Week 1 NFL Power Rankings
The Philadelphia Eagles and Kansas City Chiefs should be expected to be the two best teams in the NFL yet again. I have the Chiefs being a little bit better but the Eagles winning slightly more games than the Chiefs in my model due to the Chiefs’ more difficult schedule—but it is a difference of 0.05 games—so it is meaningless.
The surprise would be the Ravens are expected to win more games than the Bengals (again, only a 0.2 game difference) even though the Bengals are a better team—again, because the Bengals, having placed first in the AFC North last season, have to face three division-winning teams that the Ravens do not have to face.
Many observers would be surprised to see me (or, rather, my model) put the Ravens as the fifth-best team in the NFL and the Browns as the sixth-best. I wouldn’t have ranked them that highly if I went team-by-team and just guestimated “how good is this team?", but that might be reflective of my bias. When you rate the teams by position, you see the Browns and Ravens both have some of the best offensive lines in the league, highly-skilled running backs (the Browns with the one of the best in the league), and above-average wide receiver units on top of tough defenses.
I could see the Ravens and Browns both underperform their rosters. The Ravens are trying to redesign their offense (again) to unlock Lamar Jackson. Even if Jackson stays healthy, it’s easy to be skeptical of the success of their program. If you run their roster through an algorithm, it can’t analyze their scheme.
The Browns have DeShaun Watson at quarterback, and he looked terrible last season, and you just feel bad about them with all that. I gave Watson an upgrade by rating him at 5.5/10 because I allowed that he could be better after another year with the team, but he looked bad in training camp, too. Last season, he was actually worse than Steelers QB Kenny Pickett, whom I rated as 4.5/10. If he’s that bad again, he could be an anchor on an otherwise great team.
The Rams could be even worse than the Cardinals, especially if Cooper Kupp misses multiple games with his hamstring injury. A lot depends on how good the Rams’ rookies are. They will be starting rookies all over the defense.
Note the discrepancy between the AFC and the NFC. While the NFC has three elite teams in the Eagles (No. 2), the 49ers (No. 4), and the Cowboys (No. 7), they fall off a cliff after the Cowboys. Nine of the top 12 teams are AFC teams while four of the five worst teams (and 9/14 worst) are in the NFC.
This all implies that the Super Bowl will be Chiefs over Eagles again, according to my model. I know. It’s boring.
If I had to pick a realistic Super Bowl result that doesn’t include any repeat teams, it would be Bengals over 49ers. And if I had to go out on a limb and pick a surprise outcome, it would be Ravens over Seahawks.