Week 13 is just around the corner and the last quarter of the regular season is about to begin! The third SPOX Power Ranking of the current season gives the final assessment for the playoff race: Who could improve on the Power Ranking four weeks ago? Who has to bury their playoff dream? The NFC South is particularly well represented at the top, with AFC and NFC sharing the top quartet fraternally.
Place in previous ranking: 30
There’s not much you can give Colts fans for the remaining five weeks – the injury to Cornerback Rashaan Melvin is just the latest of many personal setbacks in the Defense, which continues to be toothless in the pass rush. No team in Pass-Protection is more vulnerable, the Passing Game has increasingly less good phases or even moments than in Jacoby Brissett’s first games and in the Run Game few teams are more inefficient. T.Y. Hilton can still take over a game, just like a few weeks ago against Houston. The Colts, on the other hand, are currently massively inconsistent in almost all parts of the team, not only due to the regular break-ins in the second half of the games.
Placement in previous ranking: 29
For Dolphins fans, the current season must feel more and more like a nightmare. As a possible playoff candidate in August, the injury of Ryan Tannehill was steadily downhill. And today? The offensive line is desolate in run-blocking, the pass-defense is a huge problem not only on the linebacker level and neither Cutler nor Moore will help the offense any further. The decision to trade away Jay Ajayi has not yet made the offense more flexible – as hoped for in some cases – and the fact that Damian Williams has now dropped out due to a shoulder injury will of course not help much. The defensive front can still cause problems for opponents, the Patriots felt this on Sunday despite the clear victory. Nevertheless, the Dolphins may experience a major upheaval in spring.
Place in last ranking: 31
DeShone Kizer now regularly has some positive scenes, but it’s still hard to imagine that a head coach and play caller could give less help to his rookie quarterback about the scheme than Hue Jackson does this year. The Run Game has gotten a little bit caught up, defensively you can see more and more why Myles Garrett was a good number one pick. Generally speaking, despite some injuries (Ogbah, Collins), the front still has a lot of quality – but if, as against Cincinnati on Sunday, the run defense crumbles, the whole defence is extremely vulnerable. With Secondary, the Browns won’t win many matchups this season.
Placement in previous ranking: 24
The performance in Washington on Thanksgiving was an offensive oath of revelation. The Giants don’t have any creativity in the passing game, Evan Engram fights with drops and the running backs can’t create anything. And all this despite the fact that the offensive line has actually stabilized to some extent. New York is facing a difficult final spurt, and what you get from the Defense seems to be a miracle bag: After desolate appearances against the Rams and the 49ers, the Giants in Washington seemed to have improved against a badly beaten Redskins-Offense, but how reliable is that? For number 1 Cornerback Janoris Jenkins, however, the season has ended due to injury. The fact that McAdoo is opening up another big barrel with the dismantling of Eli Manning and we now see Geno Smith costs New York another seat. In New York, the upheaval could continue before the end of the season.
Place in previous ranking: 32
For a short time, Jimmy Garoppolo’s unplanned debut against Seattle was an unexpected one – in short, but filled with a great deal of hope. The Niners have clearly stabilized in the run game, while defensively the front line can already dominate opponents. One can see Kyle Shanahan’s handwriting flashed up again and again when the loss of Pierre Garcon is definitely noticeable. The commonality of all these individual points? It’s more like snapshots, San Francisco doesn’t yet have the quality and consistency to make all this a permanent reality. The potential, however, is – and this becomes ever clearer – definitely present in individual parts. For the time being, any further evaluation will depend on Garoppolo’s appearances as a starter.
Place in last ranking: 27
The failure of Leonard Floyd hurts a so far very dangerous pass rush and should make the secondary even more vulnerable. All in all, however, the Bears still have one of the more stable defenses in the league, but in recent weeks – excluding the game against the Eagles – the offensive line also looked better. Mitchell Trubisky already shows a respectable deep ball, but above all the short pass game and the general precision has to be improved enormously. Then the passing game will be statistically much more efficient than the current one (6.3 yards per pass, 10 touchdowns, 9 interceptions). But with their own run game, the Bears have an offensive identity, which will help the rookie in his development a lot and in combination with the front line, Chicago’s opponents can make life difficult. But the deficits are still there, and besides Trubisky’s development this means first and foremost the receiving corps, but too significant for larger jumps.
Place in last ranking: 25
The combination of a lack of pass rush and problems in the secondary is probably only comparable in Oakland. The Bucs don’t get any pressure on opponent’s quarterbacks all year round, the 15 sacks so far (League low) are just one of many statistics that confirm this. The result: Only Indianapolis allows more yards per pass (8.2) than Tampa Bay (8.1). Ryan Fitzpatrick shows the high and low you can expect from him and Mike Evans is going to crack the 1,000 yards this year despite all the problems. The bigger problem, however, is the fact that the Bucs don’t get their run game rolling at all, and they don’t have a serious downfield element in their game. After all, Winston’s comeback is on Sunday. However, the Bucs should be cautious in view of the season to date, given that this is a shoulder injury. For Demar Dotson and Ali Marpet, the season has ended a few days ago, making the O-Line more vulnerable.
Place in last ranking: 18
There’s no other way to put it: the Denver Broncos’ offense is a mess. The pass protection is desolate, the running backs make a solid run-blocking too little. The quarterback carousel spins from Trevor Siemian to Brock Osweiler to Paxton Lynch, and now back to Siemian again – indeed because Lynch is injured, his appearance against Oakland and the more than beatable Raiders Defense gives Broncos fans little hope that they have actually found the quarterback of the future in Lynch. The problem with all this is that the defense has also gone down during the course of the season. None other than the Broncos Defense has allowed most touchdown passes so far, even though the pass rush is still one of the better ones in the league. At least the Run-Defense is still part of the NFL elite, but that’s not enough because of the numerous problems in Mile High.
Page 1: From Indianapolis to Denver
Page 2: From New York to Cincinnati
Page 3: From Dallas to Carolina
Page 4: The Top 8: L. A. twice, NFC South twice – a strong leader group