26. New England Patriots
At this stage, what we saw on Sunday for the New England Patriots is borderline the ideal scenario. Drake Maye puts together a good game, the Patriots hang tough against a pretty good (and hungry) Rams team, and you have some good nuggets to take away from a loss.
Obviously, Patriots fans are not used to losing, and no one really ever likes losing, but this is a unique case as the Patriots are firmly in the race for Colorado superstar Travis Hunter. Adding Hunter to this roster – as a receiver or corner or both – would be such a godsend for Drake Maye.
The Patriots were pretty strong on third downs against the Rams. They are showing strides weekly. They had a whopping 26 first downs in the game offensively and Maye threw for 16 of them. At this point, you want the best draft pick possible, you want Drake Maye to keep making strides, and you want him to stay healthy.
There’s a lot of building to be done but week by week, we’re seeing that the Pats have their guy.
25. Carolina Panthers
The Panthers were another one of a number of teams near the bottom of our NFL Power Rankings this week to have a bye, but this team started showing some stuff before they got their mid-season break.
Bryce Young has started in a couple of wins for this Panthers team, and they’ve actually pulled off two straight wins going into their bye. Unfortunately, they come out of the bye week with the Kansas City Chiefs coming to town.
I mean, hey – you never know…
The Panthers are another team near the bottom of this list with bigger long-term question marks than we really have the time to get into as we talk about their weekly ranking. But they deserve some credit for the way they played in the two weeks leading up to their bye week. They actually played better in a loss to Denver than the final score indicated.
Dave Canales might not have all of his building blocks yet, but we’re starting to see signs of progression and getting the needle to move in a positive direction on Bryce Young? Well, that’s exactly why they brought him in, right?