Midseason Power Rankings and Catchup Show!
Forgotten many details of the NFL season? Having a hard time telling the upstarts from the frauds? This article will tell you everything you need to know.
Have you forgotten many of the details and plot twists of the 2026 NFL saga now that we are approaching its halfway point? Are you struggling to match team records with team reputations? Unable to tell the flukes from the upstarts, the collapsing empires from the victims of outrageous misfortune? Did you miss a week or two of NFL news for one reason or another and now find yourself hopelessly lost?
Well, you’re in luck. The Too Deep Zone Midseason Power Rankings and Catchup Show will do just what the title says it will do: rank all 32 NFL teams and provide a rapid-fire “Previously, on X-Men” montage of relevant plot points to date. It will also provide sneak peaks into some teams’ upcoming schedules.
#1. San Francisco 49ers (6-1)
Injury. Injury. Injury. Big Bloomin’ Onion of a win over the Rams. Injury. Injury. Easy wins over the Dolphins and Cardinals. Injury. Injury. George Kittle will have NONE of your fourth quarter chaos magic, Broncos. Injury. Injury. Tough turnover-battle victory over the Seahawks. Injury. Not-as-close-as-the-score Monday night win over the Commanders. Mike Evans’ health meter finally reaches zero. Finally, a penalty-and-turnover-marred road loss to the Falcons.
The 49ers traded for DeForest Buckner at the Colts sidewalk sale during the bye week. Buckner is 32 and has not played a full season since 2023. He should rent a condo close to an urgent care facility. The 49ers may add even more cannon fodder/human sacrifices before the trade deadline.
The 49ers are awesome, but check with the CDC, the Mayo Clinic, local law enforcement (49ers employees have a higher-than-median probability of getting shot, wrecking vehicles or getting busted for trailer park solicitation) and a licensed exorcist before placing any wagers on them.
Brock Purdy would be the MVP frontrunner if he didn’t look so much like an intern being taught how to fold envelopes at a UPS Store.
#2. Jacksonville Jaguars (5-2)
Lopsided win over the Browns. Victims of Broncos fourth quarter chaos magic. Lopsided win over the Patriots. Penalty-marred win over the Bengals. Two-week London trip. Penalty-marred last-second miracle against the Eagles. Penalty-marred last-second loss to the Texans.
The Jaguars somehow committed 13 penalties for 151 yards during their Week 7 bye. Then came a lopsided Week 8 drubbing of the Colts, marred only by ugly alternate helmets that looked like surgical scrubs.
Trevor Lawrence: balling. Travis Hunter: actually swinging both ways. Defensive Coordinator Anthony Campanile: pressuring his way to the front of the line for the 2027 Head Coaching Carousel.
The upcoming schedule features enough Titans and NFC East opponents for the Jaguars to coast into the playoffs unless they smother themselves with yellow flags or try to make Hunter perform triple duty as their long snapper.
#3. Buffalo Bills (6-1)
Josh Allen: Unstoppable. Offensive line and running backs: Doing their job. Greg Rousseau and Deone Walker: Crushing it on the defensive line. Everyone else in the organization: Riding Allen’s coattails while pretending to drive.
Brandon Beane and Joe Brady really have changed the culture. In past years, the Bills would be 6-1 at this point in the season, but with a divisional loss and messy too-close-for-comfort wins against opponents they should have crushed. This year, the Bills are 6-1 and so forth, but without that icky-poo Sean McDermott.
#4. Kansas City Chiefs (5-2)
Patrick Mahomes ran for a touchdown six minutes into a Week 1 blowout of the Broncos, instantly memory-holing his December ACL tear. Kenneth Walker is doing for Mahomes what Terrell Davis once did for John Elway. Coordinator Steve Spagnuolo made sure that the new budget-friendly defense picked up where the previous budget-friendly defense left off.
The Chiefs spent the first five weeks of the season doing what they did from 2018-24: relying on Mahomes, Travis Kelce, Chris Jones and their coaches to compensate for a flawed roster, winning far more close games than they had any right to, and finding new ways to be simultaneously compelling and unlikeable. (Insert new practice-squad kicker Justin “Descuzzball Jr.” Tucker here.)
Recent losses to the Seahawks and Broncos exposed lots of little flaws, from Harrison Butker’s worsening slump to trouble at offensive tackle. But before you bury the Chiefs, remember how they looked until the skies opened up in the fourth quarter against the Broncos in Week 8. Hate the Chiefs all you want, but don’t doubt them.
#5. Minnesota Vikings (6-1)
Brian Flores’ defense: Grrrrrrr. Will Reichard, Myles Price and the special teams: Brrrrrrt. The offense: Ewwwwwwww.
The Vikings have won two games in which they scored a total of eight field goals and zero touchdowns. Their offense only produced one touchdown in the Buccaneers and Colts victories. Kyler Murray and Carson Wentz look like short-and-tall versions of the same doofus, prompting Vikings fans to cast a suspicious eye on the goings on in East Rutherford. But Flores now blitzes six times before breakfast, with Dallas Turner, Blake Cashman, Isaiah Rodgers and others enjoying career years under his malevolent guidance.
The Vikings are in the middle of a brutal patch of schedule: a narrow loss to the Lions on Sunday, Bills-Lambeau-Substation over the next three weeks. But the Vikings are Brutalists. Look for their defense to drag even the best opponents down to their offense’s level.
#6. Denver Broncos (6-2)
Bo Nix’s air yards per pass attempt are on an asymptote approaching zero. He has gone from throwing sideways to throwing straight downward; the next step will be trying to fold the football within itself. It will soon require an electron microscope to determine Nix’s intended receiver.
Sean Payton demoted Davis Webb in an effort to reboot Nix. Payton may have made things worse, but you don’t become Sean Payton by admitting such things.
Nix himself, who studied both Zeno and Pythagoras in his effort to pioneer non-Euclidian forward passing, has been understandably philosophical about his performance. Good and bad are merely mortal constructs. Within the caverns of personal perception, and against the backdrop of a vast and uncaring cosmos, I am playing as well as ever. Nix will soon teleport himself to Mars.
Fortunately for the Broncos, their defense is stingy, and weird Scarlet Witch stuff happens to their opponents in the fourth quarter. Their early schedule was also loaded with Chiefs, Jaguars, the mostly-healthy Rams, 49ers and Seahawks, so the Broncos offense may not be quite as quantum-physical as it appears.
The Broncos had little trouble with the Cardinals in Week 7, and there are enough Jets, Dolphins, Chargers and middleweight Raiders/Panthers-caliber opponents on the upcoming schedule for the Broncos to carry their offense into the playoffs.
#7. Detroit Lions (5-2)
Injuries across the offensive line and secondary resulted in a wobbly 2-2 start which combined losses to competitive foes (Bills, Panthers) with narrow escapes against try-hards (Saints, Jets). The offensive line got healthy to fuel a blowout of the Cardinals, then Brian Branch returned to stabilize the secondary. Dan Campbell tried to gamble away the Week 7 Packers game, but every time he rolled snake eyes on fourth down, the Packers answered by either dropping the dice, kicking them wide right or whizzing them at Jared Goff’s helmet. The Lions mustered a gutsy Week 8 victory over the Vikings on the strength of Jahmyr Gibbs and full-house backfield concepts, plus the weakness of the Vikings offense.
Gibbs, Amon-Ra St. Brown and Aidan Hutchinson are their usual selves. The rebuilt offensive line is a revelation. The defense, as usual, often looks like it’s a man short, and Week 8 injuries to Jack Campbell and others are worrisome. The Lions can beat any team in the NFL when they are clicking. But they are stuck in a division with teams like the Bears and Vikings who find ways to win without clicking.
#8. Cincinnati Bengals (5-2)
Joe Burrow, Ja’Marr Chase, Tee Higgins, Dexter Lawrence, Boye Mafe and a schedule that would make the 2025 Patriots blush.
OK, that was a little dismissive. The Bengals offensive line is playing well. Kicker Evan McPherson has been outstanding. The Week 7 Ravens blowout was a true team effort.
DVOA loves the Bengals. I would like them better if they weren’t being outscored 47-28 in first quarters, and if they didn't have two losses (Steelers, Jaguars) to quality conference foes.
The upcoming Bengals schedule is so full of Saints, Commanders, Colts and opponents teetering on the verge of collapse (Browns, Panthers) that the Burrow Trio and Dexter Duo can waltz into the playoffs with the rest of the roster tied behind their backs.
#9. Chicago Bears (6-2)
Caleb Williams led a 59-point avalanche against the Panthers in Week 1. Caleb got hurt in a Week 2 reboot of Ferngully: The Last Rainforest. Case Keenum humiliated the pre-malpractice Eagles on MNF in Week 3. Tyson Bagent got away with a bunch of dropped/nullified interceptions against the Jets in Week 4. Packers defenders, who have better hands than Packers receivers, held on to those interceptions to stun the Bears in Week 5. Caleb returned and turned Ben Johnson’s offense into a maglev train in Weeks 6 and 7.
GM Ryan Poles, realizing that wiry cornerback Kyler Gordon shouldn’t be his team’s best pass rusher, traded the keys to Soldier Field to the Titans for Jeffery Simmons. (The Bears won’t need those keys for long anyway.) Trading multiple first-round picks for a missing piece always works, as evidenced by last year’s Packers-Colts Super Bowl and the Rams’ 7-0 start! Anyway, Simmons delivered an early sack as the Bears slowly pulled away from the Seahawks in a hard-fought 34-17 win on Monday night.
The Bears’ second-half schedule is backloaded with Bills, Jaguars and tough NFC North foes. But Caleb now combines high-efficiency pocket passing with scramble-and-launch capability. Johnson is among the NFL’s best game-planners. Defensive coordinator Dennis Allen was blitzing slot corners back when Brian Flores was in the Patriots mailroom. And Simmons, the best thing about a Titans team that won seven games in the last three years, may already be stabilizing one of the NFL’s weakest run defenses.
Come for Johnson-versus-Dan Campbell and Caleb-versus-Jared Goff on Thanksgiving Day; stay for Simmons-versus-Jahmyr Gibbs.
