The 3rd quarter NFL power rankings

If every NFL team played a single-elimination tournament, who would win? We rank them down from 32 to 1 …

December brings more football than ever, with college bowl games galore and the FCS playoffs, but the NFL remains the king. We are officially exactly three-fourths of the way through the 2018 NFL season, with each team having played 12 games so far. That means four left for each team in a fight to the finish, and there’s a lot more on the line than just your fantasy playoffs. The Saints and Rams are dueling for the NFC 1-seed, four teams are fighting for AFC positioning, and every Wild Card race is up for grabs.

We did it at the quarter season and again at the midpoint, so it only felt fair to go back to the tournament edition power rankings one more time. What if you took every NFL team as they stand right now today and put them in a massive 32-team neutral-site single-elimination tournament? Who would win it all? What teams wouldn’t even make it out of the first round?

I simulated 15 such tournaments for you, then compiled the totals into a 32-team power rankings. The top three teams are just as you’d expect, but what order are they in? Every team outside of them is matchup prone, and at least half the league is just plain bad. As the weather turns colder and injuries pile up, the offenses are beginning to fade and the defenses are rising to the top. So which teams are the true contenders as we head into the final month?