Just because something needs to change doesn’t mean it will. After doing these Power Rankings for 11 weeks now, I can say with confidence that there are not a great deal of good football teams available. In fact, if the Super Bowl champion doesn’t come from within the top eight on this list, I would be incredibly stunned. There is a very small middle class in the NFL of teams that could ebb either way and a massive swath of the NFL that we would love to relegate out of existence (if there are no NFL clubs in New Jersey how are television broadcasts going to show us photos of the 45-minutes-away Statue of Liberty?).
I’ll have more thoughts on the long-term consequences of this as we inch closer to next week’s slate of games but for now I’ll say this: Don’t be surprised if what we saw from the Lions on Sunday against the Jaguars becomes more commonplace. The war is on between teams that are willing to build the right way and teams that would be just as happy getting “roasted” by Stephen A. Smith every Monday morning.
