NFL Power Rankings: Final rankings before 2024 regular season

24. Seattle Seahawks

I’ve gone back and forth on the Seattle Seahawks all offseason in terms of their overall projection. Ultimately, the floor with Geno Smith at the quarterback position seems like it could be five or six wins for Seattle. The ceiling feels like it’s about nine wins. Can this team be somewhere in between that? Can they compete for a playoff spot in the NFC?

Absolutely, but it’s going to require a huge jump from the Seattle defense.

And when you look at this unit on paper, it’s not impossible to project that. Seattle has talent all over the defensive backfield, and they also have invested a ton in the defensive line over the last two years (Dre’Mont Jones, Leonard Williams, Byron Murphy). With Michael Macdonald coming in as the head coach, they should be solid every week schematically as well.

With all the playmakers offensively, it’s really the quarterback that’s going to dictate the ceiling and floor of this team.

23. Arizona Cardinals

We saw some good things for the Arizona Cardinals last year in the first year of the Jonathan Gannon era. Gannon had his guys ready to play every single week, and that was with a roster that was pretty heavily criticized all throughout the course of the 2023 offseason.

And by heavily criticized, I mean by me.

I thought the Cardinals had the worst roster in the league last year and I didn’t think we’d see them be half as competitive as they ended up being, especially after they traded for Josh Dobbs basically right before the start of the season and named him the starter.

With Kyler Murray healthy and the talent on this team substantially upgraded, I like the Cardinals as a team to potentially be far better than expected.