Week 2 NFL Power Rankings

Despite the loss, the Baltimore Ravens stay on top, with the biggest movers being the Green Bay Packers and Detroit Lions

The Week 2 power rankings combine the initial, Week 1 power rankings I released and the evidence from four quarters of football for each team. 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).

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 going into Week 2, 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 important to note that the numbers above include results from this season, with prior data only playing into the schedule-of-schedule assumptions. These results are weighed against the Week 1 numbers in a roughly 10% to 90% ratio.

A good use of this plot is to look and see where the adjusted numbers might diverge from our perceptions coming out of week one. A good start is that the adjusted score saw the offensive performance of the Buffalo Bills as not nearly as impressive as the final score. On the flip side, the Baltimore Ravens were as good, if not better than their output. The Ravens had the much higher success rate, but gave up a massive turnover and ended up with one less possession.

The Pittsburgh Steelers offense is another unit that wasn’t as good as the 34 points on their scoreboard at games end. In particular, they benefited from special teams and penalty value. The San Francisco 49ers and Seattle Seahawks underperformed their offensive output, meaning that both defenses weren’t as good as they appeared. The Dallas Cowboys were sneaky good in Week 1, but part of that is strength-of-schedule adjustments that boost their results, and lower those of the Philadelphia Eagles with the assumptions that the Cowboys aren’t good and the Eagles are a top-notch team.

UNEXPECTED POINTS VERSUS THE MARKET