Tuesday is NFL power rankings day in the weekly football schedule. It's the day we look at all 32 teams and put them in some kind of order that theoretically is more meaningful than wins and losses. Wins and losses, by the way, have lost a lot of value in the sports world where we are all too smart to simply accept the outcome of the games.
↵What jumps out about this week's NFL power rankings is how universally unimpressive the top teams are. We are used to having plenty of bad teams at the bottom of the rankings but normally by this point in the season there are several teams at the top that look actually look pretty good on both sides of the ball.
↵That's not the case this season.
↵The Green Bay Packers are the consensus top pick and rightly so. They are clearly the best of this crop but they are also 30th in the league in yards allowed. They went on the road and gave up 27 points to a bad Minnesota Vikings team with rookie quarterback making his first start. The combined record of their opponents is just 18-29 and their schedule doesn't get much harder.
↵The best defensive team in the league, the Baltimore Ravens, can't score enough to beat the 2-5 Jaguars. The New England Patriots are one dimensional as well.
↵Only the San Francisco 49ers have anything remotely like a balanced team and that's built on the sturdy frame of Alex Smith. Are we supposed to believe in that?
↵Maybe it's the lockout hangover or maybe it's just a cyclical thing, but this has been a highly uninspiring season of NFL football...so far.
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