Tag Archives: Power Rankings

NFL Power Rankings

NFL Power Rankings heading into the fourth quarter of 2022:

We’ve now played 13 of 18 regular season games, which puts us exactly at the three-quarter mark of the season at this moment in the middle of the week. And just like I did after the first month of the season, I thought it was time for me to rank and tier all 32 NFL teams yet again.

As I always say – these are power rankings, based on what I perceive teams to be right now, rather than listing them by record and basically creating a standings table. Some squads may have started off slowly but are starting to hit their groove, while others have fallen off, as the season has progressed. Funnily enough, numbers one and 32 are still the same today as they were for me back on October 5th, but there’s been plenty of shake-up between those two.

Here’s my list:


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Player Rankings

Ranking all 32 NFL quarterbacks post-week eight (2022):

The quarterback position is always the most-discussed and -scrutinized in football. Often times it’s hard for casual fans to decipher how good these players actually are and opinions are based on raw numbers and team success, rather than evaluating the QB’s play specifically. Now eight weeks into the season, I decided to rank the starters for all 32 teams and create tiers within the list, to signify how I look at them at this moment.

While statistics will play a large role in making the points for some of these guys, I tried to base my opinions on what the tape says first and foremost. For this exercise, I had to consider surrounding pieces (skill-position players and offensive line), advantages delivered by play-calling and what these quarterbacks are asked to execute. This isn’t supposed to be a ranking of how good these signal-callers are for their teams specifically, but rather I tried to extrapolate the individual players and go from number one to 32.

Here’s my list:

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NFL Power Rankings

Power Rankings after the first quarter of the 2022 NFL season:

Similar to what I did last week, with the top five college players at each position a month into the season, I wanted to take a look at the landscape of the NFL, only from a team perspective, ranking them from number one all the way to 32. Due to the addition of a 17th game last year, the quarter-pole isn’t quite exact, but I think this a great time to give a resumé on what we’ve seen so far.

These are not “power ratings”, but rather rankings based on my film study, putting performances into context and using (advanced) statistics to support my case. Therefore you will see teams with worse records or even those who have lost to others in their direct matchups, be higher up than those other squads.

This is what I came up with:


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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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NFL Power Rankings, Storylines around the NFL

NFL teams most likely to go from worst to first in 2022:

After spending months on evaluating college prospects, talking about what each team did in the draft and their overall roster building process, it’s time to discuss some of the tangible effects we may witness this upcoming season. So I wanted to look at all eight teams, who finished last inside their division in 2021, and rank them based on likelihood of ascending to the top of those groups.

I had a lot of fun with this exercise, because while I enjoy creating excitement for one franchise – and I was able to still do so for the teams in question – it’s also good to do think contrarily, try to poke holes in rosters/coaching staffs and lay out a path for why groups may underachieve. Therefore, I ultimately put together a short intro on the baseline situation, gave the other three teams a paragraph each to break down certain concerns they may have, and then finally got to the franchises in question here.

We spend so much time hyping up the established squads and neglect those closer to the bottom of the league – at least in terms of positives they may have going on for themselves – that this was supposed to be a change-up to a lot of the content out there.

(I have no idea how it happened, since the Jaguars obviously selected first overall in the draft, but somehow I ended up listing the Texans for the AFC South. Since they have a lower projected win total this season, that actually makes it a slightly bigger challenge anyway though.)

So let’s get into the breakdown:


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NFL Power Rankings

NFL Power Rankings heading into the fourth quarter of the 2021 season:

There are five weeks left in the NFL season and with the last four teams wrapping up bye weeks, this is as close to the three-quarter mark as we’ll get to. Therefore, it was time for me to go through all the numbers, watch some more film and rank all 32 teams against each other heading into the final stretch.

I think there’s a fairly clear top-five, which you could order a few different ways and a couple of teams with the potential to join that group. And similarly, there’s a group at the bottom, which consists of about the same amount of teams, that have practically – and one even technically – eliminated themselves from playoff contention – and their play also reflects that. The middle group is really what’s hard to figure out, because some of those teams look like contenders one week and then let us down the very next.

Still, this is the list I came up with in the end, not just purely ranking the teams based on record, but also taking recent form into account and where they should come in, as I evaluate them at this very moment. Let’s dive into it:

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There are five weeks left in the NFL season and with the last four teams wrapping up bye weeks, this is as close to the three-quarter mark as we’ll get to. Therefore, it was time for me to go through all the numbers, watch some more film and rank all 32 teams against each other heading into the final stretch.

I think there’s a fairly clear top-five, which you could order a few different ways and a couple of teams with the potential to join that group. And similarly, there’s a group at the bottom, which consists of about the same amount of teams, that have practically – and one even technically – eliminated themselves from playoff contention – and their play also reflects that. The middle group is really what’s hard to figure out, because some of those teams look like contenders one week and then let us down the very next.

Still, this is the list I came up with in the end, not just purely ranking the teams based on record, but also taking recent form into account and where they should come in, as I evaluate them at this very moment. Let’s dive into it:

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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 Power Rankings

Power Rankings ahead of the 2021 NFL season:

Just three weeks away from the season-opener between the Cowboys and Buccaneers, I once again ranked all 32 NFL teams and split them into six different tiers, from Super Bowl contenders to – how I liked to call it – tanking teams. Putting this list together, I considered talent on the roster, how all the pieces fit together, the level of coaching and I project these teams to develop until the new year.

Of course, these will change over the course of the season, as injuries become a bigger factor, players improve/regress and teams get into a certain rhythm. Therefore I’ll come back to it, at the latest, mid-way through the 2021 season and move these groups up or down the board accordingly.

Here’s my list:

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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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