NFL Power Ranks: Final

Pretty amazing post by Ryan the other day, huh? I didn't even realize I almost nailed the entire NFC playoffs with my power ranks in week 7. So what does that tell us about the NFL season, at least in the NFC? Well it seems like the first 7 weeks told us just about everything that we needed to know. We saw some teams rise and fall over the following 10 weeks, but by the end of the regular season, none of it mattered, as the same teams were back to where they were in week 7.

Ryan also mentioned in his post that I haven't posted in a while. I'm hoping that changes soon. I just worked 4 weeks for the price of 3 at work, so I've been a little busy.

So lets pretend its 2 weeks ago. The Saints won in dramatic fashion to get their first Super Bowl title. In our ranks, the Saints were #1 or #2 for pretty much the entire season until they lost their last 3 heading into the playoffs, but they bounced all the way back including ousting the Colts to finish the season ranked #1 (whew!). The Colts dropped back 2 spots to #3, behind the Chargers, and 2 other teams that lost to the Saints benefited from the Saints going all the way, the Vikings and Patriots, and moved up a spot each. That's pretty much all of the movement in this final week.

So what did we learn? I think if anything, we learned that teams can get hot and cold extremely quick in the NFL, as proven by the NFC race this season and some of the early season stuff in the AFC (Broncos?). Also, some teams were devastated by consistency. The Eagles were ahead of the Cowboys almost all season, but couldn't win the division title. The same is with the 49ers and Cardinals, and the Ravens and Bengals. All in all, after doing this for 3 seasons, I think we have a good formula in place and I'll continue to use it in future seasons. Here are the finals ranks:

1. Saints - 74.73 - +1
2. Chargers - 71.39 - E
3. Colts - 70.00 - -2
4. Vikings - 65.75 - +1
5. Cowboys - 65.71 - -1
6. Texans - 65.11 - E
7. Jets - 64.74 - E
8. Packers - 63.89 - E
9. Ravens - 62.57 - E
10. Eagles - 61.95 - E
11. Patriots - 61.71 - +1
12. Falcons - 61.51 - -1
13. 49ers - 60.34 - E
14. Panthers - 65.64 - E
15. Steelers - 58.84 - E
16. Titans - 52.13 - E
17. Cardinals - 50.03 - E
18. Bengals - 48.80 - E
19. Browns - 44.97 - E
20. Bills - 44.60 - E
21. Broncos - 43.85 - E
22. Bears - 43.47 - E
23. Giants - 41.57 - E
24. Dolphins - 38.65 - E
25. Jaguars - 35.18 - E
26. Buccaneers - 32.52 - E
27. Redskins - 30.76 - E
28. Chiefs - 30.63 - E
29. Raiders - 27.79 - E
30. Seahawks - 23.59 - E
31. Lions - 15.38 - E
32. Rams - 11.07 - E