Ranking the Saints, Bucs, Falcons and Panthers as NFC South goes winless

The NFC South is indisputably the most unserious, most knee-slappingly hilarious division in all of professional sports, much less just in the NFL. Year over year, we have no read whatsoever on who will be good, who will be abjectly terrible and which of the four to six, 10 or 12 eventual starting quarterbacks for the New Orleans Saints, Tampa Bay Buccaneers, Carolina Panthers and Atlanta Falcons will be good, bad or awful. Most of them will be awful, but some of them could be good!

Ranking things is like its own language, and the NFC South is how we use that language to develop a Netflix comedy special. Unless we start ripping ties like it's the World Cup group stage, next week will see the NFC South at least one win as the Panthers and Falcons face off. So now is the time to capitalize on the hilarity of 0-4 in Week 1, and power rank a winless division! What a wonderful world.

4. Atlanta Falcons

I'm out.

I mean, I've been out, but I don't think I could possibly be any more out on the Atlanta Falcons than I am right now because of this horrific quarterback situation. They have quality players, I guess, but even a statistical masterclass from Bijan Robinson can't escape the fact that all their impact guys are dropping like flies. Their pass rush is in shambles after Jalon Walker went down in the preseason, A.J. Terrell briefly left the game on Sunday ... it's just the worst. And none of that had anything to do with the kind of unserious platoon of backups they're trying to run at QB.

I don't think the Pittsburgh Steelers are good. But the Falcons might just be unable to produce enough points so long as the offense consists of Cooper Rush swing passes to Bijan. Eventually, those will get sniffed out, and T.J. Watt will take one to the house.

Sign me up for no more Atlanta Falcons anything for the rest of the season. It wasn't even spectacularly trash, it was just consistent, measured trash delivered over the course of a game. They aren't the worst team in the NFL, but I promise you they have the worst chance of winning the NFC South.

3. Carolina Panthers

I don't really know what to make of the Panthers after Week 1, so here's the scorecard:

• GOOD: they scored 37 points, looked fairly professional on offense and Bryce Young appeared to be clicking with some of his new weapons.
• BAD: Their defense gave up 59 points to the Chicago Bears, and they thus lost by 22.
• GOOD: The running game seemed like it was working, and there were some good pass rush reps.
• BAD: They lost so badly it was literally Scorigami.

I think the Panthers played an alright game, and have things to build on offensively for the rest of the season. But their defense got gashed for 552 total yards and, crucially, 291 rushing yards. That is Swiss cheese-level terrible.

2. New Orleans Saints

No team better exemplified the performance art that is NFC South football better than the New Orleans Saints, who were appallingly bad for two quarters and then shockingly good for another two and overtime. They got the closest out of any of the squad to actually winning a game, falling to the Detroit Lions on a two-point conversion in OT, but I can't just scrub the first half from my brain. That was legitimately incompetent football.

There's a chance Tyler Shough is a quality NFL passer, but I think there's an equal chance his 400+ yards of passing were the result of an overwhelmingly negative game script and a Lions defense I'm already bearish on. The Saints were too sloppy with the ball for the top spot, and have too many holes on their defense for me to sit here and laud their second half.

1. Tampa Bay Buccaneers

A strange zag, perhaps, given Baker Mayfield's putrid performance, but I think the Cincinnati Bengals primarily won because of fluky and unrepeatable turnover luck. I think, by and large, the Bucs played a pretty solid game, and have easily the best roster in the NFC South. They just kept turning the ball over like it was some kind of legal obligation. But they could run the ball, Mayfield was reasonably accurate and I still like their defensive unit even if their secondary is just average.

The main trump card for the Buccaneers in the winless division is that they have the best quarterback. They just do; I know Baker Mayfield made 800 boneheaded decisions in Week 1, but he is also far and away the most creative and successful quarterback of the bunch. This division isn't going to take a lot to win, and I think the Bucs losing a game by six when they lost four fumbles is actually good for their long-term prospects. People are going to underrate them because of it, but they're still the class of the bunch. Even if it's all fairly uninspiring, betting odds agree with me.

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