NFL Power Rankings Week 17
by Robert Ferringo - 12/29/2020

Greed is good. Since the coronavirus explosion in March, I have had an unshakeable reliance on the overall greed and sociopathology of NFL owners to see to it that there would be a full and completed NFL season. I don’t mean that as a pejorative, simply as a statement of fact. And, well, here we are. This week marks the completion of the NFL regular season. The playoffs are the icing on the cake. The fact that we’ve had four uninterrupted months of football is a silver lining in an otherwise horrific year. And the driving force behind that reality has been the overwhelming greed of those at the top of the professional football food chain. So good job.

NFL Power Rankings Week 16
by Robert Ferringo - 12/24/2020

There have been 41 games this season in which a team lost a game despite holding at least a 14-point lead. I want you to think about that for a second. We’ve played 15 weeks. And we’ve had 14 comebacks of two touchdowns or more. That is an average of three wild, can’t-believe-they-did-that comebacks every…single…week.

NFL Power Rankings Week 15
by Robert Ferringo - 12/15/2020

It’s time to tank. I know that players and coaches in the NFL all say the right things about tanking. They talk about how people are fighting for jobs and for money so it is impossible to tank. They talk about how physically it doesn’t make sense for teams to sit back and get rolled over. They talk about pride and professionalism.

NFL Power Rankings Week 14
by Robert Ferringo - 12/9/2020

There is an inherent paranoia that comes with being a professional gambler. It’s hard not to let it overtake you, actually. There is a feeling of impending doom that comes with every wager. And since I’ve lost bets just about every way imaginable – you wouldn’t believe me if I told you – every week I can’t help but wonder, especially when things are going well, when things are going to fall apart.

NFL Power Rankings Week 13
by Robert Ferringo - 12/1/2020

This whole 2020 NFL season has been a mess. Fans and bettors have been able to gloss over the inconsistency and the scheduling issues and the weekly coronavirus personnel updates. We’ve been able to grin and bear it because that’s what 2020 is all about. And because we have no other choice. Some football, even if it is being played with a practice squad wide receiver lining up at quarterback or if it is played on Wednesday afternoon, is better than none.

NFL Power Rankings Week 12
by Robert Ferringo - 11/24/2020

It’s Thanksgiving week, which is easily one of my favorite times of the year. It won’t seem like quite the same respite this year, given that lockdowns and quarantines and a complete social and business slowdown this year leaves me less in need of this holiday week’s slow pace. Though it is always a good time to take stock of all the benefits, accomplishments and good fortune that one has in their life; A little self-reflection never hurt anyone.

NFL Power Rankings Week 11
by Robert Ferringo - 11/17/2020

Frankly, I’m in a pretty foul mood. I’ve had two of the worst weeks of my career as an NFL handicapper the last two weekends. I was on the wrong end of both the Arizona and the Cleveland bad beats last week and have gone 1-5 against the spread with my last six top plays in the pros. Losing streaks aren’t rare for anyone that gambles as a profession. The pendulum swings both ways. And after 14 years of making my career based on the bounce of a funny shaped ball, I know that it comes with the territory.

NFL Power Rankings Week 10
by Robert Ferringo - 11/10/2020

The single most overrated angle in NFL betting is to assume that teams coming off a bye week are going to be more prepared for their upcoming game. Last week was another perfect example of the phenomenon, which routinely buries bettors. Arizona, Washington, Jacksonville and Houston were coming in after weeks off. Houston played Jacksonville, so that was a wash against the spread. Arizona and Washington? Both lost outright as post-bye week favorites.

NFL Power Rankings Week 9
by Robert Ferringo - 11/3/2020

One of the defining characteristics of this NFL season is the massive inequality between the top and bottom tiers. The good teams are really, really good, and the bad teams are completely and totally pathetic. This flies in the face of the NFL’s structure, which is to promote parity, but it seems like a 2020 truism.

NFL Power Rankings Week 8
by Robert Ferringo - 10/30/2020

So, the reason that this week’s Power Rankings are late is because I spent most of Thursday without power and without Internet. What I was able to cobble together from my phone and some time at Panera Bread was used to finalize my actual card for the weekend, so I had to push this back until today.

NFL Power Rankings Week 7
by Robert Ferringo - 10/22/2020

The ‘under’ was the big winner in the NFL last week, with 10 of 14 games staying ‘under’ the total. That was able to stem the high-scoring, high-rising tide of ‘over’ wagers cashing early in the season. And now the question is pretty clear: was last week the beginning of an ‘under’ avalanche that continues through the rest of the season or merely a blip on the radar as the NFL’s highest scoring season continues?

NFL Power Rankings Week 6
by Robert Ferringo - 10/15/2020

Each team should set up its own bubble – a quarantined area for all players and essential support personnel – in its home city immediately. The players should be restricted to team facilities and that’s it. These guys travel on chartered flights and it is not difficult to quarantine for the 24 necessary hours in visiting cities. Really, it’s not that difficult for these players to stay restricted to the field, either their own or a visitor’s, for the rest of the season.

NFL Power Rankings Week 5
by Robert Ferringo - 10/8/2020

We’ve already seen the beginnings of the The Purge, as coaches and quarterbacks suffer the consequences of early season struggles. Most of these moves are acts of desperation (like firing Bill O’Brien). The rest (like benching Dwayne Haskins) are belated attempts to rectify mistakes that never should’ve happened.

NFL Power Rankings Week 4
by Robert Ferringo - 10/1/2020

Apparently the NFL decided that professional football should be more like Big 12 football. The overriding story of the first three weeks of the season – besides the Covid-19 tightrope walking that everyone is doing – is that scoring is up. Way up. Astronomically up. Teams are combining to average 49.4 points per game through the first three weeks. That is up 16 percent from the first three weeks of last season and 22 percent from the average of the previous 20 years.

NFL Power Rankings Week 3
by Robert Ferringo - 9/24/2020

I’m going to keep this short and sweet this week. I have taken my family on vacation for the first time in 2020, and I’m going to keep my focus where it needs to be: on producing a third straight winning football week and extending my +3,170 football run. I’m full steam ahead with my research and handicapping, but that leaves me a little less time to explain the birds and the bees of Week 2 and Week 3 in the NFL to you.

NFL Power Rankings Week 2
by Robert Ferringo - 9/17/2020

The time between Week 1 and Week 2 of the NFL season is one of my favorite times of the sports betting year. We have seven months between the Super Bowl in February and the start of the regular season in September. In those seven months, everyone and their sister has some kind of opinion about what the following season will entail. The NFL gets analyzed and overanalyzed and hyper-overanalyzed until we get to the point where people have talked themselves into Freddie Kitchens and the Browns winning the Super Bowl.

NFL Power Rankings Week 1
by Robert Ferringo - 9/10/2020

At the end of March, just weeks after The World Shutdown, people were already asking me, “Do you think there will be football this year?” My answer was always the same. And I’ve been unwavering in my belief that the NFL will absolutely, positively play and that we will have a full season. Why this unshakeable confidence? Because if you’ve been living in on paying attention to anything in this country over the last four decades, you would have come face-to-face with one immutable truth: never doubt the willpower of greed.

2020 NFL Power Rankings Post Draft
by Robert Ferringo - 5/1/2020

The NFL oddsmakers have their own version of NFL power rankings: futures odds. Yesterday I took a look at the teams that have seen the biggest movements in their futures odds, both positively and negatively, as a result of free agency and the draft. Those movements give bettors an idea about the direction in which public opinion is trending regarding certain teams. But today I wanted to try to organize the entire league based on how I see their prospects heading into the summer.

NFL Power Rankings Week 17
by Robert Ferringo - 12/24/2019

Merry Christmas! I made the trek north to Upstate New York to spend the holiday season with my family, friends and frigid temperatures. I'm going to keep this week's Power Rankings short and sweet. At this point, we know who everyone is and the hierarchy in the NFL is pretty well established.

NFL Power Rankings Week 16
by Robert Ferringo - 12/17/2019

The Los Angeles Chargers won 11 games last year and entered this season as a Super Bowl sleeper pick. Two weeks ago, they were mathematically eliminated from the postseason. How did they respond? They responded with a complete no-show last week at home against Minnesota. The Chargers turned the ball over seven times and slept their way through their worst blowout loss (39-10) in several years.