Power ranking the next 10 years in the NFL (17-32)
Offering up power rankings for the NFL season, as I did Monday, is half an exercise in evaluation, half an exercise in fanfiction. After all, you find me an analyst who correctly forecasts every team’s record at the start of a season, and I’ll find you a wizard with a lightning scar on his forehead. It’s a good sorting technique, and a valuable exercise in identifying the good and bad, but it’s also a fair amount of guesswork.
That’s the case for a one-year power ranking. So imagine that exercise over a decade. It’s even more guesswork, but it’s also a practice in evaluating current state, but also in the solid foundation a team has in young players, smart front office, etc. You obviously have to weight the present most heavily in this little game, but you’d rather have, say, Deshaun Watson as your quarterback than Drew Brees, but also Sean Payton than Bill O’Brien. So it’s also an exercise in balancing it all.
Inspired by a throwaway line in a recent The Ringer NFL podcast, today and Wednesday I’m going to attempt to power rank the 32 teams by total win total over the next 10 years. Because I’m a masochist.
(Tiers 3 and 4 — Teams 17-32 — are below. Check back Wednesday for the top two tiers. Also, I’m giving both the teams’ projected win totals over the next decade — 17-game schedule, presuming a full season in 2020 — and those wins prorated over a 16-game season for the sake of comparison.)
The last 10 years
These are the win totals over the last decade:
Unsurprisingly, the Patriots sit along at the top. But then after that, there are six teams within six wins in the next tier, and it tiers itself off pretty well most of the way down, until the Buccaneers/Jaguars/Browns just destroy things at the bottom. But the main takeaway here is that there aren’t going to be massive differences from one team to the next. The Panthers have 78 wins over the last decade. The Bengals have 77. That’s a difference of (math!) 0.1 wins per season. If I had conducted this exercise before the 2010 season and had the Bengals slightly ahead of the Panthers, technically I’d have been wrong, but as long as they were close, who cares?
That’s how to read this. I’ve divided it into tiers, but that’s more for ease of reading than anything. Really, just read the range where a team falls. I’m not anything like positive that the No. 25 team will have fewer wins than the No. 24; I’m pretty certain it will have fewer than the No. 4.
Tier 4: The Bottom 8
32. Washington
The Washington football team could turn things around in a hurry, given a new coaching staff, a young quarterback, and the fact that they cut ties with Bruce Allne. But Dwayne Haskins did not give the impression in Year 1 that he could be the long-term solution here, and if he isn’t, it could be a few years before the team gets squared away again.
10-year win projection: 61 (57 prorated)
31. Carolina Panthers
I want to like the David Tepper regime, I just hate what this offseason has indicated. There’s no sense of direction. Are they Tanking for Trevor? Then why splurge on Teddy Bridgewater, why sign Robby Anderson, why extend Christian McCaffrey? Are they trying to contend? Then why not even look at the defense until the draft, why trade away Trai Turner? I just feel like this is a team that has no idea what it wants to be right now.
10-year win projection: 65 (61 prorated)
30. Jacksonville Jaguars
Every time the Jaguars seem to be figuring things out, they do crazy stuff and disabuse you of that notion. Like, the 2017 team was good! They spent big money on the defense and succeeded despite a garbage, garbage quarterback situation. So instead of improving the quarterback in any way at all, they just … ran it back. They extended Bortles. There was literally no one this side of Jason Mendoza who thought Bortles was the answer, but they gave him a three-year deal before the 2018 season and then cut him before 2019. It was ridiculous, and it’s just an indication of how this team hasn’t figured it out yet.
10-year win projection: 66 (62 prorated)
29. Chicago Bears
I could write a couple sentences to make this point, or I could just like to a tweet:
The Bears are following the footsteps of a team I listed already, which is not a strategy I would advise. Look real hard at the Bears roster. How many people on it do you think could legitimately argue for a spot on its next good team? Khalil Mack, sure, probably, though he turns 30 next year. Roquan Smith, probably. Eddie Jackson. Allen Robinson? Even he’s a long shot. Maybe Anthony Miller? I mean, I need to stop this blurb now before I rank them lower.
10-year win projection: 68 (64 prorated)
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28. New York Jets
I could be wildly wrong here. If Sam Darnold takes strides, if the whole new offensive line is worthwhile, there are the pieces here for the Jets to be turning the corner (which my diehard-Jets-fan brother would love). But there are still huge holes, and the biggest hole is … how can you possibly believe in Adam Gase as the head coach going forward? I will readily admit to perhaps too much pessimism here, but the Gaseness of it all scares me off.
10-year win projection: 69 (65 prorated)
27. Los Angeles Rams
Sometimes you sell out for a title, and that’s tough in the long run, but hey, flags fly forever. And sometimes you try to sell out for a title, and it doesn’t work out, and that really sucks, because lack-of-flags don’t-fly forever as well. The Rams came up just short in the Super Bowl a year ago and then tumbled last year. Now, the team is without a first-rounder for 2021 (which will make it five straight years without a first-round pick since taking Jared Goff first overall in 2016). The offensive line is old, expensive, and deteriorating. The defense has taken a step back and lost Wade Phillips. The Rams popped, but from here it doesn’t look like it will be a sustained pop.
10-year win projection: 71 (67 prorated)
26. Pittsburgh Steelers
How much more can you really count on from Ben Roethlisberger? You either consider him having an entirely missed 2019, in which case we haven’t really seen him in almost two years, or you credit him for the two games he played last year, in which case he was terrible the last time we saw him. And we saw last year that, for all the goodness of that defense, the offense sans Roethlisberger, Le’Veon Bell, and Antonio Brown is lacking more than a little. If the Steelers stumble into their next long-term answer at quarterback after Roethlisberger moves on, this might be an underbid. But there are suddenly huge question marks in Miami.
10-year win projection: 72 (68 prorated)
25. Las Vegas Raiders
I guess I’m intrigued enough by the steps the Raiders are taking, finally not getting “every old guy” (although Henry Ruggs was at best my No. 4 receiver in this year’s draft class and they took him first), but at the same time, Derek Carr is still the team’s quarterback, and Jon Gruden is still the team’s head coach/super-in-charge guy, and those aspects of the team do not excite me. And Gruden will be what he is for a while yet. I don’t know, if you told me the Raiders become perennial contenders any time soon, I’d be surprised.
10-year win projection: 73 (69 prorated)
Tier 3: Bad but not miserable
24. New York Giants
If Daniel Jones turns into the Giants’ long-term answer, this rank could be way off. But there were more than enough concerns about his pedigree entering the league and his first year that I’m not convinced. The Giants have some interesting pieces on the roster, but there are some definite negatives (starting with the GM’s office) that make me push them down.
10-year win projection: 74 (70 prorated)
23. Tampa Bay Buccaneers
Like the Rams above, the Bucs have basically sold out to win now or soon — Tom Brady and Rob Gronkowski aren’t going to be floating around in the locker room four years from now, let alone 10. Bruce Arians said his last job was his last job before coming back for this job; he’s not going to be around in a decade either. So as much as you have to like the Bucs for 2020 (and the team does have genuinely good pieces on both sides of the ball who are young), you have to worry about the whole thing falling apart when the current crew ages out.
10-year win projection: 76 (72 prorated)
22. Houston Texans
This is 100%, completely, no-other-thing-involved a “Deshaun Watson is good” ranking. If you swapped Watson out for, I don’t know, Nick Foles or Teddy Bridgewater or Ryan Tannehill, the Texans would be in the bottom tier, and near the bottom of it. For all the decentness of Bill O’Brien as a head coach (and he is decent!), he’s just so bad (from my perspective at least) as a GM that it’s hard to give the Texans much more credit than this. And man, once they have to start paying him real money (soon!)? I need to stop writing this blurb before I lower them.
10-year win projection: 77 (72 prorated)
21. Atlanta Falcons
How long can Matt Ryan be Matt Ryan? He’s not the best quarterback in the league and never has been, but he’s always been more than good enough that the Falcons haven’t had to think about a replacement. On the other hand, he’s 35 in two weeks and just had his second-lowest passing yardage since 2011, with his most interceptions in four years. I’m not saying he’s nearing the end, but he’s closer to it than he is to his beginning. Add in a 31-year-old No. 1 wide receiver and a running back who just got released from his old team, plus a defense that hasn’t been good since the Millard Fillmore administration, and the back half of the coming decade could be rough in Atlanta.
10-year win projection: 78 (73 prorated)
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20. Green Bay Packers
Like the Falcons, the Packers have a quarterback who is still *good*, but the question of exactly how good he still is is an open one. Aaron Rodgers turns 37 in December, and while Davante Adams is younger than Julio Jones, he’s also not as good as him. (Did you know Adams only has one career 1,000-yard season?) And then there’s the direction. In a vacuum, you can easily explain the draft picks spent on Jordan Love, A.J. Dillon, or Josiah Deguara. But the three of those put together, combined with a lack of any receiver help? It just screams a team with no direction, or at least a wrong one. That doesn’t bode very well for the next 10 years.
10-year win projection: 78 (73 prorated)
19. Tennessee Titans
Four quarterbacks in Titans history have passed for even the relatively modest total of 3,500-plus yards. Three of them were named Warren Moon (in 1989, 1990, and 1991), with Matt Hasselbeck in 2011 the fourth. Ryan Tannehill’s total of 2,742 yards in 12 games last year would have prorated to 3,656, so there’s that. On the other hand, Tannehill turns 32 in July and was one of the league’s worst quarterbacks his last few years in Miami, so are we really counting on him as the long-term solution in Tennessee? I’m skeptical.
10-year win projection: 79 (74 prorated)
18. Minnesota Vikings
Like the Bears earlier, who on the Vikings are you relatively sure will be on the team the next time it’s very good? Dalvin Cook is excellent, but he’s also an oft-injured running back. Adam Thielen turns 30 in August. Kirk Cousins turns 31 and will be taking every last dollar in Minnesota for the next few years. Much of that once-vaunted defense has fallen apart in recent years. There are pieces, but there aren’t many of them.
10-year win projection: 80 (75 prorated)
17. Dallas Cowboys
The Cowboys could seriously finish anywhere from first to about 25th in this list and I wouldn’t bat an eye. If everything goes well in Dallas, this is a team with Dak Prescott, Amari Cooper, CeeDee Lamb, Michael Gallup, and some very interesting defensive pieces for a long time (plus, yes, Ezekiel Elliott under contract for-freaking-ever). If things go sideways? What if Dak leaves? What if Cooper leaves? There is a big low-end for this Cowboys team as well. Still, I’m intrigued enough.
10-year win projection: 81 (76 prorated)
(Come back Wednesday for the top 16!)