A new season is upon us and, taking inspiration from the NFL, I’ve decided to sell a 10% stake in the weekly power rankings to our friends at a private equity firm. We’re so excited for the ability to partner with this group, which promises to treat us with all the love and care of the chain of nursing homes it operates. While we know big changes can seem scary, we promise that this strategic shift will nevur impackt the qwality of our wirk. You’ll still be getting the same old power rankings each week. But to save time for our loyal customers, we’re streamlining the process. You’ll now get the same great power rankings feeling in less time. Nearly 100% of the NFL teams will be discussed. Your favorites, like the Chicago Bulls, the Houston Red Socks and the Tennessee Tips will all be broken down like a failing Honda Accord at a scrapyard.
Welcome to the 2024 NFL season. We hope you enjoy!
1. Kansas City Chiefs
… Just kidding, by the way. They’ll have to rip the power rankings out of my cold, dead fingers. I’ll never sell. NEVER. Not even for $100.
Anyway, the season begins the way it ended. This may sound like a failure in analysis but the Kansas City Chiefs are still the best team in football and have adapted well to the Patriot Shuffle, which is a term I use for teams that have to undergo a constant, surgical revision to evolve alongside their quarterback. At this moment we don’t know what the re-signing of Juju Smith-Schuster means and whether it has any corollary to an impending Rashee Rice suspension. This matters in a universal sense but not in a week-to-week sense, where Patrick Mahomes is still the ultimate sledgehammer who trumps an otherwise talent disadvantage.
After a quiet free agency in terms of outside additions, the Chiefs wisely spent time retaining their most important role players. Defensive coordinator Steve Spagnuolo and Mahomes, it would seem, are the two who are shouldering the heaviest burden when it comes to navigating some of the more significant losses or general lack of veteran upgrades.
2. Detroit Lions
The Sports Illustrated preseason Super Bowl favorite Lions come in at No. 2 on our power rankings. We can discuss a lot about this roster but, for me, the strength is on the line of scrimmages. This is a decidedly unsexy way of talking about a team with Amon-Ra St. Brown and Jahmyr Gibbs, among many others. But D.J. Reader, Alim McNeill and Aidan Hutchinson as a combination are way more exciting to me. The Lions are going to absolutely wear teams down by forcing them into obvious passing situations which will lessen the stress on their still-developing secondary. They are also going to continue to be one of the most dominant possession teams in the NFL. Last year, the Lions held onto the ball for more than 31 minutes per game. The Browns, for reference, were the only club that broke the 32 minute barrier last year.
3. Green Bay Packers
I recently predicted all 272 games for the upcoming NFL season and one part of the exercise that surprised me was how confident I am in the Packers and how their schedule seems to lend itself to a run at the NFC North title. It’s always dangerous to assume a quarterback is going to progress in a linear fashion and, the truth is, we don’t know whether Jordan Love was just riding a heater toward the end of last year or if he truly is an elite, top-10-caliber starting quarterback in the NFL. I would say, based on preseason observations and in watching Love’s spot appearances, that he certainly has the ability to be special. Hence, a big swing of confidence early in our power rankings column.
What I love about this team is how it’s set up offensively. All the receivers are schematic fits and stylistic complements. The running game goes hard. The offensive line is athletic and the defense is going to get another fresh set of eyes in new DC Jeff Hafley.
4. Cincinnati Bengals
NFL prediction makers could all be doomed by our desire to see Joe Burrow return to the top of the NFL. I know that life watching this game is better when he’s healthy and torching Cover 2. Based on my initial 272-game projection, I have Cincinatti winning the AFC North and squeezing into the No. 1 seed just above the still-superior but somewhat slogging Chiefs. Like Green Bay, it’s a big swing, and we’re planning on a lot of factors hitting at once. Burrow’s return is one. The realignment of the defensive line is another. Keeping Ja’Marr Chase happy is important, though Chase has been as amenable a hold-inner as I’ve seen. I would have pegged last year as the peak of the Bengals' powers in terms of a “window” but I think we’ve forgotten how good they can be at full power.
5. Los Angeles Rams
If we reorganize our thinking on the Rams’ defense from “unit trying to recover from the loss of Aaron Donald” to “collection of very exciting, young players,” it feels less irresponsible to have them ranked in the top five of our early power rankings. Like the Packers, I love how their receiver room is organized. One through four, the Rams might have the strongest room in the NFL. The absence of a true “alpha” is more than mitigated by four really strong wideouts who understand the offense and are willing to block and get themselves on the same page as their heady quarterback.
6. San Francisco 49ers
We try to shy away from the narrative here, but it’s hard not to slightly downgrade a team that just lost the Super Bowl in heartbreaking fashion and then went for more of a budget-conscious route to free agency the following year to mitigate what will be an astronomical deal for a quarterback they may not be 100% sure on while also pacifying two very unhappy and critical players under contract. The 49ers will still win games with that almost automatic precision, but it’s also fair to wonder if they will also have some prolonged periods of struggling or, at the very least, trying to survive with a roster that is aging and a league that is catching up to what they do best.
7. Buffalo Bills
Josh Allen MVP season incoming? I don’t know if the Bills offense will be beautiful as it sorts through the loss of Stefon Diggs and, very generally, the challenge of getting people open in new and different ways. But I think this could be Allen’s defining season in that, if healthy, so much weight will be on his shoulders and he could spend the year dragging people on his back to the end zone. I’m on the record as saying we’ll see new receiver stars emerge in Buffalo such as Khalil Shakir. If James Cook gets going, the Bills can roll to an AFC East title.
8. Philadelphia Eagles
It’s a strange time to be an Eagles fan. You can look at this season in abject terror, believing that it’s the unceremonious end to a great run, or you can look at the arrival of coordinators Vic Fangio and Kellen Moore with some degree of confidence. I’ve chosen the latter, clearly, though I don’t see an average season on par here in either direction. This experiment either works and the Eagles win the division, or it looks like the complicated chaos of the end of Doug Pederson’s regime where too many cooks in the kitchen thwarted the team’s post–Super Bowl LII rebuild.
9. Houston Texans
I feel like a broken record at this point, but I’ll say it one more time: The Texans are going to compete for the division and, in my mind, just slightly edge out the Indianapolis Colts. However, we need to remind ourselves just like we did in the Packers’ blurb that QB progress is not linear. C.J. Stroud is going to get the master’s course now via OC Bobby Slowik and he’s going to have to elevate his game in a significant way. Defensive progress is also not linear, and the Texans will not play as many backup QBs as they did last year. Take note: This is not the same thing as me saying they are not good. It’s me saying they are going to have to play much better for the same results.
10. Baltimore Ravens
I’m not quite sure what to do with Baltimore this year. There is a slightly modified Jets-like component to the team where, if the Ravens succeed, we won’t be surprised. Of course they did, they have a lot of great players. But if they fail … of course they did. Replacing three starters up front is difficult. Arming Lamar Jackson with a post-prime Derrick Henry is not a salve. And so on. My excitement over the Bengals shouldn’t temper the fact that this team could very easily, and may very easily, win the division again.
11. Dallas Cowboys
Dalvin Cook! All right! Nothing to see here, right guys?! Jerry Jones’s misguided belief that contractual pressure creates greatness is straight out of some ridiculous Animal Farm fantasy. For some people that might be true, but for the lot of people angling to take care of their families, it’s a useless and offensive ploy to mask larger issues. It’s frustrating because Dallas stumbled into a handful of players who will make this team better than it should be. Jones wanted Connor Cook. The Broncos and Raiders drafted the wrong receivers ahead of CeeDee Lamb in 2020. And the Giants have a phobia of drafting linebackers in the first round, so they traded back with the Bears and left Micah Parsons on the board. This raft will still float by virtue of these coincidences.
12. Pittsburgh Steelers
Too high on the Steelers? Too high on the Steelers. If I’m going to go down with a coach, I’m going down with Mike Tomlin. I’m also going to go down with a schedule that is frontloaded with some winnable games and backloaded with AFC North affairs. Initially, I thought this schedule was a hellscape but now I’m more inclined to believe that if the Steelers stay healthy, the team could romp through the back end of its schedule, given that quarterbacks Lamar Jackson and Deshaun Watson have struggled at times to maintain health toward the end of the season. I think there will be a seamless baton pass between Russell Wilson and Justin Fields at some point, and we’ll see Pittsburgh take on a very different vibe offensively when it happens.
13. Miami Dolphins
I’m warming back up to the Dolphins; that’s how you can tell the offseason is too long. How much so remains to be seen, but we know the foundation of a highly successful offense is there. The adjustments made to presnap motion rules will affect this team, but Mike McDaniel will find a way. The bigger challenge is going to be masking Tua Tagovailoa’s issues when a play slides off schedule. There were games at the end of last year when he played freer and certainly games before Tagovailoa’s confidence was torpedoed by Brian Flores that he played that way.
14. Cleveland Browns
Count the Browns, along with the Jets and Ravens, among the teams with the biggest potential variances. We have no idea what Deshaun Watson is going to look like, but at this very moment the team has four quarterbacks on its depth chart. There may still be a trade swung before the start of the season but if not, how horrifying is that for a team that paid Watson the most significant contract at the position in NFL history? In my final projections, I had the Browns sneaking into the playoffs at 9–8, but I think that’s ultimately playing it too scared. Either Watson rolls, Nick Chubb comes back midseason and is a force, the defense is tough as nails or the emergency protocol gets enacted rather quickly.
15. New York Jets
This now concludes the portion of our list where we discuss ad nauseam the two very different possibilities for a boom-or-bust team with the final product ultimately similar to a drunken fireworks show at a Kid Rock tailgate. We either have everyone celebrating, lights flashing, worlds changing, car horns honking, or a lot of people on actual fire. A frantic rush to a trough of dirty water to extinguish the flames.
Anyway, Mike Williams started doing team drills last week, which is a good sign. I’d have thought the Jets would have made a move to bolster the receiving corps on cutdown weekend, but Davante Adams remains in Las Vegas for the time being. The years the Jets have been the most successful, they have embraced the best and worst parts of being the Jets. Here’s hoping they can loosen their grip a little and enjoy the ride.
16. Indianapolis Colts
Absolutely feisty, the Colts are a team that will continue on last year’s path as one of the least enjoyable to play against in the NFL. Shane Steichen will make it work with Anthony Richardson. Ultimately, our concerns about Richardson taking Cam Newton–style knockout shots are absolutely valid. No matter anyone’s size, there is no player in the NFL who can escape the brutality of the game. Still, I cannot help but think about Laiatu Latu and DeForest Buckner absolutely wrecking games this year. This could be one of those seasons where GM Chris Ballard’s traits-forward selection process hits the big time.
17. Tampa Bay Buccaneers
From Wikipedia: The Tampa Bay Buccaneers (colloquially known as the Bucs) are a professional American football team based in Tampa, Florida. The Buccaneers compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member club of the league’s National Football Conference (NFC) South division. The club joined the NFL in 1976 as an expansion team, along with the Seattle Seahawks, and played its first season in the American Football Conference (AFC) West division.
This concludes our strictly fact-based coverage of the Buccaneers, a new feature in the power rankings this year which will help us avoid upsetting a fan base we ran afoul of in 2024.
18. Chicago Bears
I don’t know if calling the Bears a surprise playoff team is all that interesting a take. We should be saying this. They took the time to build out their roster and Caleb Williams—surprise—looks like a total superstar. Of course, we’ll need to see Williams operate the same way in the regular season. I don’t see there being much of a learning curve, but I also said that about impressive rookie preseasons from Bryce Young and Trevor Lawrence as well. Matt Eberflus has handled the rigors of a very difficult job and survived to this point because he is a brilliant defensive mind. Now, it’s time for that side of the ball to take the reins while Williams acclimates to NFL life.
19. Los Angeles Chargers
My concern has never been about Jim Harbaugh. He’s going to be great at this job. My concern was never Justin Herbert. He’s obviously already pretty great at his job. My concern is the roster that was left behind in Los Angeles. There’s a middle tier of this roster that cannot be turned over in one offseason, which is why my initial preseason projections have the Chargers inching toward a 9–8 season. This isn’t befitting of the star coach and QB combo, but it recognizes the reality of why the job was open in the first place.
20. Arizona Cardinals
I think fringe playoff contention or even a wild-card spot is absolutely in the cards for Arizona this year. This roster is very young and very talented. Last year around this time I was prewriting Caleb Williams to Arizona content and discussing a Kyler Murray trade. Jonathan Gannon was trying to tell us that he saw a quicker rebuild but the cynical among us (me!) refused to listen. Well, attention has been grabbed. The NFC West is more up for grabs than it has been in years. Let’s see what the Cardinals can do.
21. Atlanta Falcons
I fear I’ll be shouted down by Falcons fans for saying this, but the worst-case scenario for this roster is the 2018 Giants. Remember all of us wondering how they could lose with a skill-position corps that good? Odell Beckham Jr., Sterling Shepard, Saquon Barkley and Evan Engram all on one roster … who is going to stop these guys?! Well, apparently, 11 teams were. And did. We cannot let our complete and total picture of what the Falcons could be cloud our judgment of what they currently are.
22. Jacksonville Jaguars
Ditto for the Jacksonville Jaguars. There’s just something I can’t fully buy into yet, and it’s strange that I’m most excited about the turnover on defense for a team that has Trevor Lawrence. I’ll maintain that Doug Pederson & Co. were the right people to take this job at the time, but there needs to be another evolution here. Just not being Urban Meyer isn’t enough anymore. Like the Chargers and Justin Herbert, it’s hard not to feel like a window has been missed and we should have gotten more than just one electric playoff comeback out of the whole thing.
23. Minnesota Vikings
Who is here for a really good Sam Darnold season? I think Darnold entered the league as a flawed player, was hurled to the wolves despite a well-meaning coach who tried to protect him and ended up bouncing around. Is this his Baker Mayfield glow-up campaign? I have the Vikings finishing 7–10 this year, but it won’t be a season doomed by the offense. It’s always uncomfortable when a franchise has some of the right pieces in place but not others. There seems like a clear disconnect between what Kevin O’Connell wants and what he’s getting, though for now he’s making chicken salad out of the ingredients (I happen to like chicken salad).
24. New York Giants
Depending on what happens with the Eagles and the Cowboys, I withhold some optimism that the Giants can make a run at second place in the division and possibly find themselves in a wild-card game. I have them currently projected for eight wins—with or without Daniel Jones at the helm—with my main questions being the efficacy of this offensive line and the maturity of the secondary. These are big, big questions but the Giants also have new coaches for both units.
25. Seattle Seahawks
The Seahawks’ offense was a blast to watch this preseason. I’ve been talking the team up even though I ultimately have it winning six games. Am I trying to have my cake and eat it too? Sure, who wouldn’t? This is the ultimate media cop-out so I’ll rephrase it in a way that isn’t: The Seahawks could absolutely thrash people this year and end up being one of the most stunning teams in the NFL, thus, making me look like a doofus.
26. Washington Commanders
Ditto to the Commanders whom I don’t envision having as high of a ceiling as the Seahawks due to their personnel but do have as high of a ceiling offensively. The opportunity for Jayden Daniels to rip it up in his first year and make a run at Offensive Rookie of the Year is there. I love how he was connecting with some of his lower-rung wide receivers during camp and hitting tight-window throws in which he had to place the ball perfectly.
Daniels is going to move the ball even when the offense is not functioning on the strength of its game plan, if that makes sense. Even when the Commanders’ entire offense is not clicking and manipulating the defense, Daniels is going to get it done.
27. New Orleans Saints
Defensively, New Orleans can still hang with almost anyone (if healthy). I don’t think that’s changed, nor has Dennis Allen’s ability to call a really good game. So, we’re left in this nebulous realm where two things need to happen: Derek Carr needs to take comfortably to the Kyle Shanahan offense and become more of a deadly boot-action player. Carr’s play-action numbers, at least in the Pro Football Reference library, have spiked and gone down over the years, and I think some of his success is clouded by having a player like Davante Adams the year Carr threw his most play-action passes (at least as far back as the site’s data goes).
The second thing that needs to happen? This offense needs to develop an identity with its set of playmakers that can dictate how defenses respond to them. That starts with Carr, obviously, but also places a heavy burden on all the Saints’ playmakers.
28. Tennessee Titans
The Titans will be incredibly fun. Brian Callahan is a loose personality and will gel wonderfully with Will Levis, whom I imagine has a great deal of pent up wildness he’s prepared to unleash on the NFL. I imagine a handful of big three- or four-touchdown weeks, along with some weeks that … don’t look like that. It’s O.K. The Titans would not have pulled the plug on the Mike Vrabel era if they didn’t feel they were inches away from deep playoff contention. There is going to be an adjustment period here but, along the way, a period that I think will legitimize why they were so hyped about Callahan as a play-caller.
29. Las Vegas Raiders
Gardner Minshew II and Davante Adams could be a fun pairing, though Adams doesn’t seem all that excited about it, at least according to his friends and surrogates in the media. I, for one, still think a trade is possible, though I’m basing this only on being a general manager with no attachment to the Adams trade whatsoever and seeing the need for more ammunition in the draft and the advantage of not playing with a malcontent.
30. Denver Broncos
I have seen the Broncos called sneaky and underrated, but I think that is merely a symptom of the offseason being too long. If you stare at any team long enough, you can make the case that it’s going to be great or, at the very least, highly functional. Then, when live bullets start flying, we’re throttled back to reality. I like Bo Nix a great deal, and he improved drastically from his first to second preseason start. I wrote about how much his experience is going to help him, but I still wonder about the total level of support he’ll receive and what is there offensively to buoy him.
31. New England Patriots
Earlier this offseason, I predicted that Drake Maye, not Michael Penix Jr., would make the fewest number of starts among the rookie first-round picks. Of course, J.J. McCarthy is now going to be that quarterback by virtue of a season-ending injury. McCarthy removed, though, I am sticking to the take I had immediately after the Patriots took Maye: The roster is not good enough to support Maye, and he shouldn’t play until it is. Starting Jacoby Brissett is the right move. There’s not a lot of fun for a fan base that has to focus on incremental week-to-week improvements along the offensive line, but it is the pragmatic approach. Kudos to the organization for getting behind this.
32. Carolina Panthers
I’m calling it: The Panthers will be this year's Cardinals. They’ll be in a lot of games, they’ll be incredibly competitive, and while they won’t make the playoffs, they will beat at least one or two of the teams that do. I don’t know what else you want from a roster that was so incredibly mismanaged for the past five years. Dave Canales has the patience and the positivity to churn through the weeds.
This article was originally published on www.si.com as Final Preseason NFL Power Rankings: Where Every Team Stands Before Week 1.
