Category Archives: Power Rankings

NFL Power Rankings, Power Rankings

Pre-2022 NFL season power rankings:

We’ve nearly made it through the preseason and once again it’s time to put out my first power rankings of the year, before the Bills and Rams kick off the regular season.

To do so, not only did I rank all teams from numbers one to 32, but I also grouped them into six tiers. Each of those consists of four to six teams, other than what I labelled as the “second tier”, which is loaded with AFC teams in particular, who I believe all have the talent to make real noise this season.

As always, I know many people will hate how low their team is and sometimes the number in front of it may look worse than it actually is, which is why I’d like to consider the individual tiers, which is what I believe is more representative of how I look at the NFL landscape heading into 2022.

Let’s get into the list:


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Power Rankings

NFL Power Rankings after the first quarter of the ’21 season:

As I always do after the first four games of a season, I wanted to rank all 32 teams once again. Unfortunately, with the 17th game added, it’s not exactly a quarter of the season anymore and we’ll have to see how that impacts teams down the road, who may otherwise have already pre-determined their outcome for the full year, but I think at this point we have a pretty good indication of where almost everybody stands.

The thing I want to make very clear here is that these are my personal rankings and I judge what I’ve seen on the field, rather than what the records say. So there may a couple of 2-2 teams over others at 3-1 for example, as I don’t want to be a prisoner of the moment.

So looking at this whole list, I wanted to quickly share my general thought on the individual teams, aided by a couple of key statistics, but I’m more than willing to discuss certain rankings, maybe in comparison to others, in the comments or on my social media outlets (links in the top bar).

Now let’s go through this list:

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NFL Offseason, NFL Power Rankings, Power Rankings

NFL teams most likely to go from worst to first in 2021:

We have spent a lot of time on analyzing what NFL teams have done this offseason to improve their roster, detailing every single draft pick, discussing the most improved position groups and pointing out the biggest remaining needs for every single squad. Now it’s time to project how these moves will impact the outcome of the 2021 season, in regards to how much the bottom teams have improved and their chances to turn things around.

So here I listed the teams, that just finished fourth in their respective division, and ranked them based on the likelihood of winning it this year. I will describe the team itself, including some of the changes on the roster and coaching staff, talk about the challenges they will face inside their division and take a look at the schedule a little bit, in order to determine their chances of hosting a playoff game come next January. I also added a percentage at the very end, that I would give them of doing so.

Let’s get into it:

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Power Rankings

NFL Power Rankings heading into the final three weeks of the 2020 season:

As crazy as this sounds, we are only three weeks away from the NFL playoffs and the picture is starting to manifest itself. In this breakdown I’m ranking all 32 teams and I use different tiers to describe how I feel about them. While there are plenty of statistics to support the cases I want to make for them, I tried to limit those to a smaller degree, because at this point of the season it’s all about what I have learned from studying them every week and what my eyes tell me.

Here we go:

 

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Power Rankings

Top 10 defenses in the NFL after ten weeks:

Scoring in the NFL is at an all-time high. There are so many young, exciting quarterbacks and we see passing records being broken every single week, especially with Tom Brady and Drew Brees going back and forth for the title as the all-time touchdown leader. However, the best teams in this league still play great defense. Some of them may have the individual talent while others do a better job of game-planning and putting their players in position to succeed, but when we talk about the really special units, that’s where both those things come together.

I want to look at the top ten defenses in the NFL as of right now, which of course is largely based on what they have done through ten weeks, but I try to put things into context in terms of who they have played and how some of the statistics or point totals came to be. And funnily enough, only the very last one on the list is below-.500, while eight of these teams have won at least six games.

Make sure to also check out my detailed recap of week ten!

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Power Rankings

NFL Power Rankings after the first quarter of the 2020 season:

Now that the first four weeks of the NFL season are in the books and we have a pretty good idea about who all these teams are, while the results may not fully tell the story yet, I decided to put them all in order for the first version of my Power Rankings in-season. Funnily enough my number one and 32 teams are still the same that I had when I put out my list a couple of weeks before the year was kicked off. Once again, I’m not trying to just put these teams in order by their record – for that you can check the official standings on NFL.com – but rather I tried to figure out how I would personally rank them based on the tape I’ve watched and with some stats to help me put it all in context.

This is my list:

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Power Rankings

Best triplets in the NFL going into 2020:

After a week off, I am back with a vengeance! Since this was kind of a trending topic a few weeks ago and I saw a lot of media outlets/networks put out their rankings of the top triplets in the NFL, I thought I needed to put myself into the conversation and right some of wrongs that were done.

This list only includes combinations of one quarterback, running back and wide receiver each. That means no players beyond that and no consideration of the offensive scheme or play-caller, as much as that’s possible. And to lay the ground rules – all three positions are weighed equally. So just because you have one of the elite quarterbacks doesn’t necessarily put you up there and if one of those spots doesn’t have a really good player, I don’t care how great the other two are.

So with that being said, here is my list of the best trios in the league:

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Power Rankings

Top 10 offensive lines in the NFL heading into 2020:

Talking about the most improved position groups in the NFL last week inspired me to look at one of those in particular and list my top ten units. For this exercise I tried to look at all these offensive lines in a vacuum – how well they execute certain run schemes, how diverse they can be or how great they are with their bread-and-butter and of course how well they protect the quarterback. While I support my case with certain statistics and advanced numbers in particular, solely going by the stats would be a huge mistake, since that would mean the Rams allowing the fewest amount of sacks qualifies them as the top pass-blocking line or the Giants almost had a top five run-blocking unit, even though Saquon Barkley routinely had to make people miss in the backfield and Daniel Jones averaging over six yards a carry certainly helped.

Instead, I’m trying to go through the starting five individually, then talk about their strengths and weaknesses and just some of the plays they run routinely. I have to project the starting lineups a little here and there will be some battles for specific spots during whatever we will have from training camp. That’s why I mention the key backups as well, which could feature guys who will be in the starting lineup week one. Under the new CBA, teams are now allowed to dress at least two more players on gamedays and another one if the active roster includes at least offensive linemen. So the strategy teams are going to choose will be interesting to me and I would expect a lot more groups carrying eight linemen on Sundays.

And just to make this clear – this is a projection of what I think will be the top ten O-lines in 2020, even though I will often reference to what they did last season and beyond.

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NFL Predictions, Power Rankings

NFL teams most likely to go from worst to first in 2020:

We have talked a lot about the draft, biggest remaining needs for every NFL team, some breakout candidates and other stuff, so let’s now get back to more of a big picture and look at some teams from an angle of where could they go next season. In this article, I am analyzing those teams that finished fourth in their division this past year and why they could win it in 2020 or land at the bottom once again, plus an outlook where I actually see them.

Of course much of this is about these eight teams and how much better or worse I feel about them than the general public, but it was heavily dependent on their three division rivals as well. The top half I could certainly see earn a playoff spot and surprise some people if everything goes right. After that a lot of my faith is more built around the lack of great competition and giving some hope to these respective fan bases. As the cliché goes – everybody is 0-0 right now.

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NFL Power Rankings, Power Rankings

NFL Power Rankings heading into the fourth quarter of 2019:

As crazy as it may sound, there are only four weeks left in the regular season and as we are heading into the final stretch of what has been a very exciting year, it is time to rank these teams one through 32 once again,. This order is based on what I see when I watch the games or put on the film afterwards, in terms of pure talent on the roster, schematic advantages, situational success and overall team chemistry. So obviously teams who have already faced a tough schedule will be given more credit, but these aren’t college football rankings, where we bring up strength of record or what not, yet instead I am trying to tell you who I think are the best teams in the league. A lot of these have already played each other and I consider that as well, but just because one team beat the other eight weeks ago, doesn’t necessarily mean that they will be ranked above – we are trying to assess the situation at this very moment.

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