NFL Power Rankings, Week 8: Biggest risers and fallers after Week 7

28. Las Vegas Raiders

The Las Vegas Raiders have galvanized for a couple of wins this season, including one of the most shocking individual wins of the season when they went into Baltimore and caught the Ravens sleeping for a week.

That will go down as one of the weirdest wins of the season, most likely.

Regardless, we find the universe sort of correcting itself here as it pertains to the Raiders, who have traded Davante Adams to the New York Jets and are now 2-5 after a loss to the Los Angeles Rams, who just looked so much better and so much more prepared coming off their bye week than the Raiders.

The Raiders have now lost three straight games and we are monitoring this team as potentially being in absolute free-fall mode as the season progresses. It seems extremely far-fetched, but with the way the Raiders are playing, you can’t help but think how long it will take them to hang up on teams who start calling about Maxx Crosby in a trade…

27. Miami Dolphins

The bad news for the Miami Dolphins: Tim Boye played football on Sunday afternoon and the results were rather predictable, even in a tight-scoring game. 

The good news for the Miami Dolphins: Tua Tagovailoa is, in fact, coming back. And it’s possible he could be out there as early as Week 8. In fact, that may be the expectation at this point.

The Dolphins are one of the teams that has already had an early bye week, and frankly, it’s probably for the best that they ended up getting one of those because they are “only” 2-4 at this point with a chance to make a run as the season goes along if Tagovailoa can stay healthy.

This Miami team has so much talent on both sides of the ball, and there are obviously limitations to how much that talent can flourish without the team’s starting QB on the field. As concerned as we all are for Tagovailoa’s health, his presence will have this team immediately on the upswing.