The NFL has kicked off Super Bowl 2026 chatter with a graphic that put Dallas Cowboys quarterback Dak Prescott and Jacksonville Jaguars QB Trevor Lawrence closest to the Lombardi Trophy. The image, posted on the morning the 2026 season began, immediately sent fans looking for a hidden message.
That reaction made sense because the league did the same thing in 2025, when its opening-day graphic showed player representatives from all 32 teams walking toward the trophy and left Seattle Seahawks QB Sam Darnold and New England Patriots passer Drake Maye nearest to it. Months later, Sam Darnold and Drake Maye met in Super Bowl 60, and the Seahawks ended up taking home the hardware, which is why a fresh graphic naturally drew comparison and suspicion.
This time, the two names at the front of the image have already pushed talk toward a possible Cowboys-Jaguars meeting in Super Bowl 61. Prescott and Lawrence are not random choices in the way fans are reading the picture; they are the faces closest to the trophy in a league-wide visual built to represent every team, and that is enough to turn a design into a debate.
Still, the graphic is not a ticket to Los Angeles. The Cowboys may be framed by some as a roster built to contend, but the Jaguars are the more complicated part of the equation, even after a 13-4 season that ended with a wild-card loss to the Buffalo Bills. That is the gap in the story: the NFL can invite speculation with an image, but it cannot arrange the path through a season.
So the real question is not whether the graphic was clever. It is whether Prescott and Lawrence can do what the image hints at and keep the conversation alive long enough for Super Bowl 61 to become more than a punchline on opening day.
