NFL Computerized Power Ranks: Week 4

So once again this week I missed my goal of posting these ranks on a Tuesday, but at least this week they are up before most of the games are over. My picture to the right for this week may seem a little odd, but it represents how the Kansas City Chiefs became the #1 ranked team this week: Sitting at home, going out to dinner, going to a club...whatever is going on here. The other 2 undefeated teams in the NFL, the Bears and Steelers, both went down in week 4, leaving only the Chiefs as the last remaining undefeated team.

The Bears loss was a tough one. They got dominated by the Giants defense, leaving both their starting and backup QB's with injuries. The Steelers finally got outplayed by someone, the Ravens, and only fell back to the #2 spot. The Jets, who absolutely murdered the Bills, jumped up to the #3 spot, while the Falcons stayed put at #4 after beating the #32 49ers thanks to a careless fumble by Nate Clements after the "game winning" interception. The Patriots move into the 5th spot after routing Miami.

On the low end, our 4 winless teams, the Lions, Panthers, Bills, and 49ers make up the bottom 4, while the Raiders are our lowest ranked 1 win team. Some may be surprised that the 49ers are the lowest of the 4 winless teams, since they nearly beat New Orleans and Atlanta, but in reality they have been truly pathetic this season. Their offense is terrible, ranking 31st in the league in scoring, their defense, which was pretty solid last year, only ranks 27th in the league in points allowed, and they keep turning the ball over while getting few turnovers themselves, ranking 30th in the league in turnover ratio. These are the kind of numbers we saw out of the Rams last year and the Lions 2 years ago, so we'll see how the remaining 12 games go for them.

As far as the big gainers and losers for this week go, the Patriots and Chargers both jumped 8 spots after blowout wins, and the Ravens jumped 7 spots for beating the Steelers. The Titans were the big losers, falling 11 spots for losing to Denver, and the victims of the those Patriots and Chargers blowouts, the Dolphins and Cardinals, each fell 9 spots.

Here are the full ranks:
1. Chiefs - 80.79 - +1
2. Steelers - 76.55 - -1
3. Jets - 74.27 - +3
4. Falcons - 73.22 - Even
5. Patriots - 68.17 - +8
6. Saints - 65.12 - +3
7. Bears - 64.78 - -4
8. Packers - 63.94 - Even
9. Texans - 62.45 - +3
10. Ravens - 59.70 - +7
11. Chargers - 58.89 - +8
12. Colts - 56.14 - -5
13. Buccaneers - 55.02 - +3
14. Bengals - 54.98 - -4
15. Eagles - 54.57 - -4
16. Titans - 54.54 - -11
17. Rams - 53.67 - +3
18. Broncos - 52.16 - +3
19. Redskins - 51.85 - +4
20. Seahawks - 46.27 - -5
21. Jaguars - 44.87 - +6
22. Giants - 42.63 - +6
23. Dolphins - 42.33 - -9
24. Cowboys - 41.37 - -2
25. Browns - 39.59 - +1
26. Vikings - 36.68 - -2
27. Cardinals - 34.94 - -9
28. Raiders - 32.22 - -3
29. Lions - 22.70 - Even
30. Panthers - 16.44 - +1
31. Bills - 14.78 - -1
32. 49ers - 13.08 - Even