Week 15 NFL Power Rankings

49ers keep separating from the rest, the Bills starting to play like the second best team in the NFL

You’ll notice that some of the rankings shifts and movements in power rating don’t correspond exactly with intuition based solely on results. The numbers still use some 2022 data (roughly 5% weighting), and prior weeks are having their effect sizes decayed, which can cause slight adjustments that look big. When lots of teams are bunched up in the middle and bottom of the NFL, even a marginal change in power rating can move a team 3-6 spots.

* The detailed information for power rankings are on the paid subscriber Google sheet (along with other site metrics). You can find previous Power Rankings write-ups on the landing page.

WHAT WE’VE LEARNED IN 2023

First let’s look at the team offensive and defensive efficiencies so far in 2023, using my adjusted-score methodology to measure performance, and factoring in strength of schedule.

The theme for this week’s update won’t be the change in rankings as much as the degree to which some teams are rising/falling within their ranking and tier. The San Francisco 49ers have been my top-ranked team over the last five updates, but they keep extending their lead. You’ll see below that I have them as three points better than any other team in power rating, which is the roughly same difference between the the Buffalo Bills at No. 2 and the falling Detroit Lions at No. 8.

The tiers that I add to the graph above are somewhat arbitrary in exact location, but I think it’s fair to question the Philadelphia Eagles as even being on the same level as second-tier teams, like the Bills, Miami Dolphins, Kansas City Chiefs, Baltimore Ravens and Dallas Cowboys. The facts are that their offense has been strong but not elite this year by the adjusted numbers, and their defense is slightly worse than average and falling. Perhaps lingering injury issues for Jalen Hurts will resolve themselves and they’ll gain better form offensively. But their back-to-back convincing losses against the 49ers and Cowboys weren’t shocking results versus what we knew going into the contests. Despite the optics of a strong W-L record for most of the season, the Eagles have never been better than 3rd in my power rankings, and they were only that high for a single week.

THE 2023 POWER RANKINGS AND RATINGS

Below visualizes the NFL ranked by what I’m calling “Power Rating”, or the estimates of each team’s point differential playing a league-average opponent on a neutral field.