NFL Power Rankings and Week 1 Recap - 9/15/20
Week 1 RECAP
It is time to update the power rankings after one week’s worth of games played. Right off the top, it is important to note that you cannot react too much after one single week.
Week 2 is the classic overaction week. After a long, vacant football stretch, everyone watched one single game and now all their assessments are correct! The Dallas Cowboys can’t get over the hump! The Browns are still the worst team in the league! The Colts made a massive mistake by signing Rivers! The Jets are trash! Well, the Jets are still trash. However, the only way to profit from the NFL is to be contrarian and Week 2 is the best week for that. Some of the things that happened will hold up but most of it is just noise.
The biggest surprise of the week was undoubtedly the loss of the Colts to the hands of the Jaguars. How could this be?! Aren’t the Jaguars tanking?! In short, they aren’t but their front office is. The Jags front office has put a product on the field that WILL lose a majority of their games. I attribute the Colts loss to a bunch of factors – mostly not pressuring Minshew and the inability to convert on 4th down. I’m chalking up that loss to those factors and the Florida heat (that’s a thing early in the season). I’m not putting too much stock in the Jags. They are still the worst team in the league.
Do all the Aaron Rodgers naysayers have to eat chalk now? I mean he carved up a “good” Minnesota defense…in Minnesota! No. I still think the Packers are slightly below average and they are a running team. I do now fully believe the Vikings defense is not good. They lost a ton of players and it will take time for them to get better. They will get better, after all, Zimmer is a good coach.
Brady is washed up and sunk! I do think there is some truth to this but I’m giving him the benefit of the doubt this week. New Orleans is a good team, quite possibly the best in the NFC, so Tampa Bay losing in NOLA is no surprise. As I stated prior to the season, Tampa is not a double digit win team. All the talk about NFC Championship games, etc. needs to be simmered down. As long as New Orleans is in the same division, Tampa is playing for second fiddle. I do expect Tampa to come out guns blazing this week against Carolina.
I think the Browns are not as bad as they looked. They played the Ravens in Baltimore and that’s no easy task. Add on the fact that this is a new coaching staff and things still need to come together for this team. I expect to be on the Browns come the middle of the season. They are not done yet. To that end, Baltimore is still good and if they are playing a team that has a hard time stopping the run: watch out.
While the 49ers lost and looked disappointing, I believe a lot of that has to do with how good Arizona looked. The Cardinals are the real deal and Kyler Murray is a thing. Not to go too far with the Cardinals love though, their defense still is not top tier material. I expect this division to be the best division in football all year. Watch out for the Cards, they’re probably making the playoffs this year. Speaking of the NFC West, the Seahawks are good because Russell Wilson is good. I decided to fade him last week and I regretted it the second the game kicked off. All that aside, the Falcons outgained the Seahawks. They lost what seemed to be a blowout mostly because Russ is good (kind of a recurring theme here) and a plethora of unconverted 4th downs. I am higher than the market on the Falcons.
The Vegas Raiders put up points, they got a road victory and looked like a good team! Aaaaaand that’s probably the last game they’ll be favored in for a while this season. Don’t by the hype, the Raiders are bad and the Gruden / Carr relationship is one disastrous game away from blowing up. Fade the Raiders. As for the Panthers, “they are who we thought they were!”. RIP Dennis Green. This is gonna be a plodding offense with one (super amazing) talent in McCaffery and a shitty defense. This will most likely not change this year.
Some teams were just hard to assess. I don’t know what to make of Denver. They lost their best defender 4 days before the season started and their best receiver couldn’t suit up. The Steelers looked OK but Big Ben didn’t have to do much against a terrible Giants defense. Did the Bengals really improve thanks to Burrow or was their close game a byproduct of the way the Chargers are going to play this year? I think the latter. I’m taking the under on the Chargers until further notice.
I also didn’t learn much from much from the Chiefs / Texans game. The Chiefs are just amazing on offense. Their defense seems to have gotten marginally better but I will need more time to be convinced it’s good. As for the Texans, their tough schedule is not going to get any easier as they are playing Baltimore in Week 2. The Texans looked like a league average team (see rankings below) and until they start playing some league average (or worse) competition, I expect them to keep losing.
And now on to the Monsters of the Meadowlands! The Jets are horrible. I didn’t downgrade them too far because I didn’t want to overreact. However, one more performance like this and they will be on par with the Jaguars. Not good. As for the G-Men, they just aren’t good enough defensively to stand up to teams with a good offensive line. They got pushed around and bullied all night by the Steelers. The Giants will not win many games with this defense.
As for the Steelers, that was a nice win last night. However, I have not moved them up. Beating the Giants does not get any merits this year. The Titans on the other hand looked mighty. I think this team will be a serious contender this year. I am buying the Ryan Tannehill hype. Winning Week 1 in altitude in Denver is no easy feat.
POWER RANKINGS
If you are unfamiliar with the way power rankings work, here is a crash course. Power rankings are a way to show how strong or weak a team is from an “average” team. This is a system to derive my own point spreads. By having this system, I can say, “this line is off” due to my power rankings.
An easy way to explain this is using an example from the list below. The KC Chiefs are currently my highest rated team and they are 9 points better than an average team. The average team is 0 points. So, from my power rankings if the Chiefs played the Lions or Bears, I believe they should be 9 point favorites. There are variables that are not inherent in this list, such as home-field advantages, injuries and other unknown intangibles. The list assumes point differential on a neutral field. If KC is playing Chicago in Chicago, according to my Power Rankings, KC should be about a 6 point favorite (accounting for a Chicago 3 point home field advantage). Another example from the list below is the Saints should be a 6 point favorite over the Green Bay Packers on a neutral field. If the game was in New Orleans, they should be a 9 point favorite. If the game was in Green Bay, the Saints should be a 3 point favorite, according to my power rankings.
It is important to keep in mind that all home field advantages are not the same. In theory, I think Green Bay’s homefield advantage is probably 3.5 points, while the Los Angeles Chargers are more like 1.5 or 2 points. Another caveat is to be mindful or intangible factors, such as motivation, coaching issues (firings / hirings), travel, etc.
The most important concept in handicapping sports is you should ONLY bet if you DISAGREE with the line. There is no value if you agree that the line given by the sportsbook is correct. Why would you bet and lay juice (-110) on something that you think is correct? Literally, the odds are not in your favor. If you want to bet any way, that is degeneracy. While I don’t encourage degeneracy, I do believe that as a handicapper, the goal is to benefit off of others’ degeneracy.
