NFL: Power Ranking: And the strongest team in the league is…

The Regular Season is finally here – on Thursday the Philadelphia Eagles open the new season against the Atlanta Falcons! Time for a final interim conclusion covering the entire league: Who are the closest favourites for the title? How clear is the dominance of the NFC? And which franchises are more likely to plan towards 2019? SPOX editor Adrian Franke looks at all 32 teams before the start of the new season.

Good for the Bills that they have now received something else for A.J. McCarron – one of the few good news for Bills fans in the past weeks alongside the development of Nathan Peterman. Buffalo starts with the potentially worst offensive line, the worst quarterback room and one of the weakest wide receiver corps – a very difficult mix, all the more as LeSean McCoy is still threatening a possible ban. There is no doubt that the Bills are in a year of transition, even the talent available in the secondary won’t change much. Buffalo’s focus must be on Josh Allen’s development, which could very well mean that he shouldn’t play a snap in 2018. Buffalo fans can look forward to the highly talented Tremaine Edmunds, Tre’Davious White and a very good safety duo.

The Raiders have just turned in their best player and robbed their own defense of the only real column. Of course, the young defensive tackle looked promising in the preseason – but if you go through the defense one after the other, you come out with much more questions than answers, even if the scheme under Guenther should be better. Offensively the line is to be classified rather direction than (upper) average that Penn is pulled from the left to the right side and Kolton Miller starts directly helps there rather little. So does Gruden have alternative recipes if Carr doesn’t get the ball off right away? Does Carr have answers in these situations? Can Jordy Nelson give the Raiders anything else? The impression increasingly arises that Gruden sees this team several years of the Contender status and that the mack trade was probably only the beginning of the upheaval.

Sam Darnold’s appearance in week 3 of the preseason was without question impressive and gave the jets enough to trade Teddy Bridgewater a little later. Darnold will start from the beginning and possibly start a new era – but first he will make rookie mistakes, like almost every quarterback. He will suffer from a very shaky offensive line, he will have to deal with defenses that will throw their most exotic pressure plays at him to test him and he will have his growth pains. These are normal and sometimes important, but with a view to 2018 they will also cost the jets several games – while defensively the pass rush is once again the huge problem child.

I would like to upgrade the Colts in view of Andrew Luck’s progress in the preseason – but Luck will probably need a few more weeks to get closer to his old performance level and at the same time he has so little around him. The receiver corps is outside of T.Y. Hilton a big question mark, in the backfield Jordan Wilkins will start for the time being; he showed some positive approaches, but the backfield will probably not make a real difference for the Colts. The cornerbacks are a potentially huge problem, at least the defensive front has some talented players with them. Nevertheless: Even the lucky factor is not enough to lift a Colts team (for the time being), which is otherwise in many places in total upheaval.

With all the hype that has developed around the Browns in the last weeks and months, I remain even more cautious and say: show it on the pitch! Shows when schemes, game plans and in-game coaching play a role. Neither Gregg Williams nor Hue Jackson give me too much hope – and that the Browns got Amos Jones as their special team coordinator, who had very little to show for years in Arizona, is also questionable. Cleveland has the offensive weapons with Landry, Callaway, Higgins, Njoku and returnee Josh Gordon as well as a deep backfield. The Browns have an above-average line, finally a stable quarterback, one of the best young pass rushers in the league at Myles Garrett and a generally well staffed front. Now you just have to see it all on the field.

Pass-Rush, Cornerbacks, Interior Defensive Line – the Dolphins-Defense has an unpleasant number of unclear and potentially shaky team parts at the start of the new season. This also includes the linebacker corps, in the hope that rookie Jerome Baker and last year’s second-round pick Raekwon McMillan will finally provide more stability. Miami may have problems stopping opposing offenses all year round as a result. The positive news: The offense should finally come closer to Coach Adam Gase, with Kenyan Drake as a real matchup weapon from the backfield, the impressive Mike Gesicki as a receiving tight end in the preseason, a reliable receiver weapon in Danny Amendola as a Landry replacement and Kenny Stills as Deep Threat. The offensive line should also be better.

The cowboys enter the season with a receiver corps that has some solid number two weapons – Beasley and Hurns for example, potentially also rookie Michael Gallup – but lacks a dominant receiver. This is all the more important as Jason Witten eliminates the secure short pass option and doubts about the cowboys’ scheme and play calling are still justified. Nevertheless, Dak Prescott has to take the next step – while Center Travis Frederick will be absent from the line for several weeks and Zack Martin and Tyron Smith are already weakened for the season. In other words: Dallas’ offense could have some problems – on the other side of the ball the pass rush should be able to (co-)decide on some games: Lawrence and Crawford are the clear leaders here, now Randy Gregory is also back as X-factor.

The offseason of the Bucs left me a question. One of the teams that schematically relies most on its 4-men pass rush invested heavily in the defensive line and after a completely harmless pass rush last year this was urgently needed. But it remains to be seen whether the Bucs with Vita Vea, Jason Pierre-Paul, Beau Allen, Vinny Curry and Co. have not significantly improved their run defense. In view of the problem zones in the secondary, however, a significantly improved pass rush is mandatory if the bucs don’t want to be completely dependent on their offense again. But it comes with a lot of firepower: One of the best receiving trios of the league, Peyton Barber as one of the positive surprises of the past weeks, an improved (albeit already battered) offensive line as well as Jameis Winston, who showed significant progress during the past season – but also missed the first three games closed. And then of course the question remains how much of this firepower Dirk Koetter can also transfer to the field.

Page 1: From Buffalo to Tampa Bay

Page 2: From Washington to Seattle

Page 3: From Carolina to Los Angeles

Page 4: The top group – new number 1, six clear Contender