Divisional Round NFL Power Rankings
The Rams continue on a dream path to the Super Bowl, with the Bills enjoying an enormous quarterback advantage
For more info you can find the archive of previous Power Rankings posts, including the Week 1 rankings that detail much of the methodology of coming up with the rest of the rankings throughout the season.
In this post, I’m going to walk through how my team-strength model views every team offensively and defensively for their 2025 performance going into the Divisional Round, plus details on which teams really belong in the playoffs and exactly how strong they are versus each other (points-based model).
TEAM OFFENSIVE AND DEFENSIVE STRENGTH
*Downloadable power ratings/rankings available in the paid subscriber Google sheet.
The eight teams remaining in the divisional round all fall into the top two tiers demarcated above. The Los Angeles Rams are still the best performing team through the 2025 season and now into the playoffs. The gap between them and the crowd continues to shrink, with their Wild Card win over the Carolina Panthers registering as a close contest by the official scoreboard and by my adjusted scores. That narrow win dropped the Rams’ points-based team strength number by around half-a-point, the details you can find on the Unexpected Points paid subscriber Google sheet.
The Rams must have been thrilled to see the San Francisco 49ers beat the Philadelphia Eagles, making their Divisional round matchup a trip to the Chicago Bears, not playing at the Seattle Seahawks. The Bears have been moving up by my numbers, but starting from a lower baseline as they won a lot of games during the regular season that were very close and my numbers saw them as lucky to win.
Their miraculous comeback against the Green Bay Packers falls into that category, with my adjusted scores showing the Packers as fundamentally four points better. My team strength number for the Bears went slightly up, as the adjusted performance against the Packers was better than expected. My numbers would make the Rams a 4.5-5 point favorite in Chicago, a bit wider than the market currently at 3.5.
The New England Patriots basically held steady week-over-week, with their defensively dominant win over the Los Angeles Chargers. While the score differential was an impressive 13 points, my model would prefer a better offensive performance, and my ranking on the Chargers was fairly low going into the game, meaning a home win against them isn’t viewed as a strong accomplishment.
