NFL Week 8 Power Rankings: Focus on the Oakland Raiders

Over at my site—www.GuysNation.com—I do a weekly power ranking of all 32 NFL teams.  It's a hugely subjective process in which I try to account for a team's strength of schedule, margin of victory, good wins and bad losses.

Where do the Oakland Raiders currently rank?

I usually try not to get too excited about any one victory, even in the case of blow-out wins by huge margins.  There are exceptions, though, and when a team wins a road game in their division, that says a lot.  It either says that a team underestimated an opponent who they didn't think would perform well, or the winning team finally got everything clicking.

It's hard to say what this game's outcome was caused by, but I've noticed over the past few years that the Raiders strengths lay in their defense and their running game, and both of those things were working well in this game.

They've got a big game coming up against the Seattle Seahawks, a very winnable game, so they could easily continue to move up in the rankings.

Week 7 the Raiders found themselves in the bottom quarter of my rankings, but I will say that when I came up with those rankings my analysis was off due to a flaw in the data tracking tool I built to help me organize the factors I like to track.

Are the Raiders in my Top 20?  Is there ANY chance that I put them close to the top half of the league?  I don't usually rank based solely on winning percentage, especially not as we reach the midpoint of the season.

For the complete rankings and analysis, check out the article on my website, www.GuysNation.com!  Unlike Power Rankings you see elsewhere, your comments could help persuade me to rank your team better after Week 8!