Week 7 NFL Power Rankings

The 3-3 Chiefs are now back on top, with the Broncos, Steelers and Giants rising

The Week 7 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 70/30 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 7, 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 was a good week for the power rankings, with the biggest public complaints directed at the Jacksonville Jaguars being too low (19th) and the Kansas City Chiefs too high (3rd). The Jags looked stagnant against the Seattle Seahawks, while the Chiefs put up an important win at home against top-notch competition in the Detroit Lions.

Looking strictly at 2025 strength-of-schedule adjusted performance, the Indianapolis Colts are still decently separated from the pack, but pre-season expectations (priors) still have about 30% weight in the overall power ranking strength numbers. The rest of the top tier includes the Chiefs, Lions and the Los Angeles Rams, who had a walk-over win against the Baltimore Ravens in Week 6.

The positioning of the Atlanta Falcons is really interesting, with a huge defensive boost after shutting down the Bill on Monday Night Football. My numbers have been high on the Falcons all season, and now they’re playing like they deserve it. I still think they’re a high-variance projection going forward, but that means they have downside and upside.

The Dallas Cowboys are another team to watch, with top-5 offensive performances combining with awful defense. With their quarterback in place and the general stability of offense, there’s a (small) chance their defense makes an unexpected jump the rest of the season and they become a legitimate contender in the NFC.

After detailing the last two weeks why I was off from the public on the Philadelphia Eagles and Jaguars, it’s harder going into Week 7 for me to anticipate which fanbase is going to yell at me this week about their team being too low. Probably Pittsburgh Steelers’ fans will still hate their ranking, but they really haven’t been good this year, on either side of the ball. They had a better offensive game against a strong Cleveland Browns defense in Week 6, but the game was a struggle to watch well into the second half.

After a high-profile, near nationally televised late-window game on Sunday, I think the public will be higher than warranted on the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. It was a great watch, and Baker Mayfield is the most entertaining player in the league right now. That said, their team-level numbers have been merely great, not elite. And even Mayfield himself is seventh in EPA per play, not particularly close to leading the league, despite MVP talk.

UNEXPECTED POINTS VERSUS THE MARKET

** These are Tuesday morning numbers on the betting markets from inpredictable, which often firm up during the week.

** Ravens power ranking still has Lamar Jackson out, that will be updated when they come out of the bye in Week 8