Wild Card Postseason NFL Power Rankings

My numbers have seven true Super Bowl contenders, with the Lions looking as good an any non-49ers team in the NFC

You’ll notice that some of the rankings shifts and movements in power rating don’t correspond exactly with intuition based solely on results. The numbers still use some 2022 data (roughly 5% weighting), 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 in 2023, using my adjusted-score methodology to measure performance, and factoring in strength of schedule.

Looking at the adjusted-scores based internals from the 2023 season, we can see a fairly clear tier of true Super Bowl contenders: 49ers, Ravens, Bills, Dolphins, Lions, Chiefs and Cowboys. The “collapse” of the Eagles is reflected in the figures, which decay (i.e. lower the importance of) older results. Now, the Eagles don’t look much different than the surging Packers, even if their full-season results are a little better. In fact, they also aren’t much different from the Rams either. Offensively, the Eagles look similar to the Ravens, Chiefs and Cowboys, but their defense now projects as the third worst in the NFL.

I want to be clear that the non-top tier teams can still win the Super Bowl, as we’ve seen plenty of teams get hot and go on to win, despite being a tier below the best teams in their respective seasons. It’s just that there’s a big tier drop in team strength, which guide our projections. The Eagles, Packers, Browns, Rams, Texans and Bucs shouldn’t give up, but they individually don’t have a good shot at going far in the playoffs.

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.