Where the Saints clock in on NFL power rankings entering Week 1

Where do NFL power rankings have the Saints entering Week 1? Whether it’s due to Jameis Winston or Dennis Allen (or both), a lot of pundits have a lot of doubts:

What’s the public perception of the New Orleans Saints looking like? These days, it’s tough to find much optimism from around the NFL media landscape in the post-Sean Payton, post-Drew Brees era. Whether folks are doubting Dennis Allen or Jameis Winston (or both of them), there’s a real sense of credulity that the Saints are headed in the right direction.

But that could change once games kick off and speculation quiets down. To keep track of how this will develop, I’m tracking 14 different NFL power rankings as they update each week — keeping up with the placements of the Saints as well as their NFC South rivals, the Atlanta Falcons and the Carolina Panthers, as well as the Tampa Bay Buccaneers who happen to play in the same division.

Here’s the average positioning for each NFC South team entering Week 1:

  1. Tampa Bay Buccaneers: 3.5
  2. New Orleans Saints: 17.5
  3. Carolina Panthers: 25.7
  4. Atlanta Falcons: 30.5

So the Saints are, ah, a very distant second-place within the division. The Panthers and Falcons are real bottom-feeders, so it’s on New Orleans to close that gap with Tampa Bay. For what it’s worth, only one outlet has the Saints as a top-10 team (CBS Sports with Pete Prisco), while five of them see the black and gold ranked at No. 20 or lower. There are some extremes here, but the consensus suggests we’ve got a mid-tier team right now. Here is what all of these different pundits have to say about New Orleans on the eve of the regular season: