We’re one week into the NFL season and the first wave of power rankings have come down from on high … or at least come down from someone who is high.
Power ranking after one week is sort of similar to what they do in college football—the “experts” decide who ought to be good and then ride those ponies into the ground because anyone with sufficient ego to be involved in a poll or power ranking is a soul who cannot, under any circumstances, admit to being wrong until the evidence is simply incontrovertible.
For evidence of this phenomenon, one needs look no further than Pro Football Talk’s Mike Florio.
After a 20-point debacle in Seattle on the opening Thursday night of the season, Florio moved the Green Bay Packers up one spot in his rankings from No. 4 to No. 3, using this piece of sound logic:
"They lost to the Seahawks by 20. Every other team ranked below them on this list would have lost in Seattle by more than 30."
Well, then.
Florio did punish the New England Patriots for their season-opening second-half meltdown at Miami … by dropping them one spot:
"The last time the Pats looked that bad in Week 1, they won the Super Bowl."
By contrast, ESPN.com’s power rankings are at least a little more rooted in what actually happened on the field Thursday, Sunday and Monday.
The Patriots are down four spots to No. 7 and the Packers are down a couple of places to No. 8.
But the Worldwide Leader’s panel of “more than 80 writers, editors and TV personalities” loved them some Tennessee Titans—or at least liked them a lot more than they did based on the preseason.
Tennessee jumped nine spots to No. 19 by beating Kansas City, which dropped nine spots to No. 25.
So which is it? Is Tennessee that much better than expected or is Kansas City that much worse? That does not seem like a question that can be answered with “yes.”
Then again, this panel also moved the Vikings up nine spots for beating the Rams, who they dropped eight spots to No. 32. It appears “incremental” may not be in the behemoth’s vocabulary. Then again, from watching their coverage of all things Jonathan X. Football this summer, “restraint” isn’t in their vocabulary, either.
Pete Prisco does the rankings at CBSSports.com and he was apparently unconvinced by the results of the last Super Bowl. You know, the one that one team won 43-8? Prisco has the Denver Broncos at No. 1 and the Seattle Seahawks at No. 2, because … well … ummmm … I got nothing.
As far as the Pack and the Pats go, Prisco dropped Green Bay four spots to No. 6 and New England five spots to No. 9.
Of course, he wasn’t so much into rewarding teams for good showings—Buffalo jumped eight places to No. 21 as Prisco’s biggest mover of the week—as he was pummeling teams for bad showings. The Chicago Bears, Kansas City Chiefs, St. Louis Rams and Tampa Bay Buccaneers all were dumped at least six spots, with the Bears and Chiefs going down nine places.
Apparently, a lot of people drank the Josh McCown Kool-Aid, or at least the Lovie Smith flavor. ESPN had the Bucs at No. 19 and dropped them five spots, while Prisco put them at No. 29 after having them at No. 23.
Again, two words. Josh. McCown. That alone should have merited no more than a ranking in the bottom five or six to begin with.
Elliot Harrison of NFL.com on the other hand? He was summarily unimpressed with what he saw from the Patriots and wasn’t afraid to express that. New England crashed down seven spaces in Harrison’s rankings to No. 12. He also punished the Saints (down eight spots to No. 11), the Bears (down eight to No. 22) and the Chiefs (down 10 to No. 23). He also hit the Rams hard, down eight to No. 31.
And he overreacted nicely to the Dolphins and the Falcons, moving each team up nine places to No. 9 and No. 10 respectively.
All the better to be able to have dramatic shifts later, one could suppose.
FOXSports.com’s rankings had the Rams going down the elevator 12 places to No. 30 and the Titans going up nine for winning at Arrowhead. Buffalo also got a nine-place boost, but the Bears only fell three places to No. 18.
As for the Patriots and Packers, it seems FOX wasn’t wild about them in the first place—the Pats fell three spots to No. 7 and the Packers went down six to No. 11.
The five rankings couldn’t even agree on a No. 32 team—four of them went with the Oakland Raiders (never a bad choice over the last few years) and ESPN went with the Rams.
What does it all mean?
It means we’ve played a week, people, and we know nothing—or next to it, anyway.
Despite how authoritative that nothingness can be made to sound.