NFL Power Rankings - Week 7

Quick – look at the top teams on my rankings. They all should check out: Bills, Eagles, Chiefs. All good teams that have shown the capability to be trusted this year.

Now look at the teams behind them. Bengals, Chargers, Niners and Vikings. While all those teams were expected to be good heading into this year. If you’ve been paying attention over the last 6 weeks, you couldn’t possibly think any of them actually are. I like the Chargers. Hell, I bet them to win the Super Bowl. But they didn’t cover against Denver! As for the Niners, they just lost outright to the Falcons! A team that was expected to be one of the worst coming into the year.

The NFL is the definition of parity this year. Other than the top 3 teams, nothing surprises me.

I am stating all of this to say, do not be afraid to play on crappy teams. Look, the Jets just won outright in Lambeau. I would have given you 10-1 odds earlier this year that this couldn’t happen.

Some teams really just stink though. Look at the Bears. They couldn’t even beat the lowly Washington team at home on a short week. That includes playing against a hurt Carson Wentz. That is just bad. And they are just bad. They are already a one-dimensional team (running) and are playing against the best head coach of all time that forces teams into becoming one-dimensional and them destroying them.

I’ll say it again. The Cardinals are not good. The wins they’ve had have come almost in spite of their actual performance. Kliff Kingsbury would be the worst head coach in the league but…Nathaniel Hackett exists.

Speaking of Hackett, I think its prudent to take him to be the next coach fired. He looks lost, makes bad decisions and is completely incoherent in his decision making. The Broncos can’t fire Russ Wilson after giving him a quarter of a billion dollars. But they can ship this awful coach and his staff.

Two teams that keep winning games that I cannot figure out: the Giants and the Vikings. Seriously, how do these two keep winning? The Giants had like 3.7 yards per play on Sunday and WON! The Vikings were out statted and out played by the Dolphins and somehow won. This keeps happening for both teams. I can’t explain luck but that’s what some of it is.

I went against the Steelers as massive home dogs after getting blown out the week before. Shame on me. I should have known that Mike Tomlin would right the ship. You cannot keep making him an underdog week after week. He will eventually win.

As a Panthers backer on Sunday, I was not surprised by how terrible the Rams looked. They still managed to win by 14 and cover a double digit spread. This says a lot about the Panthers. This team is cooked. I don’t have them as the worst team in the league – yet. They at least have a defensive unit that seems to care. The Bears are bad at every level. All that said, I expect the Panthers to eventually be the worst team and by margin before it is all said and done. This team has given up.

The Niners were entirely too hurt to back this past weekend. They are really depleted. If I had known the status of Nick Bosa, I would have never been on them. This week it seems they are getting some key pieces back. As always, make sure you know the extent of the injury report before being on any team. 

There’s two teams I just can’t seem to get a feel for: the Bengals and the Ravens. I can’t tell if they are good and are catching bad breaks or are they catching bad breaks due to structural issues with their respective teams.

I think I have to admit it, Arthur Smith is a good coach. I still don’t think the Falcons are “good” – no matter how many times they’ve covered the spread. However, the fact that this team is competitive or winning in every single game, makes me respect the coaching staff.

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 Bills are currently my highest rated team and they are 8.5 points better than an average team. The average team is 0 points. So, from my power rankings if the Bills played the Dolphins, I believe they should be 8.5 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 Buffalo is playing the Dolphins in Miami, according to my Power Rankings, Buffalo should be about a 6.5 point favorite (accounting for a Dolphins 2-point home field advantage). Another example from the list below is the Patriots should be a 10 point favorite over the Carolina Panthers on a neutral field. If the game was in Carolina, the Patriots should be an 8.5 point favorite. If the game was in Foxborough, the Patriots should be a 12.5 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 or 1.5 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.