There’s a clear hierarchy in the NFL through eight weeks of the 2022 regular season. There are roughly six to eight teams that look like genuine Super Bowl contenders. There are four or five teams that look genuinely bad.
And then there’s the middle, where everyone kinda stinks but still has viable playoff hopes.
That made this week’s round of rankings particularly difficult for slots 11 through 27. Parity continues to reign across the NFL, though in this case it’s hitting the middle class harder than the elites. Franchises we thought could be on the rise — the Jacksonville Jaguars, the Detroit Lions and the Houston Texans, for starters — haven’t yet gained that foothold. Otherwise, there’s a wide swath of mediocrity that’s settled over the league and threatens to make the first weekend of this year’s playoffs a dreadfully uninteresting affair.
But there are still 10 weeks to go before we get there and plenty can change. With that in mind, let’s take a look at where we are, one Sunday before 2022’s halfway point.