Divisional Round losers postmortem: What's next for Bills, 49ers, Texans and Bears?
The Athletic Football Show: A show about the NFL
The Athletic
4.6 • 3.3K Ratings
🗓️ 20 January 2026
⏱️ 74 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
When you're one of the last eight teams playing football in a season, that final loss is hard to swallow. No matter how bright the future appears, there's no guarantee you get another shot quite like the one you just had. And yet, there's plenty of reason for optimism in 2026 and beyond for the Bills, 49ers, Texans and Bears after their respective Divisional Round losses. Robert Mays and Derrik Klassen consider what the offseason ahead looks like for each of those teams on this episode of The Athletic Football Show.
Rundown (timestamps are approximate)
3:00 Buffalo Bills
33:57 San Francisco 49ers
43:49 Houston Texans
59:05 Chicago Bears
1:17:20 Jeff Hafley to the Dolphins
Connect with The Athletic Football Show
Please take our listener survey: theathletic.com/survey26
YT: https://www.youtube.com/@TAFootballShow
Podcasts: https://podfollow.com/the-athletic-football-show/view
X: https://x.com/TA_FootballShow
IG: https://www.instagram.com/tafootballshow
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@tafootballshow
Discord: http://discord.gg/theathleticfootballshow
Call us: 847-448-0701
Email us: athleticfootballshow@gmail.com
Host: Robert Mays
Co-Host: Derrik Klassen
Executive Producer: Michael Beller
Video Producer: Katy Duffy
Audio Producer: Michael Beller
Social Producer: Scott Krinch
Follow Robert on Bluesky: @robertmays.bsky.social
Follow Derrik on Bluesky: @qbklass.bsky.social
Follow Robert on X: @robertmays
Follow Derrik on X: @QBKlass
Theme song: Haunted
Written by Dylan Slocum, Trevor Dietrich, Ruben Duarte, Kyle McAulay, and Meredith VanWoert / Performed by Spanish Love Songs
Courtesy of Pure Noise / By arrangement with Bank Robber Music, LLC
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Welcome to the Athletic Football Show. |
| 0:05.3 | I'm Robert Mays. |
| 0:06.7 | Spending the hangover shows during the playoffs this year, doing some post-mortem slash |
| 0:11.5 | look-aheads for the teams that lost the previous weekend. |
| 0:14.5 | That's exactly what we did today. |
| 0:16.1 | Four teams, Buffalo Bills, San Francisco 49ers, Houston, Texans, Chicago Bears. |
| 0:21.0 | What does their off-season outlook look like? |
| 0:24.0 | What positions might they address? |
| 0:25.9 | What are the biggest questions? |
| 0:27.4 | And how can these rosters be better heading into next season than they were this year when these teams fell short? |
| 0:35.0 | One other thing to keep in mind, our annual listener survey is live, and you can participate |
| 0:39.1 | by going to theathletic.com slash survey 26. |
| 0:42.9 | Three lucky entries will win $100 worth of Amazon vouchers. |
| 0:47.0 | So whether you're a longtime listener or a new one, we would love your feedback. |
| 0:50.6 | So please go to theathletic.com slash survey 26. |
| 0:53.9 | The link is also in our episode description |
| 0:56.3 | below. Right now, let's get to those postmortems slash lookaheads with my buddy Derek |
| 1:02.1 | Klesson. Spending today digging into some divisional round post mortems that's always what we've called |
| 1:12.4 | them but they're not really post mortems it's not why did the team lose we actually do that |
| 1:16.5 | in the recap shows they're mostly like what comes next for these teams but i like post mortems |
| 1:22.2 | as a way to explain them so i'm just going to continue to call them that even though that's wrong |
| 1:25.6 | it's the wrong term but still feels like the right term. |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from The Athletic, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of The Athletic and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.