s bi-annual roster restructure. It’s notable just how much better the Titans’ line looked with Cushenberry out and Corey Levin in – and Cushenberry is getting $50 million over four years, while Levin’s a veteran minimum guy. Perhaps his lack of chemistry with his guards after missing most of training camp recovering from last year’s torn Achilles, but it’s hard to handwave away 26 blown blocks when you’re one of the five highest-paid centers in the league.
Defense
Edge Rushers
The Buccaneers admitted this season that they thought Haason Reddick’s sack numbers “would be higher,” perhaps indicating that they hadn’t actually watched any footage since 2023. While Reddick wasn’t the same nightmare as he was last year, when we were using this space to talk about hired goons, he has been a far cry from the player the Bucs were hoping for when they gave him a $14 million deal. Just 2.5 sacks, only eight pressures – when your big free agent acquisition is being outplayed by career Useful Reserve Anthony Nelson, you’ve got problems.
The second spot was tougher, but I ultimately settled on Leonard Floyd and his 3.5 sacks. He’s a less extreme version of Reddick’s case — $10 million instead of $14 million, 3.5 sacks and 19 pressures instead of 2.5 and 8, and so on and so forth. Floyd set a preseason goal of breaking his career record of 10.5 sacks and, uh, no. That didn’t happen. Floyd was, charitably, Atlanta’s fourth-best pass rusher this season, and he’ll have to try to break his high-water mark with a new team next year.
Interior Linemen
Dalvin Tomlinson said that the “sky was the limit” for the revamped Cardinals line in 2025. Sure, but he didn’t say what the floor was. Tomlinson tied for 85th among interior linemen with 21 successes and 61st with seven defeats. Some of those low overall totals are to be expected from someone transitioning to more of a rotational role – he had fewer than half of his teams’ defensive snaps for the first time in his career, but the free agent acquisition was not the disrupter Arizona hoped for when they grabbed him in free agency. Arizona was second-to-last in adjusted line yards and 26th in runs up the gut, and Tomlinson was a turnstile whenever he was out there. His pressure rate also was cut by more than half, so even in his specialty, he wasn’t special in 2025. We’ll pair him with Tershawn Wharton, whose season highlight was probably pulling his hamstring while tripping during a walkthrough; he had the 10th-lowest stop rate among interior linemen and no real pass rush to speak of to offset it.
Linebacker
Denzel Perryman was not particularly good this year, but he also only played in 10 games and had 298 snaps, so he normally would not be a top candidate to make the roster – there are worse players who played more. But one of the reasons Perryman didn’t play more was his two-game suspension for multiple rules violations, most notably hitting Ryan Flournoy in the head when he was already down. Perryman is a serial offender – he was suspended for two games in 2023 for the same and has been fined in each of the last three years for helmet-related hits – so there should be very little surprise the league came down on him despite this being his first unnecessary roughness foul this year. He falls in the same broad bin as Metcalf – miss the last two games of the year while your team is in a playoff race, and you make the KCW team.
No linebacker dropped into coverage more this season than Patrick Queen. This did not end up being a good thing for the Pittsburgh Steelers. Queen was targeted 84 times and allowed 58 receptions – 11.4 yards per completion and 7.9 per target, and that’s not including the five receptions he gave up in Pittsburgh’s Wild Card loss. Sure, he recorded a ton of tackles, but it’s a lot easier to get a tackle when the guy in front of you has just caught a pass. He’s also missed 21.2% of his tackles, so maybe it’s not that easy. Far too often out of position, it’s going to be hard for Pittsburgh to justify Queen’s $17.2 million cap hit next year – he’d be a logical cap casualty for a team that’s rebuilding.
Cornerbacks
We could just give this to the New York Jets as a whole, who somehow managed to end the season with zero interceptions. If we were picking a KCW unit, they’d be in first place for sure, and we had to make sure to mention them highly.
Instead, we’re sticking to the bottom 15 of our cornerback DVOA and grabbing the three highest-paid players there. That’s Marshon Lattimore, Marlon Humphrey and Paulson Adebo, all of whom make at least $18 million a year and all of whom were outplayed by rookies and budget free agents all over the league. Lattimore has the extra issues of being arrested on weapons charges three weeks ago, and a torn ACL from November, so yeah, he won’t be around in Washington next year, with that late-season trade in 2024 looking like one of Adam Peters’ worst moves. A year after being a first-team All-Pro, Humphrey set career lows with 920 yards allowed and 9.3 yards per target, as well as having a return of some of the missed tackle issues that plagued his first few years in Baltimore. Adebo was given a ton of money to be the Giants’ CB1 and was frankly outplayed significantly by Cor’Dale Flott – Flott had a -12.4% coverage DVOA to Adebo’s 30.5%, even after considering Adebo had tougher assignments. Rather than smack around the Jets’ collection of rookies and rejects, we’ll give our ire to the players who are paid to be better than that.
Safeties
Budda Baker is aging, and that’s not a great spot to be in for someone who’s made his career on being a physical tackler. He also was used … oddly in Jonathan Gannon’s last year. Baker is a box safety; a thumper who’s there to serve as a quasi-linebacker in safety-heavy nickel sets. In 2025, however, he played more slot corner than he had since 2018, an experiment that didn’t really need repeating. And, indeed, it didn’t go well – 12.6 yards per completion allowed, and a bunch of completions. Baker’s Pro Bowl nod was more a legacy pick than anything else, and while he may well still be a useful linebacker-hybrid type in the right scheme in 2026, let’s try to keep him off of the Puka Nacua’s of the world going forward, OK? We’ll have him join Kyle Dugger, who fell out of favor in New England, was traded to Pittsburgh for a bag of peanuts, and then eventually found himself benched for Chuck Clark because of some … interesting coverage decisions.
Special Teams
Kicker
A tough call. By pure placekicking value, the worst kicker in the league in 2025 was Joshua Karty – and by a large margin. Karty was worth -12.2 weather-adjusted points, with four blocked kicks and three straight up misses. We can argue about how much Karty was responsible for the blocks, but it’s not a good look, and the Rams had to go in another direction. The thing is, though, Karty was very good on kickoffs. While he couldn’t quite sustain the early-season success of his knucklekicks, and a kick short of the landing zone drove Sean McVay up the wall, Karty’s kickoffs earned +10.0 net points of field position, as returners couldn’t handle the bouncing ball at all. With the dynamic kickoff being such a big part of the game this year, we’re going to pass up Karty and instead hit Chad Ryland – the second-worst kickoff man of the year and third-worst field goal kicker, to boot. Ryland missed four field goals from under 50 yards – in the year of the super souped-up K-balls!
Punter
Kai Kroeger won the Saints’ punting job in preseason and proceeded to have the worst punting year of 2025, worth -14.6 points of value. Corey Bojorquez in Cleveland had worse overall value on his punts, but much of that comes from the Browns’ coverage units being terrible, while Kroeger just didn’t kick the ball far enough. He had the sixth-lowest yards per punt and a long of just 61 yards. He also had two punts blocked, which certainly didn’t help.
Returner
The Vikings’ webpage praised Myles Price for being “fearless,” and we certainly won’t deny that he had his share of highlights this season. The goal for the rookie as he prepares for year two? Get some more fear. The worst thing you can do under the new kickoff rules is take the ball out of the end zone rather than accept a touchback, and Price led the league by doing that 13 times. Only two other entire teams had more declined touchbacks than that. And no, it wasn’t because Price was turning those into mega-explosive runbacks; he had -4.4 points of return value when taking balls out of the end zone. Add in the two fumbles against Baltimore, and Price ends up as the third-worst kick returner of the year, and the one with the most negative plays. He still had negative value as a punt returner as well, though not to the same extent. But when you see stats like him being third in kick return yards or whatnot, remember that a big chunk of those are empty yards running out of the end zone. Take a knee occasionally!
Staff
Head Coach
Pete Carroll, why did you come back? The coach that was supposed to add an air of professionalism and competency to the Raiders did neither. Every hiring decision he made was questionable, whether that was bringing Chip Kelly back to the NFL to run his offense or making sure there were spots on his staff for his sons Brennan (offensive line coach) and Nate (assistant quarterbacks coach). He seemed stuck in neutral for most of the season, afraid or incapable of making big moves. He stuck with Geno Smith for far too long, made no changes to an offensive line that was actively crumbling – in a year where the Raiders could do nothing right, it seemed that Carroll didn’t even try to reach for a level and change, well, anything. He very much looked like the oldest coach in the league, one who the game had passed by. And, as such, the Raiders ended the year on a franchise-worst 11-game losing streak, while alienating their best player in Maxx Crosby. Carroll ultimately was an old man puttering around Vegas, and it’s yet another wasted year for a franchise that’s been spinning its wheels for the past half decade.
Offensive Coordinator
Kevin Patullo was fired, and there was much rejoicing throughout Philadelphia. And then it turned out he wasn’t fired, and just was kind of demoted, and there was much confusion throughout Philadelphia? And then they had the damndest time finding a replacement, and there was much anger throughout Philadelphia – which at least hits their comfort zone. Patullo’s offensive scheme was uninspiring, uncreative, and ineffective. It was, to paraphrase Mike Tanier, an offense without wrinkles, concepts, creativity, schematic diversity – or well, much of anything in the way of “plays.” A team with as much talent as Philadelphia has on the roster shouldn’t make you want to pluck your eyes out rather than keep watching them, but that’s life under Patullo. Perhaps egging his house was a step too far – who wants to take a job with a serious risk of having breakfast foods thrown at you? – but, well, Philadelphia fans have thrown worse at people, so maybe Patullo got off lucky.
Defensive Coordinator
Matt Eberflus and his Cowboys had a 22.5% defensive DVOA – the fourth-worst ever, and the worst since 1986, so a decent chunk of people reading this will have never seen a worse defense with their own eyes. Too many penalties, an utter inability to generate turnovers, a bizarre mismatch of the personnel they had and Eberflus’ preferred zone schemes, injuries in the secondary – you can point to pretty much anything and find something on fire on the Dallas defense. That includes a pass rush, which they were unable to generate consistently at any point in 2025. Now, how did that happen…
Special Teams
The Rams fired Chase Blackburn Dec. 20, after a loss to Seattle which included a Seahawks punt return touchdown and a missed field goal. Many of the Rams’ losses saw Blackburn’s unit struggling – two blocked kicks against Philly stands out, but they were simply unreliable all year long. At the time Blackburn was fired, the Rams had a -4.7% special teams DVOA. And fortunately, they never had a problem on special teams again the rest of the y … oh. Well, it was worth the shot.
General Manager
Jerry Jones. Trading away Micah Parsons in a snit over … what, propriety? Respect? The concept of agents in general? It won’t ever make sense, especially when the Cowboys got pennies on the dollar for trading one of the five best defensive players in the league. The Cowboys missed him immediately, and it wasn’t long before Jones was talking about using the capital they got in the Parsons trade to acquire a “special” player – you know, like Micah Parsons! Falling out with superstars is a thing that happens, but this one in particular seemed like solely a result of Jones feeling hurt that Parsons wanted his agent to negotiate, rather than being pressured into a handshake deal. And Jones has not learned anything from the situation, insisting that he’ll also be personally negotiating directly with George Pickens this offseason. Buckle up, Cowboys fans.
