You all fat from Thanksgiving? Me too! Let’s do the Power Rankings!
1: Baltimore Ravens
This team can beat you in so many ways. Oh, you think you have the passing game stopped? Lamar Jackson will run for 100 yards. You have the running game stopped? Don’t worry, the defense will win a field position battle? Oh, the game is on the line? Justin Tucker dropping the hammer. It’s hard to argue with the fact that this team appears to be the favorite for the Super Bowl.
2: New Orleans Saints
Their biggest threat? Don’t look past the Saints, who have quietly put together the best record in the NFC, even though they were missing future HOF Quarterback Drew Brees for part of the season. Why do I put the Saints as the second best team? They seem to be playing with an edge and chip on their shoulder after getting jobbed out of the Super Bowl last year. And never underestimate the power of good coaching. Speaking of good coaching…
3: Seattle Seahawks
Pete Carroll has his team in position again, not only to make the playoffs, but to win the best division in football. Russell Wilson keeps finding ways to win, and everyone knows this team is going to be tough to beat if they get home field advantage throughout the playoffs.
4: San Francisco 49ers
They have lost both of their games with last second field goals, but at the end of the day, when they are facing up against good teams, excuses for why they lose are meaningless. If this team can’t pull a signature win over the next four weeks, they are going to go into the playoffs as the leading candidate for “Bum Slayer Team of the Year.”
5: Green Bay Packers
While most teams are trying to grind out wins on the ground when it gets cold, Aaron Rodgers seems content beating teams through the air, and the Packers look like a completely different offense when Davante Adams is on the field. Shout out to Mercedes Lewis, who has been in the NFL since, if I remember my football card collecting days, 1998, and caught a touchdown pass on Sunday.
6: New England Patriots
I’d honestly rate this team lower, and I probably should. Tom Brady is in full temper tantrum mode, and if they think that a team like the Ravens is gonna allow them to win by throwing dump off passes to James White all day, then it’s going to be a short playoffs for the evil empire of football.
7: Buffalo Bills
I’m not sure they are the seventh best team in the NFL, but I am sure that beating the Cowboys, in Cowboys Stadium, on Thanksgiving earns you a high spot in my rankings, forever and always.
8: Houston Texans
I’m not sure they are the eighth best team in the NFL, but I am sure that beating the Patriots, on National television, and cause Tom Brady to tantrum on the field earns you a high spot in my rankings, forever and always.
9: Kansas City Chiefs
Now THAT is what people were expecting from the Chiefs defense this season. They completely curb stomped the Raiders on Sunday afternoon. Chiefs/Ravens is the AFC Championship game everybody wants. Mahomes vs. Jackson is a Super Bowl play-in game wet dream. So watch how miserable everyone will be when it’s the dumpy ass Patriots vs. the Dock Hodges led Steelers in a game nobody is sure to enjoy.
10: Minnesota Vikings
Kirk Cousins is now 0-8 all time on Monday Night Football. This isn’t a coincidence. He can’t win big games.
11: Tennessee Titans
The Titans are now our best hope of keeping the Steelers out of the playoffs, so I’m rooting for a team people don’t actively know exists, led by a quarterback who people probably forgot is in the NFL, to come out of a division that most people refer to as “competent.”
12: Los Angeles Rams
At some point during their game against the Cardinals on Sunday, I thought of that scene from Simpsons, when Homer is moonlighting as Krusty the Clown and skydives in for the opening of a Krusty Burger. Then the Krustyburglar shows up, and Homer proceeds to beat the crap out of him, and there is a kid in the crowd going “Stooooop. He’s already dead.” That’s basically what it felt like to watch the Rams beat up the Cardinals yesterday.
13: Pittsburgh Steelers
I have very few rules in life, but “Never trust a guy who is willingly nicknamed ‘Duck’” is one of them.
14: Indianapolis Colts
Brutal, brutal, brutal loss on Sunday. Who would have ever thought that “what if we just blitz every play and open up the run game and the play action passing and dare them to beat us like that” would be a bad play calling strategy on defense.
15: Oakland Raiders
It took two weeks for people to go from thinking “Oh man, the Raiders could be sneaky playoff contenders” to “oh yea, the Raiders are a massive pile of butt run by a coach who always seems to know where the camera is when he’s making a dumb, extended expression.”
16: Tampa Bay Buccaneers
If you are going to be bad, be entertaining. The Buccaneers at least have the common decency to be both things at once, making them incredibly watchable. I always get a little bit excited when I see them on offense on The Red Zone Network, because it means they are either about to throw a long touchdown pass, or have a ball intercepted and returned for a touchdown. They have very little niddle ground.
17: Chicago Bears
The Bears aren’t bad. The Bears aren’t good. The Bears a thoroughly mediocre. They are a Nicolas Cage movie. They are the Imagine Dragons of football. They are the Wendys of the gridiron. And somehow, they are end up finishing 9-7, leaving Chicago fans to rue the fact that this corduroy pants of an offense couldn’t muster out wins against the Chargers and Eagles to get them into the playoffs.
18: Dallas Cowboys
This is, without a doubt, the lowest I’ve ever ranked a division leader, but this is where they deserve to be. Dak Prescott is throwing up a bunch of empty calorie fantasy numbers, but the offensive line is falling apart like an American made car, their tight end is only playing football because he couldn’t hack it as a broadcaster, and their defense is filled with guys who got contract extensions because they were friendly to their owner at a dinner party once, and not because they are good on the field.
19: Jacksonville Jaguars
IT’S MINSHEW MANIA AGAIN, BABAAAYYYYYY!!!!!!
20: Cleveland Browns
Just to make sure they never have any goodwill in the state of Ohio, Baker Mayfield is going to use a statue of Art Modell to set the Cuyahoga River on fire while wearing a Bernie Kosar jersey and Steelers colored Zubaz pants.
21: Philadelphia Eagles
I desperately hope that either the Eagles or Cowboys win this crappity ass division with eight wins, followed by NFL pundits tripping over Jerry Jones’ and Howie Roseman’s dicks to defend them making the playoffs and getting a home game by claiming that they are the most popular teams in football and blah blah blah blah blah.
22: Carolina Panthers
Well, that was embarrassing.
23: Denver Broncos
It looks like the Broncos have their quarterback of the future*
*until next week when he throws four first half interceptions and the Broncos bring in Billy Joe Tolliver or something.
24: Miami Dolphins
You know, I spent most of the year ragging on this bag of merkins masquerading around as a football team, but you have to give them credit for trying hard, and playing like a 12 year old with Madden. Nothing but fake punts and weird formations and Ryan Fitzpatrick and whatnot!
25: Wolverhampton Chargers
Everybody, ever: Man, it would be really stupid for the Broncos to run a play deep in their own territory with only 12 seconds left. There is no way they are going to be able to pull off anything, and what if they throw a costly interception?
Chargers: Hold my pass interference.
26: Detroit Lions
Running out of quarterbacks and having to bring in Rodney Peete isn’t the season that Lions fans want, but it’s the season that NFL fans deserve.
27: Atlanta Falcons
Their season is in the tank, and the team should probably just shut down all of their good players. Then they should fire their entire coaching staff. THEN, they should fire their general manager. THEEEEN, they should just set fire to every Home Depot in effigy.
28: Arizona Cardinals
Welp….that was a learning experience.
29: New York Jets
Hey, thank god they promised they were gonna let Adam Gase keep his job next year. Anytime you can support a guy who has four wins and just gave a completely incompetent, winless team it’s first win of the season, in week 13, you have to pull the trigger.
30: New York Giants
Danny Dimes might want to rethink that nickname. Danny “Gonna Get Run Out of Town By Fat Guys Wearing gold chains and track suits while hurling nickels at him” is probably the more likely scenario.
31: Washington Derrius Guice is Too Good For You Guys
Guice probably would have run for 200 yards on Sunday, but the Redskins, always against making big news happen anywhere on the field, instead opted to let him split the workload with Adrian Peterson, who is still in the NFL, still imposing as hell, and still got suspended back in the day for beating his kid.
32: Cincinnati Bengals
If I were Andy Dalton, I’d have given myself a Jack Daniels bath on the middle of the field after their first victory. What are the Bengals gonna do, bench him?
Fancy Boys Club 