The Packers are first overall in CALCULATOR this week, and maybe you find that surprising. Honestly, I kind of find it surprising! You know who doesn’t? People who bet on teams to win the Super Bowl. The team with
best Super Bowl odds right now is still the Bills at +650, but the Packers are second at +700 (tied with Kansas City), they have a better DVOA, EPA, and PFF grade than Buffalo, and the Bills’ point differential is only one point better than the Packers.
But if you’re surprised, I think you’re right! Because more than anything, I don’t think there are really any great teams at all this year. Check out the RBSDM Team Tiers chart.
All you really need to know is that “upper right is good.” Being in the upper right means you have a good offense and a good defense, and there are a lot of teams sort of on the periphery, sticking to the borders of the quadrant, but only the Rams and Colts really approach any balance between offense and defense so far. More than anything, most teams in the NFL do some things well and some things poorly, and that means that on a week-to-week basis, almost any team is a bad matchup away from being upset. We’ve seen this a ton over the past two weeks, which has been murder on confidence pools nationwide. Or maybe I’m just bad at confidence pools, which is quite possibly true.
Anyway, the other big part of this whole thing is the ascendance of “weird” quarterbacks to the elite tier. It’s no surprise that Lamar Jackson (when healthy), Josh Allen, and Jared Goff are still elite, but while many thought Sam Darnold might crash and burn outside of Minnesota, he’s gotten even better. Drake Maye has jumped leaps and bounds since last year. Dak Prescott was almost exactly average last year and has been an almost MVP-caliber quarterback so far this year, while Baker Mayfield has also continues to get better in his post-Cleveland rebirth. And of course, the biggest surprise of all is that Daniel Jones is third among all quarterbacks in EPA per Play. Daniel Jones!
It’s about to be Week 7, and it’s time to start considering that some of these “flukes” like Indy and Seattle aren’t flukes anymore. And even if they are, it may be difficult to tell as it’s almost impossible to have a truly difficult schedule this season. The only thing I’m really sure of is that the Titans and Bengals are awful.
Finally, before we get to the rankings, I did want to mention the NFC North specifically because everyone has a winning record so far, and if you’re waiting for the bottom to fall out of the 3-2 Bears, please note the following.
- The next seven opponents for the Bears, before they face the Packers, are the Saints, injured Ravens (currently 23rd in Calculator), Bengals (32nd), Giants (dangerous with Dart and Skattebo, but not “good” at 25th), Vikings (19th), Steelers (9th, the closest thing to an actual good team here), and Eagles (8th, but massively propped up with ridiculous +950 Super Bowl odds, and looking pretty fraudulent).
- Caleb Williams has only thrown 3 picks, good for a 1.3% INT percentage, 10th best in the league.
- More importantly, Caleb has only been sacked on 5.92% of his drop backs. That’s a massive improvement over last year as he ranks 15th instead of second worst like last year, and is better than Aaron Rodgers.
- This is not just a function of better offensive line play. Last year when Caleb faced pressure he was sacked a ridiculous 28.2% of the time. This season, when pressured he has been sacked only 15.4% of the time. Jordan Love, who is cool as a cucumber under pressure, gets sacked on about 14% of pressures. Williams has shown real improvement.
- The Bears are still not “good” but they’re much closer to average than bad, and remember that it can take a new coach some time to have his system fully sync in.
On the other side of things, I suspect the Vikings do crash out a bit. While Carson Wentz has been better than JJ McCarthy, he’s still been sacked on 10.71% of his drop backs and 28.6% of his pressures. They have a great defense which will always allow them to hang around, but the offense will be a problem for the foreseeable future.
And with that, here’s this week’s CALCULATOR.
