The AFC is widely viewed as the deepest and strongest the conference has ever been, but where do all the teams land in these power rankings?
As we patiently wait for the summer to pass and training camps to open, it’s a good time to sit back and take stock of the landscape in the NFL. This NFL offseason has been a wild one, with tons of trades and big-name players changing teams.
With most of the offseason moves now completed the general consensus has been that the AFC is going to be incredibly tough this coming season. So I thought it might be a good time to do an AFC Power Rankings. I’ve divided these rankings into four tiers:
- No Shot At The Playoffs
- Fighting Just To Make The Playoffs
- Super Bowl Potential
- The Class Of The AFC
As you will soon see, one of those four tiers is twice the size of any of the other three. We’ll start at the bottom and work our way up.
NO SHOT AT THE PLAYOFFS
16. Houston Texans
I feel sorry for the Texans players and fans. This team has just been really poorly run. You would think that after back-to-back four-win seasons and trading away Deshaun Watson they would at least have some exciting young talent to build around, but that really isn’t the case. Davis Mills played better than expected last year, but this team just isn’t good on either side of the ball. It’s going to be a long road back to being a playoff-caliber team and you have to wonder if the people running the team right now can be trusted to lead them there.
15. Jacksonville Jaguars
The Urban Meyer disaster really wasted a year of development for this young team. Unlike the Texans, the Jaguars know who they are building around, Trevor Lawrence. If he had been able to have a normal rookie year last year I might be more optimistic about him and the offense taking a step forward this year, but that wasn’t an NFL offense they were running so Lawrence is basically back to square one this year. Replacing Meyer with Doug Pederson will instantly make this team better, but they’re still likely a year or two away from being able to make the playoffs in the AFC.
14. New York Jets
If I felt better about Zach Wilson at quarterback this is a team that I might have bumped up to the next tier, but I just didn’t see enough from him last season. The Jets have surrounded him with talented weapons and have a defensive-minded head coach to help the other side of the ball. If Wilson steps up they’ll go from bad to respectable, but respectable isn’t good enough to make the playoffs in the AFC this coming season.
That’s it for this bottom tier. That’s right, out of the 16 AFC teams I only have three with no playoff shot whatsoever. That speaks to the depth of this conference. Now let’s take a look at the tier of teams that will be scratching and clawing to try and get into the playoffs next season.