This week’s NFL power rankings sees Atlanta drop out of the top five after losing to the Saints. The new top five is comprised of the five remaining undefeated teams after Carolina went into Century Link Field and beat the Seahawks.
The Minnesota Vikings find themselves in the top ten essentially by virtue of their bye week. Six weeks into the season and there are just ten teams with winning records. There are 18 teams with a losing record which means there are just four teams with even records, the Bills, Colts, Giants and Eagles. With parity as it’s been in the NFL, we can expect some of these winning teams to start losing and some of the teams with losing records to start winning.
Denver faces Green Bay, Indianapolis and New England over the next five weeks. Green Bay goes to Denver and then follows that up with a trip to Carolina in consecutive weeks. The top teams will be cannibalized over the next month. As for bad teams that have a chance to rebound, Detroit, New Orleans and San Diego are three teams that will almost certainly put some consecutive wins together soon. All three teams have at least six match ups left on the schedule against teams with losing records. San Diego should easily win their next five games (more on that below) and if the Saints can get through their next two games unscathed, they could win six of their last eight games.
As for Detroit, injuries have taken a toll on the defense but if they can beat Minnesota at home and then win in London against the 1-5 Chiefs (two tasks that are certainly within the realm of possibility), there’s only the two Packers games ahead that are trouble on the schedule. If they can split the four tough match ups left on the schedule (@GB, PHI, GB, @NO), the Lions could finish with a winning record. As I mention below though, there’s no margin for error.
This week’s biggest riser is Miami who moved up nine spots from 29 to 20. The Dolphins impressed under Dan Campbell, the interim head coach for the terminated Joe Philbin. Lamar Miller had himself a ball game which allowed Tannehill to work the field passing, which is the way Miami’s offense should have looked from the beginning of the season. It was just one game and it was against the Titans, but Miami’s roster was always talented. If they’ve found someone who can tap into that talent, the sky is the limit.
Fittingly, our biggest drop this week was the Tennessee Titans. Tennessee has dropped four straight since Mariota’s coming out party and now the young quarterback has a sprained MCL that may cause him to miss a little time. Even though there are some winnable games on the schedule (they’re in the AFC South after all), there are still plenty of games the Titans can lose, especially since they’ve already lost to the Browns, Colts, Bills and Dolphins, none of which have a winning record.
That about does it for the big movers and shakers in this week’s NFL power rankings, so without further ado:
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