Week 8 Pundit Power Rankings: Chiefs return to second place

Following their 45-10 win over the Cincinnati Bengals. the Kansas City Chiefs were rewarded with a slight uptick in our aggregated Pundit Power Rankings for Week 8 — moving back into second place. Here’s how the NFL shook out once all of Tuesday’s pundit rankings were tabulated.

Other power rankings we noticed so far this week:

NBCSports.com (Cam Ellis — 3rd from 3rd) It is so impressive watching them gain 15, 20 yards per play like it’s second nature. There isn’t a more *fun* team to watch in football.

Bleeding Green Nation (Brandon Lee Gowton — 3rd from 3rd) Andy Reid’s team bounced back with a big win. Kansas City leads the league in points scored with 260. That’s over 37 per game. Must be nice.

Washington Post (Mark Maske — 4th from 4th) QB Patrick Mahomes and the offense kept doing their thing Sunday night against the Bengals. And the defense, for a change, was quite good. That was probably the most encouraging development of all on a good night for the Chiefs.

NESN.com (Joshua Schrock — 3rd from 3rd) Patrick Mahomes and the Chiefs rebounded from their loss to the Patriots by hammering the Cincinnati Bengals 45-10. It looks like the weather might be the only thing that can stop Andy Reid’s high-powered offense.

Mile High Report (Pete Baron — 2nd from 2nd) Does this upcoming game count as a 2nd bye week? Like the first time, I’m not all that optimistic. This team, honest to God, is Super Bowl bound. I think the Pats have to march into Arrowhead in January and beat them... and it ain’t happening. I know we love giving the Chief fans grief because they haven’t won a playoff game since the NFL moved away from leather helmets, but bringing up that sort of history when this team is clearly vastly superior to any team the Broncos might be trotting out just reeks of desperation.

Chicago Tribune (Brad Biggs — 3rd from 3rd) For all of the focus on Patrick Mahomes, running back Kareem Hunt is third in the NFL with 542 yards and has five touchdowns.

In the view of the national writers, the Los Angeles Rams remain the unanimous pick at number one in Week 8. That’s what remaining undefeated will do for you.

When we opened the power rankings live update on Tuesday morning, the Chiefs were in second place, followed by the New England Patriots. But the Chiefs were just barely in second place; the margin between the Chiefs and the Patriots was about a tenth of a point.

So when I saw that some of the other early rankings (those outside the group we’re tracking) had the Chiefs in third or fourth place, I considered it a real possibility the Chiefs and Patriots would switch places before the day was out. Instead, the Chiefs remained solidly in second, and the New Orleans Saints moved ahead of the Patriots into third place, where they had been tied with the Chiefs last week.

I was surprised there weren’t more pundits who moved the Chiefs up this week. The Bengals are, after all, a decent team — and the Chiefs walloped them. I thought it would be a stretch to see pundits move the Chiefs to first place, but I was surprised how many still have them in fourth.

The Detroit Lions had the biggest uptick this week — moving up six spots to 16th — followed by the Washington Redskins and Houston Texans, each of which gained five places. The Jacksonville Jaguars — with their third straight loss — took the biggest fall, dropping seven positions to 20th.

The biggest disagreement among the pundits this week was about the Denver Broncos. SBNation’s Rebecca Toback and CBS Sports’ Pete Prisco both decided to give the Broncos a nice bump following their 45-10 defeat of the hapless Arizona Cardinals — while USA Today’s Nate Davis wasn’t impressed at all, dropping the Broncos one spot after their blowout victory. I’ve spent time thinking about it, and I can’t decide which of these three pundits looks the most foolish.

Snark of the week

I’ve decided to pick out the best snarky comment I find about a team each week to share with you. But I’m telling you right now: any comment including the phrase “dumpster fire” will be automatically eliminated from consideration. These folks are writers. They’re going to have to do better than that to get my attention.

The inaugural snark is about the Oakland Raiders — from the MMQB’s Mitch Goldich:

Congrats to Amari Cooper, who moved up 12 spots in the Power Poll.

Join us on Wednesday, when we round up all the data from the number-crunchers, fold it in with what we learned from the pundits, and give you Arrowhead Pride True Power Rankings — the most complete view of the state of the NFL each week!