Week 12 NFL Power Rankings

The Rams stay on top after offensive struggles in Week 11, and the Eagles are making their way up

The Week 12 power rankings combine the initial, Week 1 power rankings I released and the evidence from four weeks of NFL football. The key in updating the rankings is knowing when to not overreact (Lions taking a shellacking in Green Bay) and when to be aggressively moving assumptions (maybe the Colts offense will be functional with a real NFL quarterback). Right now, the rankings incorporate roughly 95/5 mix of team strength based on this and last season’s performance.

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 .

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 Week 12, plus comparisons of my numbers to those derived by looking out over the next two weeks on the betting markets.

TEAM OFFENSIVE AND DEFENSIVE STRENGTH

*Downloadable power ratings/rankings available in the paid subscriber Google sheet.

Not a ton has changed about the top-tier in 2025 performance. But we do have a new team to enter the mix with almost the exact offensive/defensive efficiency combo as the Buffalo Bills and Green Bay Packers: the New England Patriots.

I realize the Patriots haven’t played the toughest schedule, ranking dead last (easiest) by my assessment. Yet, they’ve been really good with the matchups they’ve had, especially on offense, which is more predictive than defense. The Patriots have a bottom-10 strength-of-schedule remaining, but do face the Bills and Baltimore Ravens back-to-back in Weeks 15 and 16, perhaps giving us a better view of how good they truly are.

I’m not sure I’m going to write - for what feels like the 20th straight week - about my lower assessment of the Philadelphia Eagles. They provided another perplexing, ugly win against the top-tier Detroit Lions on Sunday night, which was so poor offensively that it didn’t boost them a lot.

Where I think the numbers could be materially off is in their reflection of the Eagles defense, which ranks around eighth by my figures so far in 2025, but probably is a legit top-5 unit. As you’ll see below, I’m not really off of betting markets at all in my team strength number for the Eagles, but I’m a bit higher on the Ravens, moving the Eagles a little lower in my rankings.

The Denver Broncos are another team that my numbers can’t fully get behind, despite their 9-2 record and big win at home against the Kansas City Chiefs. While I view their defense as elite, how they played on offense against the Chiefs wasn’t typical of the rest of the season, when they struggled for long stretches. The Broncos have had a bottom-4 strength of schedule so far this year, and have the seventh best point differential. It’s a strong number, but doesn’t match their co-lead for best record.

UNEXPECTED POINTS VERSUS THE MARKET

** These are Tuesday morning numbers on the betting markets from inpredictable, which often firm up during the week.