The loaded slate of games in Week 15 of the NFL season promised drama, and we may have gotten more than we could have imagined.
It was an outstanding week for the NFL in Week 15 with so much drama throughout the course of the weekend. The Buccaneers and Falcons got it all started off on Thursday, but we had tremendous divisional matchups, a couple of huge upsets, and a potential Super Bowl preview with the Broncos taking on the Packers.
Our latest NFL Power Rankings for Week 16 will take a closer look at where each team has been up to this point, but with a heavy emphasis on their last four or five weeks overall. We're ranking teams based on their overall body of work, but a number of other factors like head-to-head wins (in some cases), and where these teams might be going after what transpired in Week 15.
NFL Power Rankings, Week 16: Broncos steal top spot, Chiefs free-falling
32. Las Vegas Raiders
Earlier this season, the Raiders played a game against the Chiefs in which the Chiefs started to kill the clock with a little over 5 minutes to play in the game. This week, they got obliterated so badly by the Philadelphia Eagles that the Eagles threw Tanner McKee out there for more than 13 minutes of action.
And the Raiders still couldn’t do anything.
This team is the worst in the NFL, and although they haven’t been in the 32nd slot on our NFL Power Rankings all year, they undoubtedly have been the worst team in the NFL for most of the year. The Pete Carroll experiment has to end. The Raiders can’t fool around with Geno Smith beyond this year (even though he didn’t play on Sunday). It’s time for wholesale changes for this team once again, and they need to think young.
They became the first team since the 2000 Browns to be shut out twice in the same season.
31. New York Jets
I’m not sure what we expected out of the New York Jets this week, but going on the road to face off against the Jacksonville Jaguars with their third-string quarterback went about as well as you could have expected.
At least the trade to acquire former 1st-round pick AD Mitchell at the wide receiver position continues to look like a total steal for this Jets team moving forward. Mitchell finished this game against the Jaguars with another receiving touchdown, his second in the last three games.
The Jets are just showing up for their jobs at this point. They have nothing to play for except future contracts and some evaluation on the pro scouting side of things. This was a horrendous showing, but it was also expected.