The Week 2 power rankings combine the initial, Week 1 power rankings I released and the evidence from the first week of NFL football. The key in updating the rankings is knowing when to not overreact (Cardinals beating the Chargers convincingly) and when to be aggressively moving assumptions (maybe Jaxson Dart is that guy). Right now, the rankings incorporate roughly a 10/90 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 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 2026 performance 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.
We can’t read too much into a week of football, but it was an outstanding week for the Baltimore Ravens, traveling on the road to blow out an Indianapolis Colts team that was projected to be decently solid this year. The Ravens dominated in all phases of the game, plus having a two-time MVP behind center and the greatest runner of his generation in the backfield gives a lot of confidence that this offensive performance wasn’t a fluke.
It’s early to get too excited about the Jacksonville Jaguars, but their victory was thorough. The Jags had the highest offensive success rate of the week (59.3%) and the third highest EPA efficiency (+0.31 per play), with significant portions of the game uncompetitive. Excluding garbage time, they held their opponents to the lowest offense success rate (32.4%). I was relatively high on the Jags going into the season, so they’ll continue to be ranked a bit higher than consensus this week.
Teams that won in relatively unimpressive fashion - by the adjusted numbers - include the New York Giants and Philadelphia Eagles. Their respective opponents (Dallas Cowboys and Washington Commanders) had the two worst defenses in the NFL in 2025. Defensive performance is a bit less stable than offensive, so perhaps the Giants and Eagles aren’t being given enough credit, as the defenses they faced could actually be a lot better than we expect. A few more weeks will give us better adjustments to apply back to or reassessment of Week 1.`
UNEXPECTED POINTS VERSUS THE MARKET
** These numbers haven’t yet been updated for Tuesday morning. You can find the numbers on the betting markets from inpredictable here, which often firm up during the week and could be updated soon after publication.
