49ers firmly in place at #1. There is no doubt now that this is the best team in the NFL. Dallas has a lot of catching up to do.

The Bills are still highly rated but aside from the obvious letdown spot they had in London, they have now lost, either for the season or a significant amount of time, their top 3 defenders. That is…not good.

Dolphins are humming but it’s hard to rank them higher. Do not be fooled, that defense is average at best. Maybe when they get Jalen Ramsey back it will be playoff ready. Losing Achane is also suboptimal.

Speaking of losing people, the Colts lost Anthony Richardson for at least 4 weeks (it will probably be more). While I think overall, Minshew is fine in the first couple of games, I expect this to be a longer term downgrade. They will now not have the two dimensions that Richardson is able to provide.

I honestly have no clue how to rank the Cleveland Browns at this point. That defense is top tier. They can’t be starting PJ Walker and hope to be competitive. Something is up with Cleveland and the whole Deshaun Watson situation.

I’m going to just say it, if Derek Carr was better than just league average, the Saints would be a powerhouse. He is very average and so are they. Shows how important a good QB is.

The Bears won a game. Cool. They are still the worst team in football. That defense is horrendous and their offense is not repeatable.

It’s a wrap for the Denver Broncos. This defense just isn’t getting any better and it looks like they are selling off pieces and punting on the season.

I honestly have no idea how the Steelers manage to win these games. Tomlin really is a top-5 coach. This Pitt offense is brutally bad and they need to move on from Pickett next year.

I’ll say it again, the Titans are BAD. No matter how good Vrabel is as a coach, this team is not good overall.

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 49ers 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 49ers played the Saints, I believe they should be 9 point favorites on neutral field. 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 San Francisco is playing the Saints in New Orleans, according to my Power Rankings, San Francisco should be about a 6.5 point favorite (accounting for a Saints 2.5 point home field advantage). Another example from the list below is the Chiefs should be a 0.5 point favorite over the Dallas Cowboys on a neutral field. If the game was in Dallas, the Chiefs should be a 1.5 point underdog. If the game was in KC, the Chiefs should be a 2 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.