Well the Giants did it. Yes, they won the Super Bowl, but they also officially made it impossible for the Power Ranks to spit out the Super Bowl champs as the #1 team. This system was more or a less a success though, and I’m planning on bringing it back in the fall with a few tweaks. Unfortunately, I came up with the idea to start this in a year where a whole bunch of crazy things happened. You had the first 16-0 regular season team in NFL history, but they played in an incredibly weak division that kept them out of the #1 spot for most of the season, but by the time they separated themselves and other teams piled up more losses, they had such a huge lead that it would basically be impossible to drop the #1 spot if they lost in the playoffs, and that’s what happened here. But I guess this goes back to saying that the better team lost, which happens sometimes. On the other side of the coin, the Giants were a wild card team with a middle of the pack offensive and defensive scoring units throughout the season but they still managed to wind up at #3. They tied the NFL record for worst record for a Super Bowl champ at 10-6 (with the 1988 49ers, who at least won their division), so I am impressed that they at least wound up where they did. The team in between them was the Colts, who on paper had an impressive season while playing the toughest (by my scoring system) schedule and played in the best division. The playoff collapse didn’t hurt their ranking as much as it probably should have. I did have a bit of the problem at the very bottom, where the Dolphins somehow finished ahead of the Rams. The problem there was I take recent success into account and the Dolphins got their lone win near the end of the year while the Rams dropped their last 4 in a row. Something else I noticed that had a big impact was the teams that tanked in Week 17 got penalized pretty hard, but most of them got burned in the playoffs, so that was surprisingly accurate. The one and done playoff teams took a little too much of a beating though, which could explain how the Eagles somehow finished ahead of the Cowboys and Redskins. I think if I change anything for next year, it will be weightings for playoff games and playoff positions to fix some of this. Here they are, the final ranks. Let me know what you thought of them…
1. Patriots – 78.58
2. Colts – 73.01
3. Giants – 70.68 – +2
4. Packers – 66.29 – -1
5. Jaguars – 64.80 – -1
6. Chargers – 63.62
7. Titans – 62.11
8. Eagles – 61.59
9. Cowboys – 60.83
10. Redskins – 60.70
11. Browns – 59.24
12. Texans – 58.92
13. Seahawks – 54.89
14. Vikings – 52.95
15. Steelers – 52.91
16. Bengals – 52.30
17. Bears – 49.02
18. Cardinals – 47.95
19. Buccaneers – 47.64
20. Panthers – 44.62
21. Saints – 42.95
22. Broncos – 41.51
23. Lions – 39.12
24. Bills – 37.07
25. 49ers – 36.34
26. Ravens – 34.30
27. Jets – 31.56
28. Falcons – 26.72
29. Raiders – 25.65
30. Chiefs – 24.28
31. Dolphins – 23.47
32. Rams – 21.27
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