2008 Preseason Power Rankings

Let me start off by saying these are *not* like other preseason power rankings. They are based completely on stats compiled during the preseason with absolutely no analysis. That seems kind of dumb, but my goal was not to try and assess who the best teams are, but who had the best preseason and who may be among the most improved teams. Clearly, any ranking that has the Patriots at 30 and the Colts at 31 are not something someone should consider a credible predictor of regular season success.

I included a column with the change in their ranking since the last time I compiled these at the end of the 2007 regular season to see how similar or different they looked in the preseason this year.

The things that stood out to me were things like Detroit allowing 8 pts/game and Tampa allowing 2.7 YPC. Those type of stats make up the basis for these rankings, but don't show up here. You can find the full spreadsheet used for my power ranking formula here.

You can find an explanation of how I came up with my formula here.

Rank	Team	Team Strength	Change From Last 2007
1	Detroit	14.1	20.71
2	Tampa Bay	9.7	3.99
3	Carolina	9.4	15.09
4	Seattle	8.6	1.91
5	Miami	7.1	20.04
6	Jacksonville	6.3	-1.61
7	New Orleans	5.8	7.79
8	San Francisco	5.5	16.12
9	Denver	4.5	10.00
10	Atlanta	3.4	14.05
11	San Diego	3.1	-5.10
12	NY Jets	2.7	9.15
13	Philadelphia	2.5	-0.69
14	Tennessee	2.4	1.70
15	Arizona	2.2	1.87
16	Pittsburgh	2.1	-7.91
17	Buffalo	0	7.29
18	NY Giants	-0.1	-1.50
19	Houston	-1.7	-1.12
20	Chicago	-2.8	0.11
21	Dallas	-3.1	-13.06
22	St. Louis	-3.2	9.26
23	Cincinnati	-3.3	-2.61
24	Oakland	-5.2	3.84
25	Minnesota	-5.4	-10.83
26	Baltimore	-6.4	0.89
27	Green Bay	-7.3	-17.51
28	Kansas City	-7.4	1.23
29	Washington	-9.3	-11.78
30	New England	-9.4	-30.66
31	Indianapolis	-9.7	-23.09
32	Cleveland	-10.3	-11.70