Another week goes by, and another set of lists come out. That means it's time for me to fire up Excel and start analyzing where all 32 teams in the NFL stand.
The story of this week is "jumping and falling". Tons of teams are jumping up in the rankings (Texans, Bears), while others are falling fast (Cowboys, Vikings).
Notable Quotes
Because this is a Chargers blog (and I'm a Chargers fan), I tend to focus on what people have to say about the Chargers. Here are a few notable quotes I've gathered.
Fox Sports
While the absence of starting WR Vincent Jackson continues to be magnified, the issues for the Chargers really are on the defensive side of the ball.
Did he not watch the game this past Sunday? -- Ed
USA Today
Unfortunately for [the] AFC West, [the Chargers'] Week 1 loss looks aberrational.
Pro Football Talk (Mike Florio)
Maybe the Chargers think that turnovers will sell tickets.
Sports Illustrated (Don Banks)
The Chargers won impressively at home against Jacksonville and still managed to fall a couple notches. Sorry about that, Bolts. These things have a way of working themselves out in time. San Diego stays on the West Coast this week, at Seattle. In fact, the Chargers don't venture further east than the Central time zone until a Thanksgiving weekend trip to Indianapolis, and won't play a game on the East Coast this year. I read that as a very good development for Norv Turner's streaky team.
Make the jump to see the charts.
Subjective Average
Observations
- Fox earns this week's LOLWUT award.
- Even after routing the Jaguars in Week 2, the Chargers actually dropped spots from last week in several lists.
- Three lists now have the Chiefs ahead of the Chargers.
- After two weeks of play, the Texans have supplanted the Colts as the top team in the AFC. With the Cowboys falling quickly, looks like Texas has a new team to rally behind.
- If the Steelers are really this good without Big Ben, they'll be scary once he's back.
- The 49ers aren't getting much love for almost beating the Saints.
Subjective Standard Deviation
Observations
- It's no surprise the Saints and Bills are the most consistently-ranked team. When you're at either end of the spectrum, you don't really have much room to move.
- What is interesting is how much agreement there is about the Texans and Packers.
- On the other end of the spectrum, the Vikings and Cowboys are all over the map. People don't know how bad they really are yet. Same thing with the Chiefs and Buccaneers, but for the opposite reason, a lot of people are having trouble believing.
- The Chargers are actually towards the middle of the pack as far as consistency.
Objective Average
Observations
- The Packers and Steelers really are good.
- You know who are really bad teams? The Lions and Raiders and Rams, oh my.
- Chargers are, well, okay. Not great (yet).
Objective Standard Deviation
Observations
- Panthers and Packers, both teams living up to their potentials (albeit at opposite ends of the spectrum).
- Wow, the Football Outsiders models are way down on the Texans, and way up on the Cowboys. Mind you, I'm using the DAVE rankings, which right now takes into account 25% actual play and 75% pre-season projections.
Overall Average
Observations
- Well that certainly changes some things. Based on these rankings, look for a Packers/Steelers Super Bowl.
- Interesting that the Saints are now #3.
- Still, the Raiders, Lions and Rams bringing up the rear.
- Chargers positioning doesn't change much still.
Overall Standard Deviation
Observations
- Packers: still extremely consistent.
- It seems to be very easy to pick out which teams are the worst.
- The Texans would actually have been one of the more consistently-ranked teams, but thanks to Football Outsiders mucking everything up, they're now the least-consistent.
- Chargers are exactly in the middle of the pack. So essentially, the jury is still out on them.
Difference in Average
Observations
- Again, FBO is skewing the results. Without FBO in there, the Texans are actually right in line with their Subjective and Objective averages.
- Conventional Wisdom for the Chargers has them as slightly better than their objective rankings.
- Oh those poor Falcons and Bills, under-performing their objective expectations by far.