The NFL Blog: Power Rankings (After Week 4)

Power Rankings After Week 4

1. Tennessee 4-0 (NR)
2. Buffalo 4-0 (NR)
3. Washington 3-1 (NR)
4. Dallas 3-1 (1st)
5. San Diego 2-2 (3rd)
6. New York Giants 3-0 (8th)
7. Philadelphia 2-2 (2nd)
8. Tampa Bay 3-1 (NR)

-Previous week’s ranking in parenthesis;

Out: Pittsburgh (4th); Denver (5th); Green Bay (6th); Indianapolis (7th);

Explanation: Well a week after no team fell out of my top 8 rankings I moved 4 teams out this week in what will hopefully be the most drastic redoing of my rankings all season. With Dallas losing at home to Washington I moved them out of the top spot and I decided to end my denial of the Tennessee Titans and the Buffalo Bills. There are times when teams end up with decent won-loss records and stay around .500 despite many things that say they should be a lot worse. Over the last couple of years, no two teams in the NFL have better fit that description than the Titans and the Bills. The Titans have gone 8-8 and 10-6 the last two years despite being what appeared to me to be a below average team. The Buffalo Bills have gone 7-9 in each of the last two seasons but I felt like they were a much weaker team than that each year. However, both of these teams have taken another step forward in the early part of this season, and I am finally convinced that these two teams are as good as their records say they are. One significant difference is that the Bills and Titans have not just been getting W’s this season, they’ve been winning impressively. Tennessee whipped Minnesota last week to move to 4-0 and they’ve won their games by an average of 14 points. The Bills crushed the Rams last week to get to 4-0 on the year and so far this season they’ve won by an average of 11.5 points. I decided to move these two teams all the way from unranked to the top 2 spots on my list. I moved the banged up Eagles out of the #2 spot following their loss to the Bears that dropped them to 2-2. Brian Westbrook is hurt and they need him and of course McNabb to be healthy for them to be a top team. I dropped the Eagles 5 spots, all the way to 7th because of their loss and their injuries. I dropped the Cowboys 3 spots from 1st to 4th after their loss to the Skins at home and T.O.’s relapse into selfishness that borders on insanity. The team that beat the Boys in Dallas—Washington—moved to 3-1 on the season with their 3rd straight impressive win and moved all the way from unranked to #3 in my power rankings. Forget about week 1 when they looked lost in a 16-7 defeat on the road against the Giants. Just look at their 3 games since then: 5 point win over New Orleans; 7 point win over Arizona; and last Sunday’s 26-24 upset win at Texas Stadium. They have to be taken seriously at this point because they’ve proven week 1’s performance to be a fluke by their play on the field over the last 3 weeks. I dropped the team that had been #3 on my list—the Chargers—2 spots down to 5th despite the fact that they won on Sunday to get to 2-2. After finally throttling a team the way they should have on Monday Night Football in week 3 with their beat down of the Jets, the Chargers once again underperformed in week 4. Against an Oakland team in complete dysfunction that the Chargers had beaten 9 straight times, San Diego was largely outplayed. The Raiders outgained San Diego and really gave the game away with a pair of bad turnovers late. The Chargers were shutout in the first half, 15-0, and trailed 15-3 heading to the 4th quarter. The game was tied at 18 until the Chargers kicked a FG with 1:51 left to go on top for good. They scored a meaningless TD after Oakland was stopped on 4th down with 1:17 to go, and that made the final score (28-18) look better than it should have. The Pittsburgh Steelers, Denver Broncos, Green Bay Packers, and Indianapolis Colts had been ranked 4th, 5th, 6th, and 7th respectively in my power rankings going into last week but all 4 teams fell out of my top 8. This may seem strange, as the Steelers won their game, the Broncos lost for the first time, the Packers merely lost at Tampa, and the Colts didn’t even play. Pittsburgh came from behind to win in OT at home against the Ravens, 23-20, and is now 3-1. However, the Steelers were already being killed by injuries before last weekend and they came out of the week even more crippled. The Steelers have really struggled since the opening week and right now they are winning on heart, guts, and professionalism. They are missing key players on both sides of the ball and if Big Ben makes it through the entire season without missing a game it will be an absolute miracle. As for Denver, I was always skeptical of the Broncos’ success in the first 3 weeks. While their 14 point loss to the Chiefs certainly shocked me, it only confirmed what I had suspected all along, and that was that Denver wasn’t much better than they were last year. The Packers have lost back to back games to good teams but it’s more than that. They were already dealing with injuries to key players on defense and now Aaron Rodgers is banged up. Rodgers has found the going much tougher over the last couple of weeks and the fact that the Pack has had no rushing attack has not helped things. Ryan Grant has been a non-factor so far. Things don’t look anywhere near as rosy in Green Bay as they did after the first 2 weeks. The Colts were off last week but the truth is there were too many teams playing much better than them to keep them in the top 8 any longer. They’re 1-2 on the season and haven’t looked like themselves We’ll see what happens from here but at this point they don’t look like one of the best teams in the NFL. Moving from 8th to 6th on my list despite an idle week are the New York Giants. However, I moved 3 teams ahead of them because they really didn’t have a great week either. In week 3 they needed overtime to beat the awful Bengals at home and then during the bye week they suspended stud WR Plaxico Burress for insubordination. For these reasons and others, I couldn’t rank them better than 3rd in their on division. The 4th team to join the power rankings after previously being unranked is Tampa. The Bucs beat the Packers to move to 3-1 and their only loss this year has been a 4 point defeat at New Orleans in week 1.