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USA Today Sports Media Group

Sport

Tim Weaver

NFL Power Rankings Week 18: Seahawks and Dolphins drop, Steelers rise

Dolphins NFL Seahawks United States Seattle Bailey Zappe Miami Tua Tagovailoa Cowboys Giants

With or without the Seattle Seahawks, by this time next week the NFL will be in playoff mode. Sunday’s loss at “home” to the Pittsburgh Steelers was devastating for their chances of making the postseason. Even worse, Seattle suffered injuries to two of their starting offensive linemen. Thanks to those two bits of bad news, we have no choice but to drop Seattle (-6) further than any other team this week in our last NFL power rankings of the year.

The Miami Dolphins are in much better shape for the playoffs compared to the Seahawks. However, they also lost in embarrassing fashion and suffered a couple of major injuries, one for quarterback Tua Tagovailoa (shoulder) and another for top pass rusher Bradley Chubb – potentially a season-ending ACL tear. Miami is down five spots from last week, the biggest drop inside of the top 10.

The team that the Dolphins got crushed by is of course the Baltimore Ravens, who remain No. 1 in our rankings and are starting to look like one of the best teams to come along in decades. They crushed Miami without Kyle Hamilton in the lineup, who’s their most-important defensive chess piece. It didn’t matter because Lamar Jackson lit up a normally-solid Dolphins defense for five touchdowns and a perfect passer rating, boosting his case in a suddenly less-crowded MVP race.

While Seattle and Miami are trending down, no team is playing more poorly right now than the Philadelphia Eagles, who spent much of the early part of the season on top of our rankings. This week Philly got upset by the Arizona Cardinals, dropping them another three spots on the list. The Eagles have now lost four of their last five games, with the only win coming over the lowly New York Giants.

By rights the Detroit Lions should probably have dropped a couple of spots thanks to their loss on Saturday night to the Dallas Cowboys. Given the circumstances though we have decided not to penalize them this week, keeping them at the No. 4 spot. Life isn’t fair, but power rankings can be – and in any case, Detroit is still a top contender in the NFC.

The middle of the pack is as crowded as it gets – with an incredible 15 teams entering this last week of the season with a record of either 8-8 or 7-9. Sorting them all out will take another bunch of games, but no matter what happens in Week 18 only one of them looks like it might actually win a playoff game.

That would be the Los Angeles Rams, who are still at No. 9 the same as last week as they had trouble dispatching the Giants. However, LA has still managed to win six of their last seven games. That makes them the definitive dark horse team in the NFC that nobody wants to face.

If there’s a similar team on the AFC side of the playoff brackets, they have not yet separated themselves from the herd. Chances are they will come out of the AFC South, though. The Jacksonville Jaguars, Houston Texans and Indianapolis Colts are all tied going into the last game of the year and none of them look like an easy out.