Week 17 NFL Power Rankings
The Los Angeles Rams are weakened, but still far out ahead of the rest of the NFL
The Week 17 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 17, 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.
It’s still the Los Angeles Rams all by themselves for 2025 performance, though they’re now trailing the Seattle Seahawks and San Francisco 49ers in NFC West divisional standings.
The second tier in 2025 performance is wide, led by the Seahawks, then a cluster of Buffalo Bills, New England Patriots, Green Bay Packers and Detroit Lions.
The Jacksonville Jaguars and Denver Broncos have gotten close to the more established teams above them, with the Jags benefiting from a big win in Denver last weekend.
UNEXPECTED POINTS VERSUS THE MARKET
** These are Tuesday morning numbers on the betting markets from inpredictable.
