The Ringer’s Midseason NFL Power Rankings

Under first-year head coach Joe Brady, Buffalo has kept the same machine-like efficiency that they had with Sean McDermott. Since losing to the Patriots at the start of October, the Bills have rattled off four consecutive wins and scored 30 or more points in all but one of those victories. Quarterback Josh Allen is the MVP favorite right now (despite being on pace for just 24 passing touchdowns) because he’s carrying so much of this offense on his shoulders. He’s averaging 8.6 yards per passing attempt, which is tied with Jaguars quarterback Trevor Lawrence for the league lead; he’s fourth in the league in scramble yards; and he’s essentially the best short-yardage running back in football.

The Bills are 7-1 and still have games against the Dolphins and Jets remaining on their schedule. There are some heavyweight battles coming up against the Chiefs (on Thanksgiving) and the Patriots the week after, which will be measuring-stick games for how seriously we can take Buffalo as a contender. But at least for now, all signs point toward this (still) being football’s best regular-season team.

There’s no team in the league I’m more excited to watch each week than the Jaguars. In the past month, Jacksonville has a plus-55 scoring margin. The Jaguars also have both a top 6 offense and defense by expected points added and a three-game lead in the AFC South. And more winning is on the way. Jacksonville sees the Titans twice in the next three weeks and the Giants once. There’s a good chance they’ll be running stride for stride with Buffalo in the race for the AFC’s top seed after Thanksgiving weekend, and I like their chances to ultimately get the first-round bye.

Jacksonville was set to be a top-three team in these power rankings before its aggressive approach to the trade deadline, and now the Jaguars are knocking on the door of the no. 1 spot. They’ve added defensive tackles Jordan Davis and Davon Godchaux to give them run stopping forces, and safety Jessie Bates III should help them cover for potential mismatches in the secondary. They have a complete team now, and the stage is set for them to become Super Bowl front-runners.

Since trading for defensive tackle Jeffery Simmons in late October, Chicago’s been the hottest team in the NFC. Quarterback Caleb Williams was on fire in their Week 7 win over the Patriots, and the defense dominated the reigning champion Seahawks in Week 8 and pieced together just enough stops to squeak by the Buccaneers in Week 9. Chicago is 7-2 despite Williams missing multiple weeks with a hamstring injury. And with Simmons transforming their defensive front four overnight, the Bears have jumped from an exciting team to one of the most complete rosters in football.

All that’s left for Chicago to answer is how it’ll fare in divisional competition. We haven’t had a chance to see Williams finish games against NFC North opponents, but he has four opportunities to do so in the back half of the year. And their matchup against the Lions on Thanksgiving could determine whether we were too generous with our top-3 ranking.

How San Francisco has managed a 7-1 start boggles the mind. It feels like the 49ers have had a new combination of receivers each week because of injuries, and they’ll have yet another new lineup going forward after trading for receiver Keenan Allen at the deadline. Their defense has been hit with injuries both up front and in the secondary. And running back Christian McCaffrey has been on a pitch count this season, with his fewest touches through nine weeks since his injury-riddled 2021 season.

And yet this team has thrived because of a relatively easy schedule so far—and quarterback Brock Purdy’s excellent performance. He’s third in the league in passing yards per attempt and passer rating. His 69 percent completion rate is the highest he’s had through nine weeks, and his eight sacks are the fewest. We’ll see how Purdy and this passing game holds up against the Vikings and Seahawks in coming weeks, the two best defenses at exposing any major flaws in an offense.

How often is a team last in its division at this point while still looking like a legitimate championship contender? The change in the Packers’ outlook from the last installment of our power rankings to now is staggering. Their 2-2 start had me concerned head coach Matt LaFleur was closer to landing on the hot seat than having a breakthrough. But since its embarrassing loss to the Falcons in Week 3, Green Bay’s gone 5-1 and leads the NFL in explosive pass rate. 

It’s rare that an offense can push the ball downfield as often as the Packers have without their quarterback getting beat up or turning the ball over. But Jordan Love has played like an MVP over the past month. He’ll match up against the Vikings in Week 10, which will be a perfect chance to show that he can beat the best defense in the league.

The Packers defense is also preparing for the return of edge rusher Micah Parsons, and they’ve been one of the league’s best even in his absence. With Love playing at an elite level and the Packers defense getting its best player back, Green Bay could establish itself as the best team in the NFC over the next month.

Denver’s been the most confounding team in our top 10 this year. Some weeks, the defense is so dialed in that it doesn’t matter whether the offense has any rhythm. Other weeks, Bo Nix decides that he’s ready to take more chances downfield (usually when the game’s on the line in the second half), and we get a brief reprieve from the discourse about whether the Broncos will ever win a title with him as their starting quarterback.

But most of the time, Denver has been stuck in a malaise of trying to piece together 24 points, and having that be just enough for its defense to squeeze out a win. The Broncos outlast teams just as often as they outright beat them. But I refuse to rule them out as contenders because of how tough their schedule was to start the year. Their second-half surges against the Seahawks, Chiefs, and Jaguars are proof that there’s a championship team in there. They just haven’t had much margin for error because of how inconsistent Nix and their defense have been. 

The good news for Denver is that its schedule is as easy as it gets for the next month or so, with four of the next five games against the Raiders, Dolphins, and Jets. Winning those comfortably would go a long way toward reassuring me that this is still one of the four best teams in the AFC.

We’re dealing with a common theme over the next handful of teams: they’re good, but unconvincing. I was all in on the Chiefs after their 5-0 start, even though they had some issues in pass protection and were overreliant on running back Kenneth Walker III. But their loss to the Seahawks in Week 7 was a sobering reminder that this team isn’t as close to being a buzz saw again as I’d hoped.

Still, I’m warm on Kansas City’s outlook because quarterback Patrick Mahomes is playing elite football again. No matter how good Walker is and how much he takes off of Mahomes’s plate, the three-time champion will always be the determining factor of how far this team goes. He’s not relentlessly tossing deep balls anymore—which is a result of some of the Chiefs’ roster issues at tackle and receiver—but he’s making enough magic with the pieces available to him for me to believe they’re contenders. They have a brutal stretch of games from Thanksgiving through New Year’s, but their next two matchups are against Atlanta and Arizona. Winning both of those is both expected and necessary, because the Chiefs will need to be playing their best football over the back half of the season.

The reigning champs are better than their 5-4 record suggests—they’ve already played against several opponents we can expect to see in the postseason—but their foundation doesn’t feel quite as solid as I expected. The defense is still as good as it was a year ago (possibly even better), but their offense has been totally funneled through receiver Jaxon Smith-Njigba. He’s on pace for a blistering 1,956 yards and 17 touchdowns this season, which would guarantee him another Offensive Player of the Year trophy. But he’s currently accounting for more than half of Seattle’s passing offense, and 36 percent of the team’s total yards from scrimmage. He’s totally unguardable, so I won’t complain about the Seahawks feeding him the ball, but this is no way to build a sustainable offense.

We know that Seattle’s defense will give the team a shot to win any game, but I need to see a more diverse approach on offense to get them back in the conversation as a clear contender.

Honestly, I don’t care to debate whether the Bengals are “true” contenders or not. We’ve been doing the same song and dance with them since 2021. Do they have a good enough defense to win a title? Maybe, depending on the week you’re asking. Is it a good idea for a team to rely so heavily on its quarterback and receivers? Probably not. But there’s only one question that matters: Will you let any of those issues keep you from watching the Bengals’ laser show every week?

I know my answer. Tee Higgins looks like the best no. 2 receiver we’ve seen since Reggie Wayne or Torry Holt, averaging nearly 16 yards per reception. He’s now gotten so unguardable that it makes all the defensive attention sent toward receiver Ja’Marr Chase look questionable—doubly so when you realize Chase still has 53 receptions and seven touchdowns on the year. I’m having a blast watching the NFL equivalent of the Lob City Clippers each week, and I’m hoping the next three weeks will feature them relentlessly dunking on the Steelers, Commanders, and Saints defenses.

We can talk about their championship bona fides later. For now, I’m just grabbing the popcorn.

I really wanted to see Detroit take an aggressive approach to this year’s trade deadline. The Lions offense has been humming, with quarterback Jared Goff playing as well as we’ve ever seen and running back Jahmyr Gibbs putting up video game numbers. And with just a little bit more defensive competence, the Lions could give themselves a real chance to play spoiler in the NFC.

But the deadline came and went without any major moves, which tells me they think a healthy safety duo of Brian Branch and Kerby Joseph will be enough to help them keep pace in the NFC. They may ultimately be right, but it’s not a wager I’d have been willing to make. The next month will tell us whether this defense is trustworthy, as they’ll match up against the Patriots, Buccaneers, Bears, and Falcons. If this secondary keeps those offenses from pushing the ball deep downfield, I’ll consider this team as more than just a great regular-season group.

New England’s inability to beat the best teams on its schedule has made the Patriots look more like an above-average team (with an excellent quarterback) than a team that was in the Super Bowl a year ago. They worked over the offseason to build an offensive infrastructure that doesn’t require quarterback Drake Maye to carry them every week, but that’s exactly where they’ve landed. Injuries to their offensive line, receivers A.J. Brown and Romeo Doubs, and their running backs have left Maye on an island lately. And that’s simply not enough to win each week. 

Maye’s been good over the past month, but the interceptions are still an issue (he’s tied for the league lead with 11) and we can’t expect him to dial down the aggression given that the team needs him to keep the offense afloat. The Patriots will be licking their wounds during their Week 11 bye, and then their playoff hopes will ride on a three-game stretch against the Bills, Vikings, and Chiefs.

The Texans are once again clawing their way back from an awful start to the season, going from 0-4 to 3-5 and somehow back in the AFC playoff picture. A lighter schedule certainly helped them (they beat the Titans and Chargers in the past month), but I also watched quarterback C.J. Stroud outduel quarterback Trevor Lawrence in a 34-31 win that made me believe that anything is possible for the Texans if they can just figure things out on defense.

They’ll have several opportunities to do just that in the coming weeks, as their next three opponents are Cleveland, Indianapolis, and Baltimore. I’ve given this secondary the benefit of the doubt so far this season, but it’s time to string together a stretch of play that’s more reflective of the multiple Pro Bowl and All-Pro honors given to these defensive backs.

In spite of its offense’s best efforts to lose games in the first half of the year, Minnesota got off to a 6-2 start and has a 77 percent chance to make the playoffs, according to The Athletic. And now that Minnesota’s traded for quarterback Kirk Cousins, it feels like the Vikings are beginning a brand-new season, where they still have a legitimate shot to win their division and control their playoff fate.

If Cousins can just find a way to be average, the Vikings will cruise into the playoffs without an issue. Minnesota’s expected points added on defense is only second to the Buccaneers (who’ve been helped by a few multi-turnover games), but the Vikings have the best defense I’ve watched on a snap-to-snap basis. It feels like every week defensive coordinator Brian Flores is setting a new record for blitzing, and offenses just don’t seem to have any answers for how aggressively they play. I’m excited to see how well they fare against the Packers and 49ers in the next couple of weeks.

Look at how far the mighty have fallen. In half a season, the Rams went from everyone’s presumed Super Bowl favorite to a decidedly average team with an uncertain playoff future. It seems like they barely have enough receivers to get through a practice, let alone to suit up and compete in a game. And quarterback Matthew Stafford was already having a rocky season. Now I don’t know who the hell he’s supposed to throw to even if he were in a good rhythm.

The Rams’ 5-4 start puts them in a bad spot the rest of the way, because they still have to match up against the Chiefs, 49ers, and Seahawks (twice) before season’s end. And with the NFC North as tightly contested as it is, there’s no guarantee the Rams will make the playoffs even if they go on a second-half run. Every game the rest of the way is a must-win.

The Steelers are in no-man’s-land among the playoff hopefuls. They’re too good to justify not going all in in their efforts, but not good enough to truly compete for a title. They play ugly, low-scoring games and rely on their defense to close things out in the second half. In many ways, they’re still stylistically a Mike Tomlin team. But I’m happy with the way they’re playing each week and think they can be a spoiler in the AFC.

Quarterback Aaron Rodgers is in full dink-and-dunk mode as he finishes out the final year of his career—and his receiving corps hasn’t been healthy enough to play any other way. Pittsburgh's been able to lean on running back Jaylen Warren’s career-best start to the season, averaging just under 6 yards per carry. I’ll be interested to see whether he can maintain his production against the Broncos, Texans, and Jaguars in coming weeks. Each of those defenses will offer a great test of how viable this offense is against playoff-level competition.

I feel like I’m watching some elaborate sleight-of-hand trick with the Giants. The reasons why this team is 5-3-1 somehow manage to evade my eye test each week. The same team that lost to New Orleans and needed Washington’s incompetence to escape with a tie is somehow the one that hung 27 points on the Texans and crushed the Cardinals.

What does seem to be working is the Giants’ commitment to winning in the trenches. New York’s defense has sold out to stop the run—they lead the league in defensive success rate on rushing attempts. And forcing their opponents to be more one-dimensional seems to be making their games more prone to variance. Quarterback J.J. McCarthy is thriving in that chaos. He’s taken some hard hits trying to push the ball downfield, but his connection with receiver Malik Nabers is paying off, and those explosive plays might be enough to carry this team against weaker competition down the stretch.

Who cares that quarterback Baker Mayfield has been sacked on 11 percent of his dropbacks, or that the hits he’s taking have clearly affected his play? The Bucs don’t need an efficient passing game when running backs Bucky Irving and Kenneth Gainwell have combined for over 1,000 yards on the season already—or when their defense is forcing turnovers and sacks as often as they have. 

Tampa Bay isn’t good this season, but they seem to take a painful chunk out of everyone they play. Like Minnesota, they might be able to win their division and host a playoff game without ever establishing themselves offensively. In a wide open season like this one, I find teams like Tampa charming.

Dallas just feels lost in the NFC hierarchy. They’re still firmly in the mix to win their division and make the playoffs, but the vibes around the team seem to be trending down. The last quality win we’ve seen from Dallas was their victory over the Texans in Week 4, and since then the only teams they’ve beaten are the injured Eagles and the rebuilding Colts.

Christian Parker has failed to fix their defense, and the offense has been inconsistent enough for questions to swirl about whether they should’ve traded receiver George Pickens at the deadline. I think holding the offense together was the right call and gives this team its best chance to compete in 2026. But they’ll likely have to find a way to beat out the less talented Giants in the NFC East to make the postseason.

This season feels like it's slipping away from Carolina. The Panthers have lost four of their last six games, and their last victory of note was against the Lions in Week 4, when Detroit’s defense was at its worst. Carolina’s defense had enough issues that the team fired coordinator Ejiro Evero midseason, and they haven’t gotten any better since. They also have injuries on both sides of the ball, particularly in the trenches.

Because their rushing attack is unreliable behind a banged-up offensive line, quarterback Bryce Young has been forced into a shotgun-heavy, pass-first approach. He’s actually handled the responsibility pretty well, outside of Carolina’s disaster game against the Buccaneers. But being in so many obvious passing situations means Young is taking a beating in the pocket. He’s currently third in the league in sacks taken per game, and that number probably won’t go down in the second half of the year.

Head coach Kevin Stefanski stressed that trading safety Jessie Bates was not a signal that the Falcons are calling it quits on the 2026 season, and they have enough interesting young players on their defense for me to believe him. But short of catching fire in the second half, Atlanta doesn’t have much control over their path to the playoffs. They’re 3-6 with losses to the Buccaneers and Panthers already, and the only games fans can feel confident about coming up are their matchups against the Commanders and Saints.

Winning the division is the only realistic way for them to make the playoffs, so every game in November is essentially a must-win. If contests against the Vikings and Lions go poorly, their chances of making the playoffs will totally depend on Tampa Bay bottoming out.

The Browns are much higher on this list than I’d have expected them to be—especially with Deshaun Watson under center. He’s taken more sacks than anyone in the league through the first half of the season, and most games he looks like he’s barely keeping the offense together. But Cleveland makes excellent halftime adjustments each week and hangs around in games long enough to put themselves in position to win. Three of their five wins have come from a go-ahead field goal with less than 10 seconds left, and another came via a go-ahead touchdown drive against the Panthers with less than two minutes remaining. 

They’re 5-4 with a –35 scoring margin through their first nine games, so everything about their record screams that regression is coming. But who knows, maybe they’ll keep pulling games out of their asses in the closing moments.

“Just stay alive” was the recent messaging from quarterback Lamar Jackson to his teammates, as he hopes that he can recover from a thumb injury in time to make a playoff push. But Baltimore’s just not well positioned enough to make a run at the postseason in Jackson’s absence. 

Baltimore’s offense is obviously a lost cause without Jackson, but the defense has been more concerning. They’ve allowed more than 30 points in three straight weeks and can’t seem to find the answers to solve their problems. Baltimore’s been blitzing more aggressively in the last month, hoping to force quarterbacks into mistakes before their defensive backs get beat. But the Bengals and Jaguars still diced their secondary up. With games against the Texans, Steelers, and Bengals coming up, I don’t think we can expect the Ravens to “stay alive” in the AFC race much longer. Their time might be up before Jackson can get back.

The Cardinals had a chance to trade away starters like edge rusher Josh Sweat and safety Budda Baker at the deadline, but the returns on those veterans apparently didn’t justify the losses to Arizona’s defense in the immediate future. 

While it’s not clear what Arizona was offered for those players, the Bills traded a second-round pick for safety Amani Hooker—and I’d imagine similar compensation would have been on the table for Sweat. If the Cardinals had a shot to recoup that kind of draft capital and declined, that’s poor team-building. They’re down to their third-string quarterback already, rookie Carson Beck, and he’s without receiver Michael Wilson and running back Jeremiyah Love. General manager Monti Ossenfort has had several years to evaluate this roster and see that it needs a reset, and opting against it isn’t going to win Arizona games in the present term anyway.

The Saints didn’t add much to their roster after a surprising 6-11 campaign in 2025, so regression was always on the table this season. And it looks like that’s exactly what’s happened to the Saints as they’ve lost four of their last six and needed overtime to beat the Browns.

Lack of depth has been their biggest issue, and injuries have exacerbated it. Their season may turn around as players get healthier. But games against the Bears, Bengals, and Packers loom. If New Orleans can’t pull off upset wins, their season could be over by the beginning of December.

It’s time to hand the keys over to rookie quarterback Fernando Mendoza, who takes the helm after Kirk Cousins was traded to the Vikings. What we saw of Mendoza in the preseason was encouraging—he looked like a confident passer in the pocket and seemed to be picking up the offense quickly.

He’s getting his first professional starts against the Seahawks and Broncos, a true baptism by fire, so I won’t grade him too harshly right out of the gate. What I’m most interested in is how he reacts to pressure and whether he can effectively feed the ball to tight end Brock Bowers and running back Ashton Jeanty. The fantasy football community needs Mendoza to be their hero!

Unless you’re a die-hard Commanders fan, what’s the reason to watch this team going forward? Head coach Dan Quinn hired two new coordinators to change their offensive and defensive approaches, and that’s only seemed to pan out on defense. Rookie linebacker Sonny Styles looks well on his way to becoming an elite player, and we’ve seen flashes from edge rusher K’Lavon Chaisson and their veteran-heavy defensive backfield. 

But I’m concerned about offensive coordinator David Blough and quarterback Jayden Daniels. The hope was for Blough to borrow from the Shanahan-McVay scheme and incorporate more under-center offensive looks to keep opposing teams guessing. But Washington ranks in the bottom five in rushes and dropbacks from under center, and they don’t have enough receiver talent to be spread out—especially not without receiver Terry McLaurin, who’s out for the year with a patellar tendon injury. Daniels seems to have stagnated, too. He’s still taking too many hits and scrambling too often. 

I remain a believer in Daniels’s talent and I don’t want to bail on him for having an underwhelming year with a first-time coordinator. But he needs a breakthrough in a major way, especially against some of the bad defenses (Arizona, Tennessee) he’ll see in the next month.

I sure hope running back Jonathan Taylor has his ice baths ready, because the second half of the season will be full of eight-man boxes and teams selling out to stop the Colts’ run game. Indianapolis traded away several starters in preparation for what I assume will be a long-term roster reset, but Taylor was one of the few pieces they couldn’t bear to lose without a jaw-dropping offer. 

I expect Taylor to produce no matter what. But what I’m more fascinated with is whether head coach Shane Steichen and quarterback Daniel Jones can salvage their jobs in the next few weeks. I’d imagine a few wins would go a long way toward convincing owner Carlie Irsay-Gordon to keep them around in 2027—and with no first-round pick in the upcoming draft, they don’t have a reason to tank. I don't know whether they have enough talent to make a winning effort matter, but I’ll be watching to see if we get some unexpected results.

There was no real team-building argument for keeping receiver Calvin Ridley and running back Tony Pollard around past the deadline, but I’m a little relieved that quarterback Cam Ward doesn’t have to go through the rest of the year with an offense totally stripped down to its studs. Ward’s been more bad than good this year, but I still believe that a well-built roster can get more from him than what we’ve seen so far in his career. 

I just want to see Tennessee build on their last few games. Since losing to the Texans in Week 5, the Titans have scored 24 or more points in three straight weeks and found a rhythm in the running game that minimized Ward’s responsibility. If Pollard’s 5 yards per carry over their last three games can hold up over the next month, then Tennessee has a chance to put wins on the board against the likes of the Cowboys and Commanders. That’s the kind of silver lining this franchise needs—because bottoming out would amplify questions of whether Ward should be their long-term answer at quarterback.

Quarterback Jalen Hurts is out for the season with blood clots that traveled to his lungs. And after trading defensive tackle Jordan Davis for a 2027 first-round pick, the Eagles have a surplus of draft capital that’ll make it easy for them to play out the string this year and try to position themselves at the top of next year’s draft.

As much as it pains me to say this as an Eagles fan, I have some morbid curiosity about how bad this season might get—especially for a franchise that’s never as bad as they are right now. Their bye week comes before games against the Steelers and Cowboys, which might be demoralizing blowouts. If there aren’t signs of an inspired team in those two contests, head coach Nick Sirianni may not be the Eagles head coach much longer.

Everything is broken in Los Angeles. The Chargers are the league’s only winless team so far, and they would be last in these rankings if they hadn’t been playing against a murderer’s row of opponents. Still, their season is effectively over, and they have more reason to hope for the first overall pick than to try to rally the troops.

We haven’t had a single week go by where their offense has looked anything close to effective under new coordinator Mike McDaniel, and now injuries have basically rendered the unit inoperable. Their defense has been doing what it can, but we’ve seen them fold under the pressure trying to combat the onslaught of turnovers from quarterback Justin Herbert. The most interesting thing they could’ve done at this point in the season would have been trading away their players, but they stood pat. Since they’re not making any changes, don’t go out of your way to watch them. We’ll see the Bolts in 2027.

I’m fascinated by New York’s commitment to head coach Aaron Glenn. The Jets are now 2-7 on the year and 5-21 under Glenn so far. Nobody entered the season with ideas of the Jets being a sneaky playoff team, so my surprise isn’t about him falling below expectations—but they’ve still blown chances at some galvanizing wins. Poor game management has led to a –101 scoring margin for the Jets in the final two minutes of the first half, and a –70 scoring margin in the final two minutes of the first and second halves combined. No matter how many holes exist on a roster, you can’t justify how many scoring possessions they’ve given away in key situations—or how few they’ve created on their own.

The Jets passed on trading away their young and talented players at the deadline, so Glenn has a chance to prove he can get more out of this team than he has so far. Maybe he can put together wins against teams like the Chargers, Dolphins, and Cardinals between now and Christmas, and that may be enough to get him a third year at the helm. But from my vantage point, this tenure just hasn’t worked, and there’s very little that could happen over the next couple of months to change my mind.

It was heartwarming to see the Dolphins celebrate their head coach’s first career win (and the first win of their season) in Week 7, and they’ve proven themselves to be more competitive than I expected so far. But they’re still the worst team in football, and it's hard to know how many players that are starting now will be major contributors when they’re back to being a competitive franchise again.

The only surprise that’s come so far is how many teams are set to race the Dolphins to the bottom. Miami will have to fend off the Titans, Colts, Eagles, Chargers, and Jets to secure the top overall pick in next year’s draft.