NFL power rankings: Consensus has Chiefs among top three teams
By Greg Morse
The Kansas City Chiefs remain in the top 5 of NFL teams, finding themselves at #3 in almost every power ranking. Who are they looking up to?
Monday Night Football wasn’t quite what Chiefs Kingdom expected it to be. It ended up being a classic Chiefs vs Raiders matchup that will probably be remembered more for the poor officiating than the classic 17-point comeback. It was easily one of Travis Kelce’s best games of his career (and he only had 25-yards receiving), yet more people are talking about Davante Adams and his post-game temper tantrum.
All-in-all the Chiefs showed that they are who they’ve always been in the Patrick Mahomes era: one of the best teams in football against whom no lead is ever safe. Yet it’s undeniable that the Buffalo Bills’ absolute shellacking of the Steelers on Sunday looks a lot more impressive than the Chiefs winning by one point against a one win team. And so after Week 5, the Chiefs find themselves back to square one in the Power Rankings, pretty much in the same slot as they started back in Week 1.
NFL.com has the Chiefs as their #3 team, with Dan Hanzus highlighting all-world tight end Travis Kelce in his weekly review of the team:
"Kelce remains at the center of everything, a prodigious producer who always seems to deliver his best moments when the lights are brightest. In an NFL bereft of consistent playmaking at tight end, Kelce is a cheat-code outlier."
Hanzus has the Bills at #1, as do most of the other media outlets, with the Eagles at #2. It’s hard to believe that the Eagles can even be in the same tier as the Chiefs and Bills, but their undefeated record does mean something, which is why Yahoo! Sports has them also at #2, the Bills at #1, and the Chiefs at #3.
Surprisingly, Mike Florio over at PFT has the Eagles at #1, and the Bills at #2. Just like the others, he slots the Chiefs in at #3, with his focus on how good the team is in primetime, “At Kansas City in prime time, you need to build a bigger lead than 17-0 to beat these Chiefs.”
It’s pretty much a consensus on who the top 3 teams in the league are, but I have to disagree with anyone who really thinks the Eagles are better than the Bills and the Chiefs. Nonetheless the two titans of the AFC finally have their much awaited matchup this weekend at Arrowhead.
This is probably going to be the most important game of the entire season, and it will likely decide who claims the #1 seed in the conference. It will almost certainly decide who the #1 team in next week’s power rankings will be. For the first time in his career, Patrick Mahomes is an underdog at home. But has anyone told him that?