Power Rankings

The less common top five lists for the NFL:

Now officially past the midway point of the season and my awards handed point for the first half already, I wanted to look at some areas that aren’t talked about enough. Everybody likes to hand out their top five teams, individual players at a certain position or whatever. What I wanted to do is put out my five best on topics that aren’t heavily discussed, such as the best quarterback situations, offensive and defensive play-callers and most disappointing teams in the NFL right now. Not all of these can be described purely by numbers or what the eye-test tells you, but instead you have to check the background and analyze the tape, as well as considering who has been on the schedule for all these different squads.

Not surprisingly, the only undefeated team in the league in San Francisco is most frequently represented with a spot in five of the six positive team categories and three number one nominations. The Patriots are second with two of those top spots and another nomination, while the Saints reached the top three in three different categories.

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NFL award winners

NFL 2019 Midseason Awards:

We have surpassed week eight of the NFL regular season and as always it is time to reflect a little and hand out the biggest awards if the season ended today. So this is not a projection or prediction for what will happen, but rather who I would vote for as of right now. Obviously there are biases to the quarterback for the MVP or Rookie of the Year award, most of the decisions are largely based around statistics, since I don’t believe a lot of the voters are film-junkies necessarily, and they tend to spread, such as giving Coach of the Year to the hottest name or differentiating between MVP and Offensive Player of the Year. So I just picked the winners based on who I think best suits the descriptions and gave out three more names that I think should be in the discussion. Here is who I would vote for:

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NFL Predictions

Which losing teams can turn it around and who is done for the year?

Every year you have NFL teams failing to reach the expectations fans have for them in the offseason, while others start off slow and end up going on a run. Just last season you had two teams, who were coming off conference championship game appearances, miss the playoffs entirely in the Vikings and Jaguars. On the other hand, you had two AFC South teams in the Texans and Colts meeting in a matchup of 0-3 teams early on in the season, but then both putting together impressive stretches to finish with double-digit wins.

Because of that, I looked around the league for teams that have been disappointing so far and pointed out one squad, who I think still has hope to turn things around and another one, whose season is already over to me. I only picked teams at or below .500 record to do so of course. Three of these four were playoff teams last year, while another one might have just been the most hyped group in the entire league over the summer.

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Player Rankings

Quarterback Index ahead of week six:

Five weeks into the season with my first power rankings coming out last week, I decided to rank all the starting quarterbacks in the NFL as of right now. My evaluations are based on what we have seen so far, but they are not simply a ranking of their performances or where they stack up statistically. I have to take into account the full body of work with the focus being on how what they have shown up to this point compares to what I have seen from them in prior years. Some quarterbacks have developed into better players, while others have stayed steady or regressed in terms of their physical ability. Here is how it all shakes out for me.

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NFL Power Rankings

NFL Power Rankings after the first quarter of the 2019 season:

As I like to do every year, I am putting out my first power rankings after four weeks, since I think this is a good time to reflect. To me this point always represents a moment at which it is possible to get somewhat of a clearer picture on the state of the league and where teams will go. Obviously there will still be teams falling down the ranks while others could establish themselves as contenders later on, but I feel like we know what most teams are.

I always think it’s ridiculous how everybody makes definite statements on any NFL teams after just a couple of weeks or refer to things as “all season long” when there have barely been any games played. So I like to wait until we have passed the first quarter of the season before I really try to put these teams in order. Unlike most power rankings out there, I don’t simply put all the teams in order of their record and at this point we have so many 2-2 squads, that you really have to go through the tape and rosters of all of them to be able to stack them up against each other.

Here is what I came out with:

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Player Rankings

Confidence level for new starting quarterbacks:

With the amount of veteran quarterbacks going down with injuries or changes under center in general, I wanted to take a look at this group of young signal-callers and judge how confident their respective teams should by what they’ve shown so far. This list focuses quarterbacks, who have their first extended period of starts this season. So this obviously doesn’t include guys who might be full-time starters now, after taking over at some point last year, and neither is it about signal-callers who simply switched places or went back under center for their squad with the QB1 out of the picture. This is all about potential starters for the future. Because of that, I did not include the Jets Luke Falk either, even though I always liked his ability to throw on time and target, because he started out as third string and the Jets already have a young QB that they are very invested in. So here are these six quarterbacks and my level of confidence in them:

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Storylines around the NFL

What to believe from week one of NFL action:

Week one is always absolutely crazy every year. Find me one person who said before Sunday that the Browns would lose by 30 to the Titans or that the Bucs would put up 48 on the Saints at the Superdome in last year’s week one matchup. With how little starters play in preseason and how teams still figuring things out early on, it surprises us every year and most people overreact to the first look at all teams in an extreme way. I kind of wanted to look at the storylines emerging from the first round of NFL games and give my opinion on if that trend will continue or that statement will prove to be right. To do so, I labelled all twelve of them, which includes almost all matchups, either as truth or deceit and explain my reasoning behind it. Here they are:

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