NFL Power Rankings Poll: Defending Our Unpopular Picks
The first thing to say about the reaction to our latest power rankings poll is, to borrow a line from a certain Packers quarterback: relax. They’re just power rankings. But we heard you. And while we have a tradition here at the MMQB of voting anonymously to compile the staff rankings, we’ve decided to pull back the curtain and put some names on our opinions. Because it’s May, and honestly what else is going on?
The second thing to say is that it’s possible some of your disagreements boil down to semantics. Within our rankings, we also shared the previous ranking for each team, which came from the week after the Super Bowl. The post-Super Bowl rankings were mostly backward looking: How did a team do in 2019? Whereas the 2020 rankings are looking ahead to 2020: How do we expect this team to perform this year? So a team that underperformed last year but should bounce back was no longer penalized for having a down season. That alone can explain some of the movement, beyond analysis of each team’s draft and free agency acquisitions and departures.
But with all that in mind, let’s have five of our writers dive more deeply into five teams.
Rob Tringali/Sports Illustrated
PHILADELPHIA EAGLES
Several readers let us know they weren’t happy that the Eagles landed in our top five. After all, the team went 9-7 last season, finished 12th in our rankings after the Super Bowl, and got a relatively poor draft grade in our book. Allow Albert Breer, who voted for them in fifth, to explain:
I know Philly fans have spent the balance of the offseason freaking out over the Eagles’ receiver situation, and the corner situation, and are acting as if we weren’t calling this the most talented roster in football nine months ago. The truth? The truth is Philly spend a first-rounder to address the former (Jalen Raegor), picks, cash and cap space to address the latter (Darius Slay), and is still sturdy along the offensive and defensive lines, which is a much better indicator of an NFL team’s success than the flashier spots. Bottom line, this is still a very well-conceived team with very good talent. If—and I understand that this is a big if—Carson Wentz is healthy and himself again, this is 100% a top five team.
DETROIT LIONS
A handful of readers, presumably from the greater Michigan area, were not happy to see the Lions come in at No. 25. Sure, Detroit finished dead last in our post-Super Bowl rankings after going 3-12-1 last year and Vegas has their win total line at 6.5 for 2020, but did you see how they started the season? Jenny Vrentas explains why she voted them 29th:
Jeff Okudah, the top corner in the draft, fills a pressing need (pun!) for the Lions, and Julian Okwara, the former Notre Dame defensive end whose senior season was cut short by a broken left fibula, may end up being a steal in the second round. But my ranking comes down to the fact that, after 6-10 and 3-12-1 seasons in the team's first two years under Matt Patricia, I'm not convinced they'll take a big step forward this year. If they don't, we know what may be coming, given the playoffs-or-else mandate issued by ownership late last season when the team announced it was not moving on from Patricia and GM Bob Quinn—at least for 2020.
Greg Nelson/Sports Illustrated
BUFFALO BILLS
The Bills landed a respectable ninth in our rankings, up two spots since the end of last season. But eagle-eyed readers noted that one voter put Buffalo third on the ballot. While he normally inflicts his mayhem on this poll anonymously, Conor Orr was happy to emerge from the shadows and reveal himself as the mystery Bills admirer:
First of all, please know that some of my picks are occasionally altered by the editorial staff in order to “preserve poll integrity”—or so I’m told. I have long advocated for far more aggressive measures whilst doing power rankings to compensate for festering groupthink. For a large portion of the season last year, I had the Buffalo Bills in the top five, simply because they were being largely ignored by my colleagues and I desired to weight the average to reflect a solid defense and increasingly functional Josh Allen offense. My efforts here are similar and can hopefully reflect what has been a quietly wonderful offseason by Brandon Beane and Co., including home runs in the second and third round (A.J. Epenesa, Zack Moss). But while third may seem a bit high, I am generally bullish on the AFC East favorites joining the top tier of their conference.
Jeff Haynes/Sports Illustrated
SEATTLE SEAHAWKS
The Seahawks came in sixth place on our list, leapfrogging the Packers and Titans with a little more distance between us and the end of last season’s playoffs. But not everyone is buying into Year Nine of the Russell Wilson era. Gary Gramling explains why he ranked Seattle 17th:
Everyone loves the Wilson-Wagner-Carroll troika—rightfully, they're all quite lovable—but a couple of notes on the 2019 Seahawks, who might have had the flukiest 11-win season the NFL has ever seen. First, opponent kicker luck. Opposing kickers missing field goals—taking distance into consideration—at a rate well below the league average is not in a team's control. By my measure, Seahawks opponents should have had 10 more points from kickers over the course of the year, which would have put the Seahawks' pedestrian plus-8 point differential in the negative for the year, so, yeah, about 17th-best in the NFL.
But even flukier were their 32 takeaways, third-most in the NFL, for a defense with their profile. Takeaways are a fickle stat from year to year (just ask the Bears, who had a league-leading 36 in 2018 then dropped to 19, tied for 22nd in the league, last year). But, typically, the teams you can expect to get a lot of takeaways are those teams that have exceptional pass rushers (a Khalil Mack, a T.J. Watt) or exceptional ballhawks. The Seahawks have neither of those things—even if Jadeveon Clowney comes back, this is one of the most pedestrian pass rushes in football. Last year, they benefited from 16 fumble-recovery takeaways (second-most in the NFL), which will be nearly impossible to replicate this season.
And we saw what became of the Seahawks when those fluky fumble recoveries dried up. Seattle didn't get a single fumble-recovery takeaway over the last six games of 2019 (including playoffs)—they went 2-4 in those games, and the wins were over the Kyle Allen-led Panthers and Josh McCown-led Eagles.
David E. Klutho/Sports Illustrated
TENNESSEE TITANS
The Titans made it to the NFL’s final four last January, and took a 10-0 lead over the Chiefs in the AFC championship game to boot. But after coming in fourth the last time we ranked everyone, they’ve fallen to a tie for seventh, with votes as low as the teens. Mitch Goldich explains being one of several voters to knock the Titans down a few pegs:
The way people are talking about the Titans reminds me of how people talked about the Jaguars two years ago. Not to take anything away from their accomplishments, but this is a 9-7 team that overachieved during the playoffs. Sure, they got better as the season went along, particularly after they switched from Marcus Mariota to Ryan Tannehill. But we shouldn’t assume they’ll be the team that beat the Ravens for the entire 2020 season.
You remember those Jaguars. They nearly made it to the Super Bowl, and then the following summer and fall everyone treated them like they’d gone 13-3 as a result. In reality, they’d gone 10-6 and squeaked by the Bills 10-3 in the wild-card round before the shootout in Pittsburgh and the bad whistle on Myles Jack’s fumble recovery against the Patriots. They promptly fell on their faces the next season and are now entering a total rebuilding mode with very few contributors from that team. I’m not saying Tennessee is bad, or that they’ll fall apart. (Loyal readers may hopefully remember I picked them to win straight up in Foxboro a few months ago.) But we should judge them on the entirety of their 2019 when we size up their prospects for 2020, and not get carried away by a couple of good games in January. And I think 11th, solidly in the AFC playoff picture, is more than fair.
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