It’s way too early for the proverbial power rankings. So let’s do them anyway! Let’s overreact after two weeks and look stupid a fortnight down the road!
The top 10 after the season’s first 30 games:
1. Dallas (2-0). The offense is mostly on fire, and the D has allowed 10 points in eight quarters. BTW: I covered the Giants for four prime Lawrence Taylor seasons. Micah Parsons is the closest thing I’ve seen to Taylor in terms of being able to collapse the pocket with a bull-rush and turnstile a tackle with unblockable speed.
2. San Francisco (2-0). Flip a coin for Niners or Eagles as number two. San Francisco’s got an efficient quarterback, a team of offensive weapons as good as any team has, and a brutish defense. What a difference Christian McCaffrey makes. Plus, two big road wins to start.
3. Philadelphia (2-0). I chortled at an Eagle-fan friend who was verbally wringing his hands to me Friday. Told him his team is running it great, has a top-five quarterback who will soon strafe foes, has young road-graders on the defensive front who are the envy of the league, and has the best 1-to-53 roster in football. What’s to worry about, other than holding off Dallas in the NFC East?
4. Miami (2-0). Survive and advance. That’s the moral of the story on a crazy Sunday night in Foxboro. Nothing’s changed since Labor Day: If Tua plays 16 or 17 games, this team’s going to be a very tough out in the postseason. He drops passes into tight windows as pretty as any quarterback today, like the throw just before halftime Sunday night to River Cracraft.
5. Kansas City (1-1). Things I do not expect to last in the 2023 NFL season: Arizona, Indianapolis, and Washington outscoring Kansas City. But it’s happening now. I grade on the reality that I’ve seen in two weeks, not what I project a month down the road. And Kansas City is struggling on offense.
6. Baltimore (2-0). Injuries are biting already—they always do for the Ravens—and Odell Beckham (ankle) may be the latest. But the Ravens had lost their last three in Cincinnati by an average of 13 points and made big plays when big plays were needed all afternoon Sunday.
7. Buffalo (1-1). I thought the Josh Allen turnover-fest last Monday was an outlier. For a week, it was. Sunday was the Buffalo I thought 2023 would produce.
8. Los Angeles Rams (1-1). In the first two weeks, the Rams have outgained the best two teams in the division (or so we thought), Niners and Seahawks, by 133 yards a game. I thought this was a rebuilding year for the McVays. But this is a tough, tough team.
9. Seattle (1-1). Heck of a rebound week. Lions unveil the Barry Sanders statue and get more fired up for a home game than for any game in years—and the ‘Hawks put up 37 on them.
10. (tie) Detroit (1-1). I’m seeing the Jared Goff endgame as a one-off. The Lions are good, but the first two weeks show us they’ve got to bring their best game weekly to be a double-digit-win team in 2023.
10. (tie) Tampa Bay (2-0). Biggest deal about the Bucs so far: They’ve held two teams to 17 points apiece, and they have zero turnovers. Keep that up, or close to it, and a Wild Card home playoff game awaits.
The first two weeks have had very few stunners. Dallas is terrific. Did you see Micah Parsons bull-rush and speed-rush his way to two sacks and four pressures in the 30-10 win over the Jets? Not exactly the way Robert Saleh wanted to soup-up Zach Wilson’s confidence level. Tua Tagovailoa’s wowed us. What touch. What a symphonic relationship he has with Mike McDaniel. The Bucs might be better than the best team in an awful division. The Rams are far better than even Stan Kroenke thought. And the Bengals. The poor, 0-2 Bengals. Something’s missing here, and it might be the health of the quarterback.
Read more in Peter King’s full Football Morning in America column.
