Week 10 NFL Power Rankings

The Ravens continuing climbing as others stumble. Can C.J. Stroud leads the Texans into the playoff hunt?

The Ravens defense has established themselves as an elite unit

You notice that some of the rankings shifts and movements in power rating don’t correspond exactly with intuition based solely on Week 6 results. The numbers still use some 2022 data, and prior weeks are having their effect sizes decayed, which can cause slight adjustments that look big. When lots of teams are bunched up in the middle and bottom of the NFL, even a marginal change in power rating can move a team 3-6 spots.

* The detailed information for power rankings are on the paid subscriber Google sheet (along with other site metrics). You can find previous Power Rankings write-ups on the landing page.

WHAT WE’VE LEARNED IN 2023

First let’s look at the team offensive and defensive efficiencies so far in 2023, using my adjusted-score methodology to measure performance, and factoring in strength of schedule.

The Browns defense continues to destroy the scaling of the above plot, performing at a level this season almost twice as far from average as the second best team. Keep in mind that the effects are much smaller on the vertical (defensive) axis, with the Browns defense, with a little over 0.2 EPA per play separating the best and worst defenses, versus nearly 0.3 on offensive. And it’s really the Browns as an outlier, with most defenses spread out in a range from +0.15 to slightly negative. Even with defenses performing much better this season, the relative value gains are still found mostly on offense.

The top-tier of NFL teams has gotten very bunched up and thick at this part of the season, mostly due to a failure of any team to separate from the pack. This is more about the lack of high-end teams than having a bunch of elite squads. Now there are seven teams with almost identical team-strength performances in 2023, and a few who could join them by year-end.

THE 2023 POWER RANKINGS AND RATINGS

Below visualizes the NFL ranked by what I’m calling “Power Rating”, or the estimates of each team’s point differential playing a league-average opponent on a neutral field.