As much as NFL fans enjoy rooting for their favorite team, they enjoy root against their least favorite team just as much. When a fan mentions which team is their least favorite, one of the seven teams listed will likely be their answer. So here are the 7 most hated NFL teams in 2025:

Kansas City Chiefs:

The Chiefs have displayed an unprecedented amount of success in the last 9 years: 3 Super Bowl wins, five Super Bowl appearances, hosting the AFC Championship game nine consecutive times, and a 90-26 record. However, the tremendous hate directed at the Chiefs isn’t just, “They hate us cause they ain’t us”.

The Chiefs receive a clear preferential treatment from the refs, which many fans will deny based on the Chiefs’ ranking high in penalties. However, preferential treatment is given through penalties on opposing teams, lack of penalties that should be called, and calls that don’t involve penalties at all. Particular calls in the 2024 playoffs helped the Chiefs reach the Super Bowl, such as the roughing the passer on Will Anderson Jr., the unnecessary roughness call on Henry To’oTo’o, the controversial 4th down call on the Bills’ tush push, and the “complete pass” that touched the ground.

Additionally, it seems impossible for defenders to get a clean hit on Patrick Mahomes without a roughing-the-passer call, as only two active quarterbacks have more roughing-the-passer calls per sack than Mahomes. And yet in the rare scenario where Mahomes does not receive a call he agrees with, he whines and moans as if he’s entitled to help from the refs, which he usually is. There are countless other controversies and reasons to hate the Chiefs, but it would take an eternity to list them all.

Dallas Cowboys:

The Cowboys are the team that all NFL fans love to hate. The Cowboys were initially hated for their success in the 90s, though their hate has grown far beyond mere Lombardi Trophies.

Cowboys fans are some of the most arrogant and obnoxious in professional sports, even though the Cowboys haven’t made it past the divisional round in 28 years. Nevertheless, it’s always “The Cowboys year” until the rest of the NFL eventually cheers for their early playoff exit. What’s even more arrogant is that the Cowboys choose to call themselves “America’s team”, a name that no one accepts but Cowboys fans due to its grave inaccuracy.

Philadelphia Eagles:

Much hate toward the Eagles is directed at their fans, who are a very passionate group of people but can be a bit too passionate sometimes. When the Eagles win, their fans will climb street lights, punch police horses, demolish traffic lights, and cheer for Michael Irvin’s season-ending injury.

And when the Eagles lose, their fans will boo their own star players, throw batteries at players, and boo the NFL’s Man of the Year award announced at the Super Bowl, just because he was a Cowboys player. Eagles’ fans can get further obnoxious when they win, and the Eagles have done so recently, reigning as the current Super Bowl champion and having the second most wins of any team since 2021.

New England Patriots:

The Patriots have had the seventh-worst winning percentage since 2020 and no hated players outside of Stefon Diggs, so fans shouldn’t particularly hate them.

However, fans are still scarred from their consistent winning through the 2000s and 2010s, which also included multiple cheating scandals, such as “Spygate” and “Deflategate”. 6 Super Bowls and 18 winning records in 19 seasons is an absurd amount of success, inevitably garnering an absurd amount of hate. Hence, it will take at least multiple decades of losing for the rest of NFL fans to start feeling sorry for them.

Pittsburgh Steelers:

NFL teams that win four or more Super Bowls are almost always among the most hated, and the Steelers fall into that category with six titles. The Steelers garnered further hate from Super Bowl XL, a game that was essentially handed to them by the refs.

 The Steelers’ despised playoff success isn’t just Super Bowls, as they have beaten every divisional opponent in the playoffs in the past 10 years. Other AFC North teams already hate their division-rival Steelers, but the hate intensifies when those teams have the bitter taste of losing to the Steelers in the playoffs.

The Steelers are very successful, especially against division rivals, but they have a third ingredient that makes them additionally hated: bandwagon fans. The Steelers have undoubtedly the most bandwagon fans of any team, as at least multiple Steelers fans appear at every NFL game, no matter who is playing.

Baltimore Ravens:

The Ravens’ have received a great deal of hate despite being a relatively new expansion team. Precedently, fans disapproved of the Ravens’ dirty playstyle, their early success, and they were the former Browns who were owned by Art Modell.

More recently, the Ravens’ have accumulated hate for their consistent regular season success, hate towards Lamar Jackson for a multitude of reasons, and hate from their own fans, who are not content with their yearly playoff exits, especially Mark Andrews’s lack of ball security in last year’s divisional round. However, the most egregious incident and reason to hate the Ravens was Ravens’ fans chanting F*** Joe Burrow after Burrow’s season-ending injury.

San Francisco 49ers:

The 49ers were the Chiefs of the 80s and 90s, had one of the NFL’s most hated players in Terrell Owens in the late 90s and early 2000s, and had a .600 winning percentage since 2019.

The 49ers have experienced more success than most NFL teams in recent years, which not only creates resentment from fans of less successful teams but gives 49ers fans annoyingly high preseason expectations and delusions. 2024 was refreshing, as the 49ers finally experienced a down year with a losing record and without a playoff birth, which should keep their expectations in check for 2025.