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.

NFL Power Rankings Week 15
by Robert Ferringo - 12/10/2019

Life isn't fair. If you still believe that Santa Claus is real, then you may not realize that. For the rest of us, it's just a fact of life. Life isn't fair, and no one ever said it would be. So, no one wants to hear it when things don't break your way. That goes for the New Orleans Saints, who once again were completely screwed by poor officiating in a thrilling loss to San Francisco.

NFL Power Rankings Week 14
by Robert Ferringo - 12/3/2019

In the NFL, this is moving time. This is the time of the year that the top teams maneuver their way to bye weeks and home-field playoff games, positioning themselves for a potential championship run. For the next tier, this is the month in which the contenders and the pretenders sort themselves out as they grasp for those final fleeting playoff slots.

NFL Power Rankings Week 13
by Robert Ferringo - 11/26/2019

It is Thanksgiving week, so I am doing an abridged version of my NFL Power Rankings. But I do want to take this opportunity to point out again that I will be releasing my football selections on Wednesday this week to accommodate the Thanksgiving holiday. That goes for all of Doc's football handicappers, and we want to get our action in early so we can sit back and enjoy an orgy of alcohol, eating and gambling this weekend that would make the Romans blush.

NFL Power Rankings Week 12
by Robert Ferringo - 11/19/2019

Do you remember how early on this season the underdogs were covering the spread at an astronomical and completely unsustainable rate? Well, regression has struck - sort of - and NFL underdogs have been a lot less potent over the last five weeks than in the opening six weeks of the season. Well, some underdogs that is.

NFL Power Rankings Week 11
by Robert Ferringo - 11/12/2019

A tool I have found useful in handicapping college basketball and college football is something I like to call relative conference strength. The basic premise is that you can gauge a team's true strength based on whom they have played and how those teams stack up against the rest of the country. It's a very macro way of looking at the field, rather than focusing on the minutia of matchups and individual players.

NFL Power Rankings Week 10
by Robert Ferringo - 11/5/2019

Despite all of the talk about how the NFL has become primarily a passing league, I have definitely noticed that the pendulum has started to swing back the other way. And now, rather than teams trying to build their rosters and game plans to just outshoot and outscore opponents, we are seeing a return to the fundamental NFL strategy: running the football.

NFL Power Rankings Week 9
by Robert Ferringo - 10/29/2019

Most people I know are in agreement about the product that is NFL football these days: it's pretty awful. The game is a ragged, penalty-filled mess that is routinely interrupted by instant replay reviews, commercials and promotions for network television shows.

NFL Power Rankings Week 8
by Robert Ferringo - 10/22/2019

The NFL has become a game of incompetence. Whether it is officiating errors, coaching and game-management mistakes, or just shockingly poor play, Sundays have become defined by stupidity rather than strategic or athletic excellence. The results have frustrating for bettors, and most professionals I know are starting to dread having to sit through NFL action each week.

NFL Power Rankings Week 7
by Robert Ferringo - 10/15/2019

There is any number of explanations for why underdogs are crushing it at the window each week. Quarterback play, league-wide, has regressed, and that's made everything more topsy-turvy. The sportsbooks have the most difficulty projecting teams early in the season. Defense has become en vogue in the NFL again, and that's led to lower-scoring games. Take your pick of the reason. But the reasons why don't matter. All that matters is that right now the only way to bet the NFL is to take road teams, underdogs and, when possible, road underdogs.

NFL Power Rankings Week 6
by Robert Ferringo - 10/8/2019

I don't know if I have ever seen a wider disparity between the top and the bottom of the NFL. There is still a clear, muddled middle class in the league right now. That's the forced parity that the league loves and the fuel for all of the weekly surprises on the field and at the window. However, if you look at the top eight and the bottom eight teams in the league right now, the variance is stark.

NFL Power Rankings Week 5
by Robert Ferringo - 10/1/2019

After last year's scoring explosion, in which teams combined to average 46.6 points per game, scoring has reverted back down to levels that we've seen only once this decade. With just 44.4 points per game, this season is on pace to be the second-lowest scoring year of the decade. However, this doesn't account to the fact that we are still in the early portion of the season.

NFL Power Rankings Week 4
by Robert Ferringo - 9/24/2019

The week after the season opener is the Overreaction Week. But now we are getting into Hype Week. Despite an extremely limited sample size and some outlier results, it appears that the bobblehead media is ready to make (more) wild, unsubstantiated claims on everything from Buffalo's viability in the AFC East race to Daniel Jones' Hall of Fame prospects.

NFL Power Rankings Week 3
by Robert Ferringo - 9/17/2019

Never forget that football is a war of attrition. It is battle. Football is sport. And it reflects the realities of nature. Football is two male rams smashing horns. It is two rhinos fighting for territory or male lions wrestling for command of the pride. It's primal and brutal.

NFL Power Rankings Week 2
by Robert Ferringo - 9/10/2019

Obviously, the Patriots are going to win another Super Bowl, beating the Cowboys next February. Miami is going to go 0-16 and get the No. 1 overall pick, and Kyler Murray is going to win the Offensive Rookie of the Year Award. Everything has already been determined after just one week, so we can all just save ourselves some time.

NFL Power Rankings Week 1
by Robert Ferringo - 9/3/2019

There is a storm on the horizon. A storm of ritualized violence, presented by global telecommunications giants and the insurance industry, is about to make landfall. And it brings with it a hail of gambling and brutality and has helped define the sport of football as America's True National Pastime, a weekly ceremony of our own collective bloodlust and a measure of our national hedonism.

NFL Power Rankings Week 17
by Robert Ferringo - 12/26/2018

Well, this is it. Another NFL regular season is about to settle into the books. This week is the dreaded Week 17 of the NFL season. For some teams, like the Titans and Colts, the playoffs start on Sunday. For others, this week is the last hurdle between their players and an offseason of recreation and recovery.

NFL Power Rankings Week 16
by Robert Ferringo - 12/18/2018

How do you gauge the most valuable player in a given sport? For some, the MVP should simply be the best player. Period. If that is the case, then Patrick Mahomes should easily win the MVP this season. He is set to throw for more than 5,000 yards and 50 touchdowns passes - both by far the top numbers in the league - while leading the Chiefs to a potential No. 1 seed in the AFC. Mahomes has done all this while making any number of jaw-dropping throws, and the kid clearly looks like the Next Big Thing in NFL quarterbacking.

NFL Power Rankings Week 15
by Robert Ferringo - 12/11/2018

I love futures betting. But I am not at all a fan of betting on teams to win the Super Bowl. It is really such an arbitrary thing, when you think about it, and the odds for teams to hoist the Lombardi Trophy never come close to reflecting how difficult the task really is.

NFL Power Rankings Week 14
by Robert Ferringo - 12/4/2018

Some weeks things just aren't going to go the way they were supposed to. And last week was that week for me. The Saints laid their first egg in three months. Three college football teams blew double-digit leads. The Bears threw up on themselves against the hapless Giants.