Tag Archives: Footballtalk

NFL Power Rankings

NFL Power Rankings after the first quarter of the 2025 season:

We’re four weeks into the NFL season, and as always, this is the point at which I first try to reflect on what we’ve seen and actually try to put all 32 teams in order. Please bear in mind that these are power *rankings* rather than standings. So you may see one team be listed above another with a (slightly) better record or even one they’ve already lost to head-to-head at some point – the objective is to weigh them against the rest of the league at large, and how many opponents I’d favor them over.

This is meant to be a snapshot of how I view each of these teams as of right now, taking injuries into account, although as objective as one tries to be when putting these together, there may be some projection of certain areas improving or declining with time. I will use a variety of statistics and advanced metrics to support my arguments, but they’re all grounded in having watched all 64 games so far on the broadcast and/or All-22 – yes, even some of the atrocious AFC South matchups in the early going.

Overall, I wouldn’t say there’s one dominant group in the league right now, and there are a bunch of teams in the middle of course, where I expect plenty of movement over the next three plus months still, while the bottom-eight teams feel pretty distant to the rest of the competition.

Let’s get into the list:

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NFL Draft

Early risers for the 2026 NFL Draft:

Usually, at this point of the calendar, I publish my current list of the top five college players. Yet, with how fluctuant that can be based on the ups and downs of the season, the fact that I can’t watch every single game – like I do for the NFL – and my heavy focus on their journey to the pros, I decided to write about something more draft-centric.

I also thought about simply doing a top five by position, but with how I structure my schedule, I typically haven’t more than 15 names for each of those. So instead, I opted for a different approach, as I’ll outline my ten biggest risers a month into the college football season (five on offense and defense each). Please bear in mind that this won’t be complete list, and feel free to put some more names in the comments.

Therefore, you won’t see stalwarts like LSU quarterback Garrett Nussmeier or Ohio State safety Caleb Downs listed, who I already viewed as top-five prospects coming into the year. Rather, I will outline ten players who have stood out to me, watching the games, and either have really gotten onto my radar or have already moved up my rankings, based on scouting them during the summer. Some of them may have transferred or earned a starting role, now having the opportunity to prove themselves (against a higher level of competition).

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NFL Film Breakdowns

Justin Herbert has entered the Giant Robot Fighting arena

The discourse around Herbert for the better part of his career has been mostly nauseating to me, but he had yet to establish himself among the top tier of quarterbacks in the NFL. Through two games of 2025, it appears as if he’s unlocked his highest level yet – and we’ll review his tape!

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NFL Weekly Recap

Key takeaways from all 2025 week one NFL games:

We’re one week down for the 2025 NFL season and as always, there was a lot going. Before we even had one snap from scrimmage, we had a star defender ejected for spitting at an opponent in the kickoff game, then a great AFC West quarterback battle in Sao Paulo, a Sunday slate filled with revenge stories, an early game of the year contender on Sunday night and another big-time comeback to close things out on Monday.

Understandably, there’ll be a lot of overreactions from what happened in these opening games, and while we saw more established players participating in preseason, there was still some rust to shake off, and defenses setting the tone in several matchups. Nonetheless, there‘s a lot to take away for now, as we get our first look at new schemes, rookies, units, etc.

I‘m going to outline three takeaways for all 16 games based on watching the broadcasts and/or tape afterwards. Therefore, these will obviously be rather subjective in terms of on what stood out to me, but I’ll try to encapsulate what matters most for individual players and teams here.

Let’s break it all down!

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NFL Predictions

Bold predictions for the 2025 NFL season:

I’ve already previewed the entire 2025 NFL season in detail, but as an annual tradition, the day before we kick things off – here are my six bold predictions for the year!

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NFL Film Breakdowns

NFL Preseason 2025 standouts:

Two weeks of the preseason (plus the Hall of Fame game) are in the books and it’s time to shine some light on players who have popped so far! We’ll go through some clips for three players on offense and defense each!

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Fantasy Football

Fantasy diamonds for 2025:

Fantasy football season is upon us, and while I don’t label myself an expert in the field, this has become an annual tradition to lay out some of my favorite picks for where they’re going in drafts. And they’ve worked out pretty damn well for me over the years!

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NFL Top 100

My NFL Top 100 Players of 2025:

As this year’s official NFL top 100 countdown is nearing a close – even though the network pushed back its release by nearly a month – I’m once again presenting my personal version as an alternative. Any content in this format has a certain level of subjectivity, but I believe in my process of putting the list together more so than how the top 20 lists for all the players polled are merged together.

Just as a reminder of what the criteria is supposed to be – a ranking of the best 100 players heading into 2025, regardless of position. Obviously, it’s challenging to not weigh the value of quarterbacks or adequately compare names with very different jobs/roles. However, the aim here to me always is to find the right balance between what someone provides for their specific team and also project how they would fare on a theoretical average franchise, without a defined scheme.

My one quick disclaimer here is that I didn’t include any players coming off long-term injuries, are dealing with pending suspensions or other factors that’ll affect their performance this upcoming season in significant fashion. That’s why the following names weren’t eligible – Christian McCaffrey, Tyreek Hill, Andrew Thomas, Sam Cosmi, Aidan Hutchinson, Alim McNeill, Christian Wilkins and Jeremiah Owusu-Koramoah.

This is what I ended up with:

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NFL Offseason, NFL Predictions

NFL teams most likely to go from worst to first in 2025:

With how intent the NFL is on keeping an even playing field, we see a couple of teams turn things around every year. I ranked the eight teams who just finished last inside their division by how most likely to improve to number one!

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NFL Offseason

What does success look like for your favorite NFL team in 2025?

The following conversation goes against what the NFL’s shield is trying to sell the public at the start of every single season – the idea of all 32 teams having a chance to hoist the Lombardi Trophy at the end of it. As much as I love how they strive for parity, conceiving anything but achieving the ultimate goal as a failure would always leave all but one fan base dissatisfied. Generally, I sway away from asking questions like the one in the title, but due to several factors, I thought laying out which factors we should pay attention to and what constitutes a “successful campaign” was particularly interesting this year.

I’m fully aware that this by no means is an innovative concept, but looking back at this past season, I thought the gap between “the rich and the poor” was as large as ever once we got to around Thanksgiving. So I do believe it’s important to offer a frame of context for how we should probably view what these franchises are about to put onto the field once we kick things off. For some teams, simply measuring it by where the journey ends for them in 2025 is fair, yet for others, showing growth in certain areas may be even more crucial for their future outlook.

We’ll go through them all by division here!

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