The Week 5 power rankings combine the initial, Week 1 power rankings I released and the evidence from the first two weeks of NFL football. The key in updating the rankings is knowing when to not overreact and when to be aggressively moving assumptions. Right now, the rankings incorporate roughly a 40/60 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 5, 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.
The San Francisco 49ers are in another stratosphere in terms of 2026 performance, entirely due to the proficiency of their offense. The 49ers defense hasn’t been bad, but aligned nearly perfectly with what would be considered average play. Their level of play on offense is clearly unsustainable, but that doesn’t mean we should overly discount what they’ve done. You’ll see below they’re moving up the ranks, but over pre-season prior still matter enough to keep them out of the top spot.
While only 2-2 in the standing, the Los Angeles Rams have performed as the second-best team in the NFL by my numbers, driven by their defense more than offense. They got hit hard by the 49ers offense, but opponent effects mitigate that as the 49ers have been taking all their defenses faced to the woodshed. What’s interesting is that the Rams offense theoretically has significant room for improvement, playing outside of the top-5 so far this year. They have an enormous game at home against the Buffalo Bills in Week 5.
Even without Caleb Williams for more than half the season, the Chicago Bears offense is performing in the top-5. I don’t think a combination of Case Keenum and Tyson Begent would continue to put up this strong of efficiency on a longer timeline, but you have to give the team credit for having enough firepower to not only survive but thrive without their starting quarterback. I thought my power ranking numbers for the Bears were likely too high going into the last two weeks, but the results have shown that not to be the case (so far).
So how to should we look at the 4-0 Minnesota Vikings? Unsurprisingly, they have a top-notch defense in performance this year. Also unsurprisingly, they’ve been poor on offense. Just how poor they’ve been might raise some eyebrows, with their adjusted EPA efficiency ranking eighth worse, relegated to a large bottom-tier of NFL offenses. Overall, the offenses hasn’t been a lot worse with Kyler Murray back, but the dropback portion of the attack has materially fallen.
UNEXPECTED POINTS VERSUS THE MARKET
** You can find the numbers on the betting markets from inpredictable here, which often firm up during the week and can shift around.
