Tag: 2023 NFL Power Rankings

NFL Power Rankings, Week 17: The Ravens pointed and laughed at the 49ers’ fraudulence

The Ravens tore Brock Purdy to shreds — and reminded us even the best teams are sorta bad in 2023.

Here’s the problem and/or highlight of the 2023 NFL season. No one’s great.

Granted, there are several very good teams. But the one that looked elite, the San Francisco 49ers, came out in primetime on Monday night and got their doors blown off by the Baltimore Ravens. That leaves Baltimore to assume the mantle of “best team” (and Lamar Jackson to take up Brock Purdy’s spot atop the MVP ranks), but based on how this season has unfolded it won’t last. Baltimore, a team that already has losses to the flawed Indianapolis Colts and Pittsburgh Steelers, remains vulnerable in its quest to take down the AFC’s top seed.

Behind them lies a frustrating upper crust liable to be blown out by a less talented opponent any given week. We know this because the Detroit Lions, Dallas Cowboys, Kansas City Chiefs, Miami Dolphins, Buffalo Bills and Philadelphia Eagles have each scraped the dizzying heights of Super Bowl contention and had that post-win bliss stomped out by garbage teams before they could stamp their place on the contenders’ list.

As a result, no one is trustable. Not even a Ravens team and its likely MVP quarterback who also happens to be 1-3 with a 68.3 passer rating in the postseason. Whether that’s a feature or a bug depends on how much predictability you like in your playoffs. But either way, it’s made our power rankings a total crapshoot where we’re forced to just sorta shrug and say “yeah, I *guess* the Cowboys are 2023’s fifth-best team.”

NFL Power Rankings: Ravens vault to No.1, Chiefs tumble after loss

The latest NFL Power Rankings ahead of week 17 see the Baltimore Ravens vault up to number one and the Kansas City Chiefs fall after a loss.

Week 16 is in the books and there are just two games left in the National Football League’s regular season.

Everything started on Thursday night when the Los Angeles Rams beat the New Orleans Saints in a pivotal game in the NFC wild card race. The Pittsburgh Steelers did the same to the Cincinnati Bengals and the Buffalo Bills beat the Los Angeles Chargers to keep their AFC East hopes alive.

Christmas Eve saw the Dallas Cowboys fall short to the Miami Dolphins in the best game of the weekend 22-20. Monday night was a potential Super Bowl matchup that wasn’t close as the Baltimore Ravens whipped the San Francisco 49ers 33-19.

The power rankings saw some significant shifting with this past weekend’s games.

NFL Power Rankings, Week 16: The Buffalo Bills are circling the wagons

The Buffalo Bills are circling the wagons, and the Baltimore Ravens are circling their prey as two of the hottest teams in the NFL.

After being left for dead, the Buffalo Bills were cornered with two shots in the chamber and hit both of them. Now at 9-6, they are back in the thick of the AFC playoff race.

Plus, the Eagles are no longer soaring after three straight losses, while the black birds from Baltimore look as good as they ever have in the Lamar Jackson era. Here is how all 32 teams stack up ahead of Week 16.

NFL Power Rankings Week 12: How can anyone trust the Dolphins right now?

Or the Seahawks, for that matter? Or the Cowboys, or the Chiefs …

The Miami Dolphins are 7-3. They have a 90 percent chance, per the New York Times, of winning the AFC East for the first time in 15 years. They have a quarterback who ranks among the top three in touchdown passes, passing yards and passer rating. They have the league’s most unstoppable wide receiver.

And they are thoroughly untrustable.

The Mike McDaniel era in south Florida has been defined by flashy, explosive performances, some bad injury luck and a lack of quality wins. The Dolphins have seven victories this season; only one came against a team that’s .500 or better. That’s the 5-5 Denver Broncos, who were in the midst of a 1-5 start when Miami stomped a mudhole in them and walked themselves dry for a 70-20 Week 3 win.

That’s the issue with this year’s NFL. A league that prides itself on parity has built a handful of sure-fire playoff teams but few no-doubt Super Bowl contenders. The Dolphins haven’t beaten anybody. The Kansas City Chiefs’ lack of receiving depth has made them vulnerable. The Philadelphia Eagles’ secondary concerns and inability to put opponents away could bite them come playoff time. The Baltimore Ravens remain forever trapped between “good” and “great.”

There’s a lot more to worry about than have confidence as the calendar flips over to winter. But as the two-thirds mark of the 2023 NFL regular season looms, here’s how we see all 32 teams shaking out.

NFL power rankings Week 5: Dolphins stumble, Titans soar, new No.1 takes over

The power rankings for week 5 saw a lot of movement

Week four of the National Football League season is (mostly) in the books and we have some real movement in the power rankings.

The Buffalo Bills made a major statement on Sunday by putting up 48 on last week’s number one team the Miami Dolphins. The game was close early at 14-14, but the Bills took a huge step forward and the rankings show that.

On the flip side, the Dolphins had a lot of issues hindering them all at once on Sunday and they will have to go back to the drawing board to get them fixed.

One of the more impressive teams was the Houston Texans, who ran the Pittsburgh Steelers out of Texas with a 30-6 win. C.J. Stroud was my number one quarterback in the 2023 NFL draft class and he is playing up to that level with six touchdowns and zero interceptions.

Heading into Monday night football, here are the latest NFL power rankings.

NFL Power Rankings, Week 5: Bills dominate, Cowboys back on track

Ahead of Week 4 wrapping up on Monday Night Football, here is how all 32 teams stack up against one another.

One game remains on the Week 4 schedule, as the New York Giants and Seattle Seahawks will square off on Monday Night Football. Before then, though, here are how all 32 teams currently stack up.

NFL Power Rankings, Week 4: 49ers, Chiefs see that Dolphins are closer than they appear

Before the double-header on Monday night, here are the current NFL power rankings after Sunday.

Sunday’s games in Week 3 of the 2023 NFL season saw some truly historic performances, some strange coaching decisions, and further proof that preseason hype has no bearing whatsoever on in-season performance.

We still have two games remaining in Week 3. Before the Monday Night double-header, though, here are our Week 3 NFL Power Rankings after Sunday’s slate of games.

NFL Power Rankings Week 2: Cowboys and 49ers already look like the NFC’s dominant teams

The Cowboys and 49ers are noticeably better than everyone else.

Week 1 is a fascinating place in the NFL.

The teams you thought were great look extremely flawed (See: the Kansas City Chiefs and Cincinnati Bengals). The teams you thought were awful pulled off shocking upsets (See: Baker Mayfield’s Tampa Bay Buccaneers and Sean McVay’s Los Angeles Rams). And the squads you thought would live up to the hype (see: San Francisco 49ers, Dallas Cowboys, Detroit Lions) are already making their fanbases swell with overzealous pride at what the season could hold in store.

And the best part is because it’s Week 1: A majority of these sentiments could be irrelevant by October. Isn’t it the best when the season opener is a de facto preseason game?

But let’s center on two of those hyped teams: The 49ers and Cowboys. We knew both San Francisco and Dallas would likely pick up where they left off as powerhouse contenders. After their respective road shellackings, both NFC contenders might be even better than we believed. A lot can change in the coming weeks and months, but it’s hard to imagine these two NFC powers losing their mantle — at least in the regular season.

Let’s take stock of the 49ers, Cowboys, and the rest of the league after a predictably unpredictable Week 1 in the first edition of For The Win‘s 2023 NFL season power rankings.

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2023 NFL Power Rankings: Training camp edition

Power Rankings! With training camps just around the corner, Natalie Miller takes stock of all 32 NFL teams.

Now that we have wrapped up the draft and the majority of free agency, we have a pretty safe view of how most rosters will fill out. Barring any sort of pre-season trade, which of course is always possible, it all comes down to trimming the fat off the rosters and settling some positional battles.

Training camps are just around the corner, preseason football starts in less than a month, and before you know it, the 2023 NFL regular season will be upon us. With all that in mind, it’s time to take stock of each NFL team, seeing where they stack up in the Training Camp edition of Touchdown Wire’s Power Rankings!

2023 NFL Power Rankings: Eagles somehow grow even stronger after amazing draft

The defending NFC champs aren’t kidding around. Other teams might want to stop reading their own hype.

We made it. It was a long, arduous journey, but the acquisition period of the 2023 NFL offseason is finally behind us. The latest NFL Draft, a sheer spectacle in its own right at this point, capped the spring before teams break for the summer soon.

But before teams eventually return for warm-weather training camp fun, it’s time to take stock of where the league stands after both free agency and the draft. And there’s no need to beat around the bush. Honesty is the best policy, after all.

Some of the expected heavyweights, like the (ahem) defending Super Bowl champions, didn’t move the needle much and probably didn’t have to. Others started their rebuilds perfectly as they looked ahead to bright futures later this decade. But, as we all know, fortune favors those who draft well (and get really lucky sometimes).

Here are For The Win’s NFL power rankings after the conclusion of the 2023 NFL Draft.