Offseason power rankings are always awkward to put together. What are we supposed to be basing them on?
How teams looked at the end of the previous NFL season? How much cap space they might or might not have to spend in free agency? What their draft capital is looking like?
Well, with these offseason power rankings you’re about to read, the answer to all of those questions is “yes.” Instead of ranking all 32 NFL teams on how we think they’ll stack up in 2021, we’ve ranked them by how much excitement they should be able to build over the course of the next few months.
For instance, the Jaguars might be the worst team in the league; but, thanks to a certain generational quarterback prospect, fans in Jacksonville are going to be juiced for the start of the 2021 season. The Saints, on the other hand, are coming off a division title but they have a tough offseason ahead of them.
We used Lee Sharpe’s helpful chart below to help determine each team’s capacity to get better (on paper) in the coming months.
Updated offseason resources chart!
X-axis = Draft Capital per @Jason_OTC @PFF_Brad model
Y-axis = Effective Cap Space pic.twitter.com/I8ehDKViL9
— Lee Sharpe, ⛓️ @ 🏠 (@LeeSharpeNFL) March 3, 2021
But when we say offseason power rankings, there’s a big emphasis on the “offseason” part. This is our read on where these teams are now meshed with how much we trust that they can or will take steps to improve.
With that out of the way, let’s rank some teams.