And now for the cream of the crop, which now actually includes two AFC South teams.
| Rank | Team | nERD | Rec | Playoff Odds | Off. NEP Rank | Def. NEP Rank | Change |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 12 | Carolina Panthers | 2.74 | 4-1 | 65.4% | 13 | 10 | +5 |
| 11 | Pittsburgh Steelers | 2.76 | 3-2 | 56.0% | 15 | 8 | +1 |
| 10 | Buffalo Bills | 3.03 | 3-2 | 58.3% | 20 | 5 | -4 |
| 9 | Atlanta Falcons | 3.15 | 3-1 | 61.4% | 6 | 18 | 0 |
| 8 | Houston Texans | 3.35 | 2-3 | 48.6% | 12 | 7 | +5 |
| 7 | Green Bay Packers | 3.91 | 4-1 | 82.5% | 3 | 23 | 0 |
| 6 | Philadelphia Eagles | 4.37 | 4-1 | 81.8% | 5 | 16 | +4 |
| 5 | New England Patriots | 4.57 | 3-2 | 72.2% | 2 | 29 | -3 |
| 4 | Washington Redskins | 4.69 | 2-2 | 48.3% | 18 | 3 | +1 |
| 3 | Denver Broncos | 5.19 | 3-1 | 68.9% | 23 | 2 | 0 |
| 2 | Jacksonville Jaguars | 7.12 | 3-2 | 77.1% | 9 | 1 | +9 |
| 1 | Kansas City Chiefs | 8.08 | 5-0 | 96.7% | 1 | 14 | 0 |
Over the past two weeks, Deshaun Watson has completed 41 of 65 passes (63.1%) for 544 yards, 9 touchdowns, and 1 interception, helping Houston climb from 25th to 8th in our power rankings over this span.
The Houston offense is now 12th in Total NEP, which would in theory be good enough for the Texans given the strength of their defense. They may need even more from their offense, though, since J.J. Watt and Whitney Mercilus are out for the season and cornerback Kevin Johnson could also miss about a month.
Speaking of AFC South offenses, the aforementioned Jaguars have actually not been a tire fire on this side of the ball. They've actually been quite good on the ground, ranking fourth in Rushing NEP per play.
Rookie Leonard Fournette leads the league in carries and touchdown runs while also ranking sixth in Rushing NEP. His 38.53% Success Rate is around league average, but average may be good enough if the Jaguars defense continues to dominate and Blake Bortles continues to, well, not be terrible (Jacksonville is tied for 18th in Passing NEP per drop back).
Nearly all of this improvement has come from the Jaguars dropping their sack rate from 5.2% to 3.5%, while the rest has come from an unsustainably high touchdown pass rate (5.2%; nearly one percentage point higher than Bortles' career rate and a full two percentage points better than last season’s mark).
Bortles is completing a career-low 54.8% of his passes, still has an interception rate higher than the league average, and isn't making enough big plays through the air to compensate for these things -- he is only averaging 11.2 yards per completion. That's an average number, but if you are throwing a lot of picks and not completing a high rate of passes, average explosiveness doesn’t cut it.
The good news is Jacksonville's defense has been good enough to reduce the impact Bortles needs to have -- he is throwing only 27 passes per game, an average which would be the lowest of his career.