Power rankings, Week 2: eight national lists, and where they put a 1-0 Cleveland

Pro Football Focus

PFF Power Rankings after Week 1: Baltimore climbs five after a loss, and the arithmetic that keeps Cleveland 32nd

PFF Staff · Monday, Sept. 14

Our in-season rankings blend a preseason projection with opponent-adjusted efficiency, and through Week 1 the projection carries the larger of the two shares. It keeps carrying it until roughly Week 5, when the in-season term overtakes it. That is worth spelling out this week, because Cleveland produced the largest single-week efficiency gain on the board and comes out of the blend in the same position it went in.

The inputs were these: 434 yards on 52 plays, 8.3 per snap, 8-of-11 on third down, zero giveaways, one punt, and a 28-point win as a 9.5-point underdog, which beats the number by 37.5. Weighted at the Week 1 share, against a projection assembled from 17 games of roster grades, that is not enough to move a team off 32. The projection has not changed, because nothing that feeds it has.

The Ringer

The Week 1 NFL Power Rankings: New Tiers, and Bo Nix’s 466-Yard Catastrophe

Staff · Monday, Sept. 14

Tier 7 has one team in it and that team is 1-0. Cleveland was getting nine and a half points in Jacksonville, won by four touchdowns, leads the league in completion percentage and in passer rating, and is bottom of this list. We know. Jacksonville won 13 games last season and lost at home by 28 to a team starting five rookies, and the Jaguars’ 218 yards would have been a mediocre half. Cleveland got 119 yards on six targets from the rookie receiver it traded up 14 spots for in April, a move most of the draft industry graded as a reach at the time, and Harold Fannin Jr. scored three touchdowns and handed the ball to the official all three times like a man returning something he had borrowed.

Next up is Tampa, where the Buccaneers have declined to employ a defensive coordinator, so the odds are decent that this stays strange for at least one more Sunday.

NFL.com

NFL Power Rankings, Week 2: The Rams are everybody’s No. 1; Saints surge after a 42-point opener

Eric Edholm · Tuesday, Sept. 15

The Browns’ third-down tape is going to get passed around a lot this week. Eight conversions in 11 tries against the best run defense of last season is a real number, and the call sheet behind it was not the one an offense usually hands a second-year quarterback on the road. On third-and-1 in the second quarter, KC Concepcion beat press coverage for 55 yards down the sideline and Quinshon Judkins scored from 30 on the next snap. Nick Mansour calls the plays. Travis Switzer builds the plan. What the two of them put on a Jaguars defense in September is worth filing and looking at again in October, when there is more of it.

So why has the number not changed? Because the team that graded out last in August is the team that played Sunday, down to the personnel: the same interior defensive line, with Maliek Collins still not taking a team rep since July; the same secondary that started a safety at boundary corner; five rookies starting, one of them at center. Nobody was signed, nobody came back off a list, and none of the hard part has happened yet. These lists are pointed forward, and Sunday in Tampa is where they start being tested.

The Athletic

NFL power rankings after Week 1: our staff ballot, and the team our 12 voters could not agree on

The Athletic NFL staff · Tuesday, Sept. 15

Cleveland produced the widest spread on this week’s ballot and the flattest outcome on the page. One voter had the Browns 21st. Another had them 24th. The other ten had them 32nd. The average came out at 30.4, which was the highest number anybody drew this week, and the ordering puts Cleveland last for the second consecutive edition.

The argument in the thread ran longer than any other team’s and most of it was about Jacksonville. The Jaguars gained 218 yards, made 10 first downs and converted four of their ten third downs, at home, seven months after being installed as a division favorite. Cleveland’s own numbers are not contested: 434 yards, 8.3 a play, no turnovers. The voter who filed the 21 made the case that a 37.5-point beat against the spread is the largest single piece of evidence anyone gathered on Sunday. Ten of the 12 ballots did not move.

Yahoo Sports

NFL power rankings: The Saints are 1-0, the Lions have a defense problem, and Week 1 was extremely stupid

Frank Schwab · Monday, Sept. 14

Shedeur Sanders leads the NFL in completion percentage (83) and in passer rating (142.1). His team is 32nd on all eight of these lists, this one included. Moving on. The Browns went into Jacksonville getting 9.5 and won by 28, and the explanation on offer is that the Jaguars finished the afternoon with fewer total yards than the Cleveland quarterback threw for and played like a team that had been told the game was next week.

The roster was in plain sight in August. The offensive line got rebuilt in March, Quinshon Judkins ran for 96, DeAndre Hopkins has 1,059 career catches. No change here, and here is the honest part: if Cleveland goes to Tampa on Sunday and does that again, every person who filed one of these on Monday is going to look ridiculous in about six days. Filing it anyway.

CBS Sports

NFL Power Rankings: Buffalo jumps to No. 2 after Week 1, and I did not move the Browns

Pete Prisco · Monday, Sept. 14

I had them 32nd. I have them 32nd. They won a game and I am not moving them. My inbox has been full since about 4:15 Sunday afternoon and every one of those notes says the same thing, which is that the Browns beat the Jaguars, and I watched the Browns beat the Jaguars.

Cleveland ran for 173 on 28 carries and the Jaguars did not tackle anybody in their own building. It was a good day. A good day in Jacksonville does not get a team past thirty-one other teams on my list, and I do not rank clubs by what they did last Sunday. Ask me after Tampa.

USA TODAY

NFL power rankings: Saints soar, Steelers sink, Cardinals crater after Week 1

Nate Davis · Tuesday, Sept. 15

Five touchdowns, a single punt, zero giveaways and a 28-point win in the one building in America where the visitors are usually the ones wilting. Also true: Jacksonville, 13-4 a year ago, managed 218 yards on its own field, converted four of ten third downs and emptied its own lower bowl by the middle of the third quarter, which is the sort of afternoon that gets a coordinator asked about it on Wednesday. That is a Jacksonville result, and Jacksonville is the team that moves on this list.

No change. The schedule stops being polite on Sunday.