Final Power Rankings
1. New York Giants 13-7 (7th)
2. Green Bay 15-2 (1st)
3. San Francisco 14-4 (3rd)
4. New Orleans 14-4 (2nd)
5. New England 15-4 (4th)
6. Baltimore 13-5 (5th)
7. Pittsburgh 12-5 (6th)
8. Houston 11-7 (8th)
9. Philadelphia 8-8 (10th)
10. Atlanta 10-7 (9th)
11. Detroit 10-7 (11th)
12. Dallas 8-8 (12th)
13. Arizona 8-8 (13th)
14. Miami 6-10 (14th)
15. Seattle 7-9 (15th)
16. San Diego 8-8 (16th)
17. Cincinnati 9-8 (17th)
18. Denver 9-9 (21st)
19. New York Jets 8-8 (18th)
20. Kansas City 7-9 (19th)
21. Tennessee 9-7 (20th)
22. Oakland 8-8 (22nd)
23. Carolina 6-10 (23rd)
24. Chicago 8-8 (24th)
25. Cleveland 4-12 (25th)
26. Buffalo 6-10 (26th)
27. Washington 5-11 (27th)
28. Jacksonville 5-11 (28th)
29. Indianapolis 2-14 (29th)
30. Minnesota 3-13 (30th)
31. Tampa Bay 4-12 (31st)
32. St. Louis 2-14 (32nd)
-Previous week’s rankings in parenthesis;
Something New and Weird This Year. This is the first year that I’ve done a post-playoffs power rankings. I’ve been making a lot of slight changes to my formats this year. It’s possible I’ll change my mind on some of these things next year but I doubt it. For some reason I just felt like it made sense this season even though it never had before. That’s been a common theme for a lot of my different blogs.
For the future, I think it makes sense to continue the power rankings after the end of the regular season. I mean, non-division winners are consistently making playoff runs. The teams with the very best regular season records are often “peaking early.” Since these rankings are based on how things feel from week-to-week—as opposed to grading the season as a whole—it makes sense to follow the action until the very end.
There could even be a situation where the Super Bowl winner didn’t end up being the top team in my final rankings. I think those instances will be very rare, however, I can think of a few times in the last decade when I might have done it. Trying to “post-predict” how one would have done things is always a bit shaky. For various reasons it’s a little hard for me to know exactly how I would have felt at the time. Things are obviously not as fresh in my mind so I could be forgetting a lot. Even the things that I do recall aren’t going to be as powerful as they were when the events had just taken place.
Furthermore, it’s almost impossible for one’s perception not to be effected by the things that happen after a certain event. For example, I wouldn’t look at the 2001 Patriots and immediately think, “There’s a Super Bowl winner that I might not have had at #1 in the final rankings.” Looking back now, that title makes complete sense, as they’ve been consistently great in the 10 years since. However, I know for sure that at that time I thought they would be a fluke, so I may not have given them as much credit as it seems like I should have.
I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t have ranked the Giants #1 after beating the Pats back in 2007 (although that playoff run and championship certainly impacted the way I looked at this year’s Giants championship team). If the Seahawks had won in 2005, I might have ended up ranking the Colts #1 even though they lost in the divisional round. And there’s no doubt in my mind that if Arizona had beaten Pittsburgh in 2008 I would not have had the Cards #1.
So I do think there’s reason to do a final edition of the rankings even though in the NFL, unlike CFB, things are decided on the field in a way that leaves everyone satisfied. It might seem like the non-playoff teams get screwed. I just look at it like their cases had already been determined, while the other teams cases were still open.
You might wonder why I wouldn’t just take out the non-playoff teams after week 17, but that doesn’t work because I might have one or more playoff teams ranked behind some of the non-playoff teams. Of course the teams at the very bottom stand almost no chance of moving up or down. Yet even as I say that, the thought occurs to me that I might have moved the Seahawks way down if they had gotten blown out by the Saints in last year’s WC round, meaning some teams near the very bottom would have moved up.
I admit it feels a little strange. 20 of 32 teams haven’t played a game since week 17, while 7 teams have played more than 1 game, including one team that played 4 games. It was weird doing these final rankings because I’m so used to only having to deal with 1 week’s worth of “new evidence.” Plus, 11 of the 12 teams that did play post-week 17 games were automatically going to lose their last game. 6 of those 12 teams have both won and lost games since week 17.
Already I’m thinking that I’m going to change this again next year, but not by going back to the way I did it last year. I think maybe next year I’ll do complete power rankings after each week of the playoffs. For now we’ll just have to deal with this less than perfect way of wrapping it up.
Double Déjà Blue. This time there’s simply no denying the New York Giants. It doesn’t matter that they had a relatively average regular season. It doesn’t matter that one or two mistakes by the Dallas Cowboys is all that even allowed NYG to even reach the playoffs. It doesn’t matter that mistakes by the 49ers and the Patriots kept the Giants from coming up short of the ultimate goal. None of it matters.
The New York Giants finished as the best team in football and they are the #1 team in my final rankings. The G-Men moved up 6 spots from #7 to #1 in my final rankings. In the process, they ended the Packers run of 15 straight weeks atop my rankings.
No Change at the Bottom. Obviously, the Lams had no chance. St. Louis is the bottom team in my rankings for a 3rd straight edition. They are the #32 team in my final rankings.
Some Final Changes. Not surprisingly there wasn’t too much movement in the final edition of the power rankings. However, 12 of the 32 spots did experience change, although only 4 teams moved up or down more than 1 spot. Only 3 teams moved up in my rankings, while 9 teams moved down. Of the 3 teams going up in the rankings, 2 moved up more than 1 spot. Of the 9 teams going in the wrong direction, only 1 team fell more than 1 spot.
It wasn’t just playoff teams that moved in the last edition. 8 of the teams moving in my final rankings were in the postseason, but there were also 4 non-playoff teams that experienced change.
Big Blue Finish. 3 teams moved up in the rankings in the final edition. The Eagles were the only non-playoff team to rise in the final rankings. Due to the Falcons awful performance against the Giants in the WC round, the Eagles moved up 1 spot in my rankings from #10 to #9.
The Broncos were one of two teams to move up more than 1 spot in the final rankings. They stunned Pittsburgh at home in OT in the WC round and were then obliterated in New England a week later in the divisional playoffs. I moved the Broncos up 3 spots in my final rankings from #21 to #18.
As you might expect, the Giants had by far the biggest rise in my final rankings. After going 4-0 during the postseason, I moved the G-Men up 6 spots in the rankings from #7 to #1.
End of the Fall. 8 of the 9 teams to drop in the final edition of the rankings dropped only 1 spot. The Jets, Chiefs, and Titans were the 3 non-playoff teams to fall in my final rankings, with each team dropping 1 spot. The Jets dropped from #18 to #19; the Chiefs fell from #19 to #20; and Tennessee slid from #20 to #21 in the final edition. All 3 teams fell as a result of Denver’s upset of Pittsburgh.
6 playoff teams fell in the final rankings. The Packers dropped a spot to #2 after 15 consecutive weeks in the top spot. Despite coming probably 1 dropped pass away from winning the Super Bowl, New England fell 1 spot in my final rankings from #4 to #5. Baltimore very nearly upset the Pats in the AFC title game but they also dropped a spot in the final rankings from #5 to #6.
Pittsburgh suffered one of the more surprising playoff losses in recent memory, losing at Denver in OT in the WC round. The Steelers fell 1 spot in my final rankings from #6 to #7. The Falcons were soundly beaten by the Giants on the road in the WC round and they dropped 1 spot in the rankings from #9 to #10.
The Saints were the only team to fall more than 1 spot in my final rankings, despite beating Detroit in the WC round and barely losing at SF in the divisional round. I moved the Saints down 2 spots from #2 to #4.
Other Notes. Including the playoffs, the Green Bay Packers finished the season as the only team with less than 4 losses in the NFL…The Colts and Rams finished the season as the only 2-win teams in the league…The Dolphins finished the season as my highest ranked team with a losing record at #14. At 6-10, the Fins were also easily my highest ranked 10-loss team…At #21, the 9-7 Titans finished as my lowest ranked team with a winning record…The Lions are my lowest ranked 10-win team at #11…The Eagles are my highest ranked .500 team at #9. They are also my highest ranked non-playoff team and my highest ranked team with less than 10 wins…The Bears finished as my lowest ranked .500 team at #24…The Broncos are my lowest ranked playoff team at #17.
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