Wild Card Round NFL Power Rankings
The top-7 strongest teams in the NFL made the playoffs, with the Panthers the obvious outlier and the Packers looking better than most think
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 the rest of the rankings throughout the season.
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 the Wild Card round, plus details on which teams really belong in the playoffs and exactly how strong they are versus each other (points-based model).
TEAM OFFENSIVE AND DEFENSIVE STRENGTH
*Downloadable power ratings/rankings available in the paid subscriber Google sheet.
First, let’s take a look back at adjusted performance during the regular season, which includes strength-of-schedule assessments.
Compared to a couple weeks back, the Los Angeles Rams have come back to the pack materially, with the New England Patriots moving closest to where the Rams stand. The Patriots haven’t faced a difficult schedule, but they’ve been highly impressive after adjusting for the ease of path, and my model prefers teams with strong offenses - passing offenses specifically.
My numbers have favored the Patriots over the market for the last several weeks, and continue to do so going into their matchup with the Los Angeles Chargers, a team I’m lower on. My numbers would make the Patriots a 5-to-5.5 point favorite against the Chargers, with most betting lines at 3.5.
The Seattle Seahawks are a bit lower by my numbers than their No. 1 seed and common perception has them, most because their offense struggled somewhat down the stretch, relying on big rushing gains, defensive strength and turnover differential to beat a tough list of opponents.
My numbers have the Chicago Bears performing a little worse than the Green Bay Packers this season, and the Packers get a bit of a boost for having missed key starters - like quarterback - in recent weeks who will return for the playoffs. My numbers aren’t far off from the betting markets that make the Packers a slight favorite (-1.5) on the road in Chicago.
