NFL Power Rankings Week 1: Predicting Season-Opening Standings
After a month of watching camp arms throw touchdowns to undrafted free agents, it's always a refreshing change of pace when the games start to matter in the NFL and we can begin to quantify each team's capabilities with a record.
It's less refreshing when your team starts 0-1, but that's the way the cookie crumbles for 16 fanbases.
In Week 1, there will be upsets, and there will be subsequent overreactions. Take the Indianapolis Colts' opening-week trip to Buffalo, for example. If the Bills knock off Indy, new Buffalo head coach Rex Ryan becomes a deity for a week and the Colts' perceived Super Bowl chances are shot.
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That's the haunting beauty of Week 1's unrepresentative sample size.
Here, we'll get out in front of those reactionary impulses by predicting the NFL's power rankings following the first slate of games and examining four teams that could capture your imagination in their first outings of the season.
In this list, an 0-1 record isn't the end of the world—meaning it doesn't preclude anyone from topping a 1-0 team in the rankings. But, there are only 16 games on each team's schedule, so it certainly doesn't help.
NFL Power Rankings After Week 1
| Rank | Team | Record |
|---|---|---|
| 1. | Seattle Seahawks | 1-0 |
| 2. | Indianapolis Colts | 1-0 |
| 3. | Green Bay Packers | 1-0 |
| 4. | New England Patriots | 1-0 |
| 5. | Denver Broncos | 1-0 |
| 6. | Dallas Cowboys | 1-0 |
| 7. | Detroit Lions | 1-0 |
| 8. | Pittsburgh Steelers | 0-1 |
| 9. | Philadelphia Eagles | 1-0 |
| 10. | Miami Dolphins | 1-0 |
| 11. | St. Louis Rams | 0-1 |
| 12. | Baltimore Ravens | 0-1 |
| 13. | Houston Texans | 1-0 |
| 14. | Kansas City Chiefs | 0-1 |
| 15. | New Orleans Saints | 1-0 |
| 16. | Minnesota Vikings | 1-0 |
| 17. | Buffalo Bills | 0-1 |
| 18. | Atlanta Falcons | 0-1 |
| 19. | Cincinnati Bengals | 0-1 |
| 20. | San Diego Chargers | 0-1 |
| 21. | Arizona Cardinals | 0-1 |
| 22. | Carolina Panthers | 1-0 |
| 23. | New York Giants | 0-1 |
| 24. | Cleveland Browns | 1-0 |
| 25. | New York Jets | 0-1 |
| 26. | Chicago Bears | 0-1 |
| 27. | Oakland Raiders | 1-0 |
| 28. | San Francisco 49ers | 0-1 |
| 29. | Tampa Bay Buccaneers | 1-0 |
| 30. | Jacksonville Jaguars | 0-1 |
| 31. | Washington Redskins | 0-1 |
| 32. | Tennessee Titans | 0-1 |
Week 1 Headline-Makers
New Orleans Saints (Opponent: at Arizona)
The NFC South couldn't manage to produce a team with a winning record in 2014, and the division doesn't look vastly improved heading into this season. But somebody has to win it and by virtue of uncertainty, the Saints are a strong candidate.
Jimmy Graham's offseason departure is a loss, but that doesn't necessarily mean the transaction was a drastic step back for New Orleans. The trade added former Seahawk Max Unger to the Saints offensive line, a unit that desperately needed reinforcing if 36-year-old Drew Brees is to survive 2015.
Although Graham was Brees' safety blanket, the quarterback still has a budding stud at his disposal in second-year wideout Brandin Cooks. The development of that relationship is both inevitable and dangerous.
Underachieving New Orleans takes on last season's Overachiever in Chief, Arizona, in the first game of 2015. If there is any matchup on the Week 1 schedule that could preview its two contestants' swapping of fortunes, this one is it.
Oakland Raiders (Opponent: vs. Cincinnati)
Year 2 of Derek Carr's journey to restore the family name kicks off against a team with a quarterback trending in the exact opposite direction.
Oakland fans are cautiously optimistic—or as cautious as someone who looks like this can be—that Carr is the solution to their long quarterbacking nightmare. Meanwhile, Andy Dalton is four strikes deep with Cincinnati fans, and their patience is wearing thin.
Week 1 will also be our first chance to see Carr play with his shiny new toy, Amari Cooper, after using James Jones as his primary receiver in 2014. The Raiders QB registered the 19th-most passing yards in the NFL a season ago and only threw 12 interceptions.
A win over the Bengals would be an upset for Oakland, but it's one of the more plausible upsets on the Week 1 schedule.
Tampa Bay Buccaneers (Opponent: vs. Tennessee)
Tampa Bay's season-opening meeting with Tennessee is a bubbling cauldron of hot-take stew waiting to be spilled all over the NFL.
If Jameis Winston outperforms Marcus Mariota, even by a razor-thin margin, the game will serve as instant justification for the Buccaneers' choice at No. 1 overall in the 2015 draft. If the inverse happens and Mariota leads his team to the win, all of Winston's question marks become bold and highlighted in a size-36 font.
But the real intrigue of this game is the potential for Winston to dominate in his debut. Tampa surrounds its quarterback with a better supporting cast than Mariota has at his disposal in Tennessee. If Winston's connections with Mike Evans and Vincent Jackson look polished in Week 1 and the Bucs' defense—with Gerald McCoy and new additions Bruce Carter, D.J. Swearinger and Tim Jennings—holds up, the Titans could be out of their depth.
Houston Texans (Opponent: vs. Kansas City)
The Chiefs are a trendy pick to disrupt the hierarchy in the AFC West and overtake Peyton Manning's Broncos as the division's top team. The Texans find themselves on the opposite end of a popular prognostication, with the division-rival Colts favored to cross the threshold into Super Bowl contention and carve a path of destruction through the rest of the AFC South.
With the table set in that fashion, the Week 1 meeting between Houston and Kansas City would be a perfect snow globe for the Football Gods to shake up.
Brian Hoyer is a capable quarterback for Houston. Last season, he threw for 3,326 yards with just 13 interceptions in the dysfunctional mess that is Cleveland. He has a rapidly improving DeAndre Hopkins to target and on the other side of the ball, he's backed up by arguably the best player in the game, J.J. Watt, and a supposedly healthy Jadeveon Clowney.
In the grand scheme of things, a Houston win wouldn't be earth-shattering. But it would be a blow to some of the accepted notions of early 2015 in the NFL.
*All stats courtesy of NFL.com
Danny Garrison is a member of Bleacher Report's Breaking News Team. You can follow him on Twitter @DannyLGarrison.
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