Let’s see what ties do.
It’s a tie. A bloody tie. But how do we actually deal with a tie when it comes to power rankings? Well…
For your old-timey power rankings, there are plenty of options to choose from around the old internet, or you can just ask ChatGPT, which will tell you that the Eagles are undefeated because of Johnny Cash’s excellent coverage, probably. Everyone has a Power Ranking. People LOVE Power Rankings! But over here in analytical nerd land we’re trying something a little different. This is the futuristic neural net version of power rankings, and we’re using our best cyber-neurons to generate neurotically objective power rankings. Since power rankings are all about arguing about why the rankings are wrong, I’ve decided it’s disappointing to be subjectively wrong like everyone else. If we’re going to be wrong, we’re going to be objectively wrong. And so, in the spirit of being objectively wrong, we have created C.A.L.C.U.L.A.T.O.R., the Comprehensive Analysis of League Competition Using Latest Analytics To Organize Rankings.
What goes into Calculator? Basically, every advanced stat I have available, in addition to data based on net point differential, and the current Super Bowl odds from our friends at FanDuel. I run some formulas to smooth everything out, create a unified scale, and here we go! We had quite a bit of movement this week because of some big moves in the betting market, AND because this is the first week where FTN starts using opponent adjustments in DVOA, but we’re starting to get a clear view of the haves (Buffalo) and the have-nots (the Titans are “Titaning” their grip on last place).
1. Buffalo Bills: CALCULATOR Score: 130.46, Change from last week: 6.23 – The Bills are SUPER interesting. Usually, the number one team here is pretty strong across the board, especially when they have such a significant lead over the second-best team, but that is NOT the case with Buffalo. While they are a good team to be sure and have the best offense by DVOA and most other metrics, they’re a poor defensive team AND poor special teams team so far, and that is unlikely to change. They’ve scored over 30 in every game, but they allowed 21 to a pretty bad Dolphins team and 19 to the Saints. 19 might not sound that bad, but the Saints are a special case. Anyway, the reason that Buffalo is so high is that they play a comically easy schedule. It’s been easy (NYJ, Miami, NO), and it doesn’t really get harder (NE twice, Miami again, NYJ again, ATL, CAR, HOU, PIT, CIN, CLE). Even if they are flawed, they are extremely likely to have the AFC’s number one seed, and that will get you a good chunk of the way to the Super Bowl. They have great Super Bowl odds as a result, which pushes them way up the charts, but we shouldn’t ignore the flaws. They remind me a bit of the 2011 Packers and keep a close eye on their November 2nd game against the Chiefs. That single game will probably tell us more about Buffalo than anything else. They also play Philly in their second-to-last game of the season, but that game may very well not matter for them.
2. Philadelphia Eagles: 102.54, 11.07 – The Eagles are 4-0, and in control of the NFC, but they’re also 4-0 in one-score games (although in fairness, the margin last weekend against Tampa Bay was only one score because of an intentional safety on the last play of the game). Much like Buffalo, Philly’s underlying efficiency numbers aren’t that great. They have a middling DVOA and EPA, and even PFF doesn’t like them that much, ranking the Eagles just 8th overall. They have the second-best Super Bowl odds working in their favor, but a pretty tough remaining schedule, and their bout of regression to the mean may hit sooner than Buffalo’s as a result.
3. Detroit Lions: 98.04, 4.32 – Guess who’s back, back again, the Lions are back, tell a friend. Of all the things the Packers may end up regretting, it’s faltering while the Lions got themselves off the map. After an embarrassing week one loss, the Lions have looked a lot like their dominant 2024 selves, and now that the Packers have suffered a tie, the ostensible tiebreakers between the two don’t even matter. Detroit is second to Buffalo in EPA per Play, and a bargain at +1200 to win it all.
4. Los Angeles Rams: 95.36, 5.46 – The Rams are good in most metrics but lead everyone by quite a bit according to PFF. Matthew Stafford has been great, Puka leads the league in receptions and yards, and a young, emergent defense keeps them in every game. Davante Adams is averaging 15.8 yards per reception for this team, which would be a career high, though he is catching under 50% of his targets. Anyway, the Rams are good, but they’re in a three-way tie for first in the division, and they’re a little top-heavy on offense as they rely heavily on a 38-year-old with a questionable back.
5. Green Bay Packers: 93.67, -13.69 – Two weeks ago, the Browns exposed the Packers’ offensive line, completely shutting down the Green Bay offense. Last week, it was the defense’s turn, as Green Bay was unable to get pressure on Dak Prescott, and the secondary was torched as a result. The Packers also played a coward’s game down the stretch and were lucky to escape with a tie, but at least the offense was able to right the ship and hold up their end. They’re still a good team based on underlying numbers and currently have better odds to win it all than Detroit for some reason.
6. Kansas City Chiefs: 90.83, 14.05 – Uh oh. The Chiefs have been on a downward trajectory of sorts over the past several seasons. I know it doesn’t seem like it because they keep making the Super Bowl, but if it were any other team, their underlying efficiency stats would scream “LUCKY JERKS, WHAT THE HELL?” But great quarterbacks have bucked this trend in the past with Peyton Manning and Tom Brady frequently exceeding their expected stats, and so with Mahomes and Reid, it’s not THAT surprising. What is surprising is that the Chiefs look like they may be getting it together a bit in the conventional sense, and that they may in fact be underrated at the moment as they sit at 2-2. They only trail the Bills by one single point of DVOA, and while I’m sure I don’t need to warn anyone to beware of the Chiefs…beware of the Chiefs. Most of their difference in record this year is one-score regression, finally catching up.
7. Seattle Seahawks: 82.87, 3.06 – PFF grade is hardly perfect, but I include it because it does catch things that raw stats simply miss. One of those things is, I think, “fundamental soundness,” a quality that also sometimes shows up in Special Teams play. Seattle is perhaps the fundamental example of this as, in EPA per Play they’re 10th and nothing special, but they’re first in DVOA (which gives a bigger bump for great special teams play) and that PFF score essentially confirms they’re just executing at a very high level. They would EASILY be a top 5 team if betting markets believed in them at all, but they currently sit +3500 to win it all, which is a drag on their still excellent ranking here. I thought Sam Darnold would turn into a pumpkin outside of Minnesota, but he’s 8th in CPOE (ahead of Matthew Stafford by the way), fourth in DVOA, and second to Jordan Love in Ben Baldwin’s DAKOTA. They’re 3-1 with the Bucs, Jags, and Texans up next before their bye.
8. Baltimore Ravens: 80.84, -23.04 – At some point, you just have to win games. Baltimore remains a fun watch, but they’re 1-3, and instead of projecting their record to eventually catch up with good underlying metrics, those metrics are crashing. This team is just 21st in EPA per Play, they now have a worse DVOA than the Steelers, Lamar Jackson is hurt and may not play on Sunday (Cooper Rush is the backup), and the defense has fallen apart. They’ve played a hard schedule, but Kansas City absolutely smoked them last week. Their remaining schedule is a cake walk, which may be why Vegas is holding out hope (they have the 5th highest Super Bowl odds, which is why they’re 8th instead of like, 14th), but so far this is a mediocre team with major injury issues.
9. Los Angeles Chargers: 80.71, -5.16 – Am I upset that the Chargers’ loss to the Giants knocked me out of my survivor pool? Yes. Did I say bad things about Jusin Herbert on Bluesky after that happened? Also yes. Were those comments justified? Well, as many, many people yelled at me, he was missing key offensive linemen in that game, and the rush from the Giants was pretty fierce, and a Jim Harbaugh team will struggle more than most with linemen out because that guy LOVES running the ball no matter what. Most quarterbacks would have struggled under similar circumstances, like Love against Cleveland. On the other hand, the Giants are not Cleveland, and I’ve been something of a Herbert skeptic for a long time. Herbert has great tools and a cannon for an arm, but he also never quite produces as well as he should. There have always been excuses (see: Chargers), but this year his skill position guys are pretty good and this offense still ain’t humming. He’s 16th in DVOA (behind Caleb Williams!) and 19th in DAKOTA (behind Michael Penix!), and I need to see more. In the loss to the Giants, Ladd McConkey was targeted 6 times and caught 1 pass for 11 yards. Woof.
10. Indianapolis Colts: 75.87, -13.51 – Indy is the fun upstart of the year, and those kinds of teams always crash a bit upon suffering their first loss because no one really trusts them. And there’s some justification for that, I will admit, as Danny Dimes had a very vintage Danny Dimes performance, with two picks and a fumble, but it was also a very narrow loss to a very good Rams team, that may have ended very differently had the Colts not blown a coverage on Tutu Atwell’s 88-yard touchdown catch with under two minutes remaining. The Colts probably aren’t a great team, but they likely are good. They’re still 4th in DVOA, and their division is, let’s say, achievable. Fun team. No complaints.
11. Jacksonville Jaguars: 73.44, 1.95 – The Jags are 3rd overall in defense, but the offense is just very bad. Trevor Lawrence is completing under 60% of his passes, but he’s not even really airing it out. Sometimes trading some completion percentage for explosiveness is warranted, but Lawrence has neither. Poor Brian Thomas has been targeted with the highest number of uncatchable passes in football and has currently hauled in 12 of 32 targets for just 164 yards. On the plus side, Travis Etienne leads the NFL in yards per carry with 6.1. The Colts are fun, and the Jaguars are very much not, as an ’80s throwback “run and grind” team.
12. Denver Broncos: 73.42, 8.07 – Speaking of boring defensive grindhouses, the Broncos are almost exactly the same as the Jags on that side of the ball, which is a fine building block for a meh team. On offense, they’re slightly better at passing, and slightly worse at rushing, and while Bo Nix had a nice game on Sunday, it was against the Burrow-less Bengals, who didn’t seem to have much fight. The Bengals gained 159 total yards against the Broncos, and that’s pretty demoralizing. The Broncos are fine, but their counting stats are built on the Titans and Bengals, and remember what happened to the foolish man who built his house on sand. He couldn’t get insurance due to global warming and the increased ferocity of hurricane season and had to move.
13. Washington Commander: 71.98, -9.14 – The Commanders lost to the Falcons, which is questionable, but I’m actually pretty high on Washington as they’ve remained pretty good even with Marcus Mariota in for Jayden Daniels, and with an injured Terry McLaurin, which, to me, is the sign of a deep, well-run team. They’re still 5th overall in DVOA, and while their Super Bowl odds have plummeted to +2700, largely because they face a tough schedule, if they can weather the storm, get healthy, and sneak in, they’ll be a tough out in the NFC.
14. San Francisco 49ers: 71.67, -7.21 – Stats were run prior to their victory over the Rams last night on the strength of like a billion Eddy Pineiro field goals and Kendrick Bourne playing like vintage Deebo Samuel. Kyle Shanahan has once again built a hyper-efficient weirdo team where anyone can quarterback, and every skill position turns into a YAC monster. And of course, given that Mac Jones threw for 342 yards and 2 scores, people are asking why they paid Brock Purdy again? I often draw similarities between the 49ers and Packers, and much like their Green Bay cousins, the 49ers rank highly in offense and defense, but just 30th in special teams.
15. Tampa Bay Bucs: 64.65, -6.69 – The Eagles won a fascinating game as they generally do, leveraging a blocked punt and some timely Jalen Hurts scrambles into a solid offensive performance. Baker Mayfield and the Tampa offense put up some nice counting stats, but under the hood, Emeka Egbuka caught just 4 of 10 targets, and Chris Godwin caught just 3 of 10. Egbuka did manage to rip off 101 yards and a score on those 4 catches, but the lack of down-to-down efficiency cost the Bucs in the end, despite Bucky Irving’s best efforts. They’re still a good, fun team and in control of the terrible NFC South, but they’re more fun when Mike Evans is healthy too. They are between 12th and 18th in all major efficiency stats, so this ranking checks out.
16. Pittsburgh Steeler: 60.73, 8.96 – Doubting Mike Tomlin is just a dumb thing to do, and I’ve pledged to stop doing it, but I don’t regret doubting Aaron. That said, Tomlin really does seem to be just what Aaron needed, a highly respected coach who knows what he’s doing, and it would be difficult for any veteran, no matter how seasoned, to walk all over. The Steelers are 3-0 in one-score games, and so there’s a lot of luck at work here, but they’re also getting exactly what they need out of Rodgers. Hyper-efficiency with no big mistakes, and the occasional superhero move in the rare instance they need it. Their underlying efficiency numbers aren’t great, and if anything bites them as the season moves along, it will likely be a defense that can’t support a conservative offense week-to-week, but a smart coach and fundamentally sound team will keep you in a lot of games too.
17. Minnesota Vikings: 59.70, -11.99 – The Vikings were on the business end of the Steelers’ reliable, mistake-free football, piling up big counting stats, but doing just enough wrong (2 Wentz picks and a fumble) to keep Pittsburgh in the game. Brian Flores’ defense confounds a lot of quarterbacks, but Aaron Rodgers doesn’t get fooled by much as long as he’s standing on a football field. Off the football field, he gets fooled by like, everything. Anyway, the Vikings remain what they almost always are: a well-assembled collection of talent that is likely to be undone by a questionable quarterback.
18. Atlanta Falcons: 59.33, 5.22 – The Falcons are a strange team, in that they’re really constructed as a high percentage, explosive running offense, but have a quarterback in Michael Penix who really specializes in airing it out. To his credit, Penix has adjusted well to having Drake London as his go-to, and when they get good production from Bijan Robinson and Tyler Algiers, they’re pretty good. But they definitely have their weaknesses as most teams have learned they can cheat on the middle of the field and dare Penix to throw outside to receivers that just can’t really bring it. It is worth noting that Kyle Pitts has actually started to turn it on, and may not be a huge bust after all, which would do wonders for the team if he can keep it up. As it stands, Atlanta is basically average at everything.
19. Houston Texan: 58.39, 12.83 – Speaking of average, Houston is about as close as it gets. They have a 1.6 DVOA, a -.001 EPA, and while they’re 1-3, they have a +13 point differential. They’re fresh off a shutout of the Titans, which proves absolutely nothing.
20. Arizona Cardinals: 57.23, -6.83 – The Cardinals are 0-2 in their division and only have wins over the Panthers and Saints, two of the worst teams in football. They actually have the same point differential as the division-leading 49ers (+8), but they’re much worse in all underlying efficiency stats. Kyler Murray is 21st in DAKOTA, just behind CJ Stroud, which is their biggest issue.
21. New England Patriots: 54.72, 10.24 – Drake Maye, on the other hand, is 4th in DAKOTA, 7th in CPOE, and 12th in DVOA. That’s at least “pretty good” and maybe better. Why the discrepancy? Well, remember that DVOA adjusts for the quality of defenses faced, and Drake lit up the Panthers and Dolphins while struggling against the Steelers and Raiders. Still, it’s a good sign when your young quarterback lights up anyone, and with the Pats sitting at 2-2 with a respectable EPA, it’s something to build on.
22. Dallas Cowboys: 52.61, 4.53 – This is the Team Tiers chart.
For those who have never bothered to think about how to read this, if you are further to the right, you’re good on offense, and if you’re further towards the top, you are good at defense. See the Cowboys down there in the lower right? No, further down. FURTHER DOWN. Yeah, those guys. See how there are only 4 offenses that have been better in the entire league? That team could use an elite pass rusher. Dallas is 5th in offensive AND special teams DVOA. They are 32nd in defensive DVOA. Good work, everyone!
23. Chicago Bears: 51.17, -.19 – I don’t know how you throw 3 picks against the Bears, but the Raiders managed it, AND lost a fumble, and still would have beaten the Bears if their special teams still didn’t have Bisaccia stink all over it. And Carlson stinks. Lotta stink. You don’t need to worry about the Bears yet; they’re still a bottom-third team in everything. So, it was written.
24. New York Jets: 47.56, 4.96 – The Jets have been kinda fun bad so far, hanging with better opponents, but they lost to Miami this week, which it pretty embarrassing. So why then did they move up? Good question! There are several reasons. First, we use DVOA as a component, and this is the first week DVOA is adjusted for the quality of the opponent. This pushes their DVOA from -16.4 all the way “up” to -9.8. Still bad, but WAY less bad. Second, their loss to Miami this week was, analytically speaking, stupid. The Jets outgained the Dolphins by 104 yards and converted a higher percentage of their third downs; however, the Jets fumbled three times and lost all three. The Dolphins fumbled twice and recovered both. So, there were five fumbles in this game, and Miami recovered every single one. Most advanced analytics punish you for a fumble but see recoveries as basically random. In fact, fumble recovery regression is one of the better predictors of whether a team will get better or worse the following year. Anyway, the Jets should have won, but they are still bad. The essence of “fun bad.”
25. Las Vegas Raiders: 44.88, 6.11 – There’s no sugar coating how bad the Raiders are; I just remained surprised by it. That’s what I get for focusing too much on the skill positions and not the trenches. Fun fact! The Raiders have the second-best run defense in football, which just goes to show you how unimportant that can be.
26. Cleveland Browns: 44.28, -4.92 – The Browns got destroyed by Detroit and have pledged to start rookie Dillon Gabriel next week instead of wily veteran Joe Flacco. This is probably a mistake, as while Flacco has been bad, only 2 of his 6 interceptions actually came on turnover-worthy plays. The rest were weird receiver tips and drops, and so he hasn’t been even close to as bad as he is perceived to be. Gabriel is one of the best college quarterbacks ever, but his arm strength is quite bad. He would do well on the 49ers. That’s my new insult for quarterbacks.
27. New York Giants: 43.45, 4.11 – Stupid Chargers couldn’t stop the Dart/Skattebo ground attack grumble grumble. Dart looked OK but wasn’t really tested as a passer, so we’ll see how that goes.
28. Carolina Panthers: 43.35, -8.36 – If you draft a teeny tiny quarterback, you’d better be really sure. Moving on…
29. Miami Dolphins: 39.93, 6.56 – The Dolphins’ efficiency stats have them as more of an upper-tier team of the bottom third, but PFF has these guys dead last with a 58.1 overall grade. Regardless, they’re certainly not any good despite their win over the fun bad Jets.
30. New Orleans Saints: 35.09, 1.69 – Atrocious and unwatchable. The second-worst team in football by DVOA and fourth-worst by EPA. Not being last is a huge accomplishment, honestly.
31. Cincinnati Bengals: 31.98, -5.9 – This team just looks like they quit without Burrow, and I can’t say I blame them.
32. Tennessee Titans: 26.63, .2 – Last in everything but PFF grade, and our hearts.
Category: General Sports
