NFL Power Rankings: Week Six
NFL October 20th. 2009, 1:45pm
Peter King has his Fine Fifteen, ESPN has its own composite power rankings, and the legendary Dr. Z’s weekly power rankings were a must-read until he was stricken silent by a stroke last year. So, why can’t TBL get in on the fun? Here’s the sixth installment of the 2009 NFL in-season power rankings, featuring the most powerful being in the known universe, Mila Kunis:
1. New Orleans Saints (6-0): There really isn’t any praise left in the can at this point, is there? Alright, I’ll try and add some: The Saints, after six weeks, are the Kristin Kreuk of the NFL. I know of no higher praise I can bestow.
2. Indianapolis Colts (5-0): Remember prior to the NFL’s 2007 season kickoff when that Colts-Saints opener was being billed as a Super Bowl preview? Two years later, it may finally come to fruition, with the Week Six Champion Saints opening as three-point favorites. I’ll take the points (and this t-shirt).
3. Minnesota Vikings (6-0): Every successful NFL team requires a little bit of luck along the way. Matt Stover wouldn’t have missed a 45-yarder indoors. This Vikings’ victory sponsored by Kurtis Blow.
4. Denver Broncos (6-0): Donconation is alive with the sounds of “Eat it, Cutler!” Maybe the Broncos don’t need a supremely-talented malcontent at the helm; maybe a moderately-talented, even-keeled QB (with a surprisingly stout defense behind him) is the better match at Mile High.
5. New York Giants (5-1): Should we even write about these frauds? They haven’t played anybody worth a damn. They got waxed by the Saints. What’s that, they’re 21-5 since the start of the 2007 playoffs? So what, live in the now! If it didn’t happen this week, it doesn’t matter, dammit!
6. Pittsburgh Steelers (4-2): Anybody else who isn’t a Steelers fan just a tad nervous about the champions scuttling below the radar thus far? I don’t know what the futures odds are on the Steelers being the AFC’s Super Bowl representative, but it might be worth looking into. [Ed. Jeff Reed is the greatest.]
7. New England Patriots (4-2): You have to admire Bill Belichick. He no doubt watched the second half of last week’s Colts-Titans game, saw that Tennessee had packed it in for the year, then used the first 30 minutes of Sunday’s game as a Tom Brady confidence builder and to announce to the rest of the league that the Patriots are still relevant. When a team’s secondary is injury-stricken and inept, go for the throat. Belichick is The Terminator, 1984 version. By the way, this is must-read stuff.
8. Atlanta Falcons (4-1): Matt Ryan is just so cerebral! He’s like a young Peyton Manning! He…still throws quite a few balls he shouldn’t. Ryan currently is like The Empire Strikes Back’s Luke Skywalker. For the Falcons to be Super Bowl contenders they need him to turn into Return of the Jedi’s Vader-mashing Luke Skywalker, green lightsaber and all. I fucking love Star Wars.
9: Green Bay Packers (3-2): The Packers controlled the ball for a Dolphins-esque 40 minutes against the Lions Sunday and crushed them 26-0. One point of concern: four drives ended in field goals instead of TD’s.
10. Baltimore Ravens (3-3): The Ravens have one of the most well-balanced offenses in the league and their front seven still inspires fear and respect. Unfortunately, other than perennial Pro Bowler Ed Reed, their secondary’s about as scary as Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2.
11. Chicago Bears (3-2): Here lies Orlando Pace (1997-2005), seven-time Pro Bowler, three-time All Pro, first-ballot Hall of Famer and third-greatest left tackle of his generation (behind Jonathan Ogden and Walter Jones). Memo to Chris Collinsworth: grabbing a pass rusher by the neck as he’s whizzing by you and wrangling him to the turf is not a pancake – it’s holding.
12. Cincinnati Bengals (4-2): This is why you never compliment a Marvin Lewis-coached team. The Bengals are the NFL’s David Caruso. Don’t pay them any attention and they just might surprise you with a quality performance (see NYPD Blue, season one. O/T: Who made that video? Cripes.). Praise them and they’ll shit on your chest and laugh as it runs down your abdomen (see the rest of Caruso’s career).
13. Arizona Cardinals (3-2): Speaking of Jesus…
14. Dallas Cowboys (3-2): The Cowboys had the best bye week in the history of evar. The Giants got waxed, the Eagles were beaten by the Hotel California, that Washington team continued its terribleness and Tony Romo’s jersey was retired.
15. Philadelphia Eagles (3-2): Donovan McNabb: good, sometimes great, QB, but not someone you want taking your SAT’s.
16. Houston Texans (3-3): Matt Schaub has thrown for more TD passes than anyone in the NFL and, don’t look now, but the Texans just might be fringe playoff contenders.
17. San Francisco 49ers (3-2): The Niners sat home Sunday and watched the Titans’ debacle against the Patriots, breathing a sigh of relief as they ceded the distinction of worst 2009 collective team effort. And then this movie came on and they felt like shit again.
18. Miami Dolphins (2-3): Tony Sparano spent his bye week here, honing his craft. No other NFL coach is on his level there.
19. San Diego Chargers (2-2): Like a film in the HBO2 rotation, we’ve seen this before. Chargers start slow, appear to be in shambles, then roar back to make the playoffs and upset the Colts. Only this season, Jamal Williams is gone, the Broncos are for real, Kenton Keith is history and there’ll be no home playoff games on a technicality.
20. Jacksonville Jaguars (3-3): One week they show flashes of respectability, the next they show why they need to keep choppin’ wood. A 7-9 or 8-8 finish may save Del Rio’s job. Who says they don’t have anything to play for?
21. Buffalo Bills (2-4): After Mark Sanchez’s fifth INT all but handed the Bills the game Sunday, 98 percent of TBL commenters joined virtual hands and sang this in unison.
22. New York Jets (3-3): Glancing over Roland Emmerich’s pristine CV, there isn’t a misfire in the bunch. It contains such cinematic classics as Joey, Godzilla, The Day After Tomorrow, 10,000 B.C. and the most-anticipated film of the year, 2012.
23. Seattle Seahawks (2-4): [Picture of a latte]
24. Oakland Raiders (2-4): Q: How bad does one have to be for a 17-28 for 224 yards with two picks performance to be considered a “breakout” game? A: Unfathomably awful.
25. Carolina Panthers (2-3): Jake Delhere’stheball’s season passer rating: 56.8, with 4 TD’s against 10 INT’s. Things could be worse.
26. Detroit Lions (1-5): Matthew Stafford is a devious one, I tell ya. He figured out how to take the lead in this year’s rookie QB derby – sit out. Very cerebral.
27. Kansas City Chiefs (1-5): The Chiefs held on against the hapless BurntEpidermises, recording the first 2009 season victory by a Missouri-based professional football team. With bragging rights like those, who needs trophies?
28. Cleveland Browns (1-5): The ManKoks! have now dropped 12 consecutive to the Steelers. At least Pittsburgh’s four turnovers kept this one respectable. As respectable as it gets in Cleveland these days. Please stay, LeBron.
29. Washington Redskins (2-4): BurntEpidermis fans don’t deserve this. If the government can step in and bail out banks and insurance companies, why the hell can’t they wrest Washington’s NFL franchise from the grips of Scrooge McDuck?
30. St. Louis Rams (0-6): The good news is that the winless Rams took the Jaguars to overtime before losing. The bad news is they allowed almost 500 yards and would’ve been blown out if not for some careless Jags’ turnovers. Progress lies in the eye of the beholder.
31. Tampa Bay Buccaneers (0-6): Does anyone else wonder if David Mamet is scripting Raheem Morris’s post-game press conferences? His breakneck streams of dialogue must be hell for reporters to transcribe.
32. Tennessee Titans (0-6): Maybe no team in NFL history has ever quit as spectacularly as the Titans have over their past six quarters of play. Calling it perhaps the most pathetic display of competition  in NFL history wouldn’t be hyperbole. But this would.
50 Responses to “NFL Power Rankings: Week Six”
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October 20th, 2009 at 1:50 pm
Bills ranked too high.
October 20th, 2009 at 1:51 pm
Titans ranked too high.
October 20th, 2009 at 1:52 pm
switch ATL and Pitt and i agree
also, -1 on the Whitney Houston song
October 20th, 2009 at 1:52 pm
Sssshhhh about the Steelers, sshhhhh…
October 20th, 2009 at 1:53 pm
Browns are sky rocketing up the power rankings. Denver should be ahead of Minnesota.
October 20th, 2009 at 1:56 pm
These look pretty solid to me. In all honesty, I think the Falcons could be in trouble. We don’t have a great secondary, to begin with, and we just lost one of our best, if not our best, DB. Now we have a nickel back (Chevis Jackson), a rookie (Chris Owens) and a bust (Tye Hill) playing DB by committee. Somewhere Drew Brees is laughing hysterically.
October 20th, 2009 at 1:56 pm
\
Greatest scary movie ever, or greatest movie ever?
October 20th, 2009 at 1:57 pm
Have the Colts been ranked #1 yet?
Anyone else think these rankings should stop at 20?
October 20th, 2009 at 1:57 pm
Jared Allen will soon be the NFL’s version of Scot Pollard.
October 20th, 2009 at 1:58 pm
I’d give you Ogden, but no one will ever convince me Walter Jones is any better than Pace.
/homer’d
//right
October 20th, 2009 at 1:58 pm
for some reason i thought you were lying
October 20th, 2009 at 2:00 pm
That’s
racistaccurate.October 20th, 2009 at 2:00 pm
First spitting on baseballs, Now pissing on football fields, in 2 weeks “Did Kobe shit on center court?”
October 20th, 2009 at 2:02 pm
for a three year stretch (2003-2006) there was no finer OL player in the NFL than walter jones. there wasn’t a single weakness in his game…each week was a clinic in power, foot and hand work and leverage.
he didn’t sustain it like ogden or dominate like pace, but when it comes to technique and speed, jones from that period was an all-timer.
October 20th, 2009 at 2:03 pm
Standard comment, but feel I need to do it every week:
Broncos are too high. Higher than Spencer on a day off during the U.S. Open.
October 20th, 2009 at 2:03 pm
Saints are 5-0
/bye week’d
October 20th, 2009 at 2:04 pm
/plays taps
October 20th, 2009 at 2:04 pm
I don’t get it. What does funny chill mean? I thought i was gonna see a picture of the Govenor’s Cup, currently proudly held by my St. Louis Rams.
October 20th, 2009 at 2:05 pm
finding it harder and harder to get amped up for this movie. seems to be visually stunning, but the story sounds so…predictable. and from James cameron that’s a huge disappointment.
jets are ranked too high.
October 20th, 2009 at 2:07 pm
collinsworth mentioned how great pace was on sunday several times. said he had 3 pancakes (football) in a row.
October 20th, 2009 at 2:07 pm
49ers are ranked exactly where they should be.
October 20th, 2009 at 2:09 pm
Fuck the Bears.
October 20th, 2009 at 2:11 pm
he also fell on his face from his 3-point stance and drew a false start which was high comedy.
October 20th, 2009 at 2:11 pm
Apparently I somehow don’t own Blair Witch II: Book of Shadows on DVD, though I do have the two sided movie poster, the theatre standee with spooky sounds, and the official soundtrack. Worst day ever.
October 20th, 2009 at 2:11 pm
Seattle too high.
October 20th, 2009 at 2:12 pm
You told me they were good/decent/mediocre after that “impressive” opener against the Rams.
October 20th, 2009 at 2:17 pm
Vikings are too high. Interesting to note, though, that the Vikes would be 4-2 at best without Favre.
October 20th, 2009 at 2:18 pm
Mark Sanchez doesnt even know Spanish. Im offended.
October 20th, 2009 at 2:18 pm
Um, that’s not Shawn Merriman with Kendra, it’s LJ.
/Throw a drink in her face, Larry’d
//Oh, and the reason I looked at a the file name is because I was wondering why LJ and Kendra were nestled besides the Bears and the Bengals.
October 20th, 2009 at 2:21 pm
walter jones was/is good but i think the secret to him being rated as high as he is steve hutchinson. the fact that those two guys were on the same line almost seems unfair. shaun alexander should send them fruit baskets everytime he makes a payment on something he owns.
October 20th, 2009 at 2:22 pm
the bears are too high. their coaching staff is gonna fail them.
October 20th, 2009 at 2:23 pm
False, QB’s have absolutely no effect on the outcome of a game, by far the least valuable position on the team.
/spencer, sportsgal, and all cutler/rivers fans
October 20th, 2009 at 2:24 pm
amen brother.
October 20th, 2009 at 2:27 pm
Jay Cutler’s picture is in an odd spot.
October 20th, 2009 at 2:29 pm
oh shut up, coop.
October 20th, 2009 at 2:31 pm
to the orton fans, just because you didnt lose the game for your team doesnt mean you won it for them.
October 20th, 2009 at 2:33 pm
I was going to say something about Hutch but I thought Spence would make me cry.
October 20th, 2009 at 2:35 pm
Agreed. And just because you threw an interception, doesn’t mean you should throw your
punt returnerwide receiver under the bus.October 20th, 2009 at 2:38 pm
well the fact that Cutler is throwing to a punt returner and johnny knox and making everyone say “wow johnny knox looks good!” should go to show you how good he is.
October 20th, 2009 at 2:38 pm
na. i love hutch too, but jones was amazing also. you can’t really knock either.
those two together was just unfair.
October 20th, 2009 at 2:40 pm
just heard the in his career Orton has 30 TDs to 2 INTs in the redzone.
October 20th, 2009 at 2:41 pm
One of these consisted of grabbing John Abraham around the neck and holding on until he fell down.
October 20th, 2009 at 2:43 pm
Johnny Knox should be thrown to on a streak every series. That would open up the chosen one(Greg Olsen) or the better TE Desmond Clark and possibly Fumbles Forte who is better at catching and running out of the back field than actually running out of the back field.
October 20th, 2009 at 2:44 pm
What happened to his Godhood this season?
October 20th, 2009 at 2:45 pm
I hear it was the middle linebacker who made most of those plays, that bum is nothing without his precious defense.
October 20th, 2009 at 3:01 pm
Just got my Tommy Kramer Vikings jersey in the mail today. Fuck yeah
October 20th, 2009 at 3:12 pm
Feels good not to see TBL coming in with “ah, the Saints are overrated” or “Drew Brees isn’t all THAT good” junk. Hell, feels good that nobody’s saying anything, like it’s all so matter of fact.
I like that. Feels weird (and good), but I like it.
/Not going to Simmons it up with “NO ONE DENIES THIS!” crap.
October 20th, 2009 at 4:38 pm
Excellent. It wouldn’t be the same otherwise.
You could argue that Orton actually has won games for them, at least partially by not throwing boneheaded picks in the red zone like the Baby Vanderbilt Jesus.
October 20th, 2009 at 6:12 pm
if the texans are going to be a mediocre team again this season i just want to freaking beat the colts
October 21st, 2009 at 1:07 am
Probably in the top five on the photo …number one in my mind is that six-pack of SEC chicks in lingerie.
Flip the Broncos and Vikings — c’mon if not for a missed field no way you have would the Vikings near number three, and you are admitting that the team is held up for the sake of a errant kicker on the Ravens? From what I can remember the Broncos have earned all their wins except on the fluke play against Cincinnati due to their later error weeks ago.
Everything else about right except no way the Bears are better than the Cardinals or Bengals other than in media reputation to which I think you are succumbing as did most folks with regard to Arizona last year in the playoffs.
No doubt I say stop the list at 14. Only 12 make the playoffs you know.