Friday, January 18, 2008

Team Rankings

Before last week’s Divisional Playoff games, ESPN ran a Scouts Inc. feature that ranked the remaining eight playoff teams across nine categories.

For some reason, they haven’t updated it to reflect the NFL’s final four teams so I’ve gone through and done it myself:

Categories: QB-RB-REC-OL-DL-LB-DB-ST-Coach=Total

1. Patriots: 1-3-1-1-2-3-2-1-1=15
T2. Packers: 2-4-2-4-4-2-1-3-2=24
T2. Chargers: 4-1-4-2-3-1-3-2-4=24
4. Giants: 3-2-3-3-1-4-4-4-3=27

I more or less agree with the rankings here although I’d argue that the Giants have better special teams than Green Bay (Jeff Feagles is a better punter than Jon Ryan and the Giants kick and punt coverage is certainly solid). I’d also question why Mike McCarthy is being given the benefit of the doubt as a better coach, given the fact that this is only his second career playoff game.

Even still, swapping those points between New York and Green Bay only puts New York at 25 and Green Bay at 26. That doesn’t change anything in my view since the gulf between Favre (#2) and Manning (#3) is a mile wide. For that reason, I won’t quarrel with the original rankings since it’s the divide between the rankings that matters, not the rankings themselves.

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