Your Football Place

For some reason, fans of football seem to love power rankings. Never mind the fact that power rankings are often personal opinion and mean nothing, fans usually take their team’s status in ESPN or Yahoo’s rankings at face value. Some find it insulting to be ranked low. Others feel that vindicated or justified. Here is my opinion of the top-five teams in the NFL right now, after four weeks. Note that I am not going to give teams with more wins an automatic spot like most rankings do.

1. New England Patriots - There really is no question about this right now. Their passing offense is so lethal that it is feasible for Tom Brady to finish the season with a 130+ passer rating and for Randy Moss to catch 25+ touchdowns. And their defense, aided by Adalius Thomas, is as good as ever.

2. Dallas Cowboys - No offense to Colts fans, but the Cowboys have been very impressive and seem to only get better from week to week. Owens is happy, Romo is consistent, and the team is undefeated. Factor in the fact that no other NFC team seems to be in their class, and the Cowboys have to be riding as high as any other team right now.
3. Indianapolis Colts - Recent injury problems and close wins are what drop the Colts from the usual spot of two to three. Having Peyton Manning surely makes the Colts contenders every year, but he can’t do it by himself. It may not be a very bold statement to make, but I doubt the team starts 9-0 this year.

4. Pittsburgh Steelers - Consider that through four games, this team has only given up 47 points. Yes they lost to Arizona, but they were also facing two previous coordinators motivated to prove they deserved the job in Pittsburgh.

5. Green Bay Packers - This is not meant as a slight to the Packers or Brett Favre. But no running game is going to hurt this team eventually. Outside of their 35-13 blowout of the Giants, the Packers have won each of their games by one touchdown or less. While their start certainly is impressive, it is not nearly as dominant as the Steelers’ has been…even when one factors in the fact that Pittsburgh has a loss and that the Packer’s don’t.

So those are the rankings. Hopefully no one is too insulted by them. The truth is, again, that these rankings are just my opinion. From now on I will revisit this issue every week.

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Over the course of the past six years, no team has faced more ridicule and has fared worse than the Detroit Lions. As a fan of the team, I know this from personal experience. Not only has our talent been mediocre, at best, resulting in many, many losses, our coaching staffs and front office have been generally incompetent. How else do you explain us having no more than six wins in a single season over this period?

But forget about Joey Ballgame being a bust or the four first-round WRs drafted over the last five years. These Lions have been, so far, pretty good. While the defense is still far from championship-caliber, the offense has clicked from the get go. Kitna and his talented receiving corp seem to having timing routes down perfectly and Roy Williams and Calvin Johnson open up the deep ball every play.

Most of all, the Lions have shown that, unlike in past seasons, they can come back from deficits and bad situations and win. Against Oakland, the team squandered a big lead before rallying for multiple scores to seal the game. Against Minnesota, the team overcame losing Kitna for a half and missing a game-winning field goal try before overtime. And verses the Bears, the team overcame three quarters of horrendous play, a back-breaking 97-yard touchdown return by Hester, and a couple of bad turnovers to win.

Three wins right now does not guarentee the playoffs or Jon Kitna’s guarentee of ten wins, of course. But the way the Lions have fought to win games they would have lost in past years is impressive. Add in the fact that the NFC seems weak, as usual, and the playoffs are not an unrealistic goal if all continues. Before we start booking playoff plans, however, remember that the team did start 3-1 in 2004 too.

But if Detroit keeps playing like this, ten wins are not out of the reach. You can reach the playoffs by outscoring the opposition and the Lions certainly have the tools to do that.

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