Week 9 Pundit Power Rankings: Chiefs drop one spot

The national writers have spoken, ad despite their 30-23 defeat of the Denver Broncos on Sunday, the Kansas City Chiefs have dropped one spot in our aggregated power rankings for Week 9.

Other power rankings we noticed this week:

Mile High Report (Pete Baron — 2nd from 2nd) And the band keeps marching on. The game was closer than most predicted, but again, divisional games are usually like that. This team is set for a long while with Mahomes, Hunt, Hill, and Kelce. Their only competition will be the salary cap when contracts start coming due. If they can keep pure greed at bay, they can be the NFL’s next dynasty.

NESN.com (Joshua Schrock — 2nd from 3rd) Patrick Mahomes further improved his MVP case with his third straight four-touchdown game in a 30-23 win over the Denver Broncos. The Chiefs will face the Cleveland Browns and Arizona Cardinals in the next two weeks before facing the Rams in Mexico City in Week 11.

NBCSports.com (Cam Ellis — 3rd from 3rd) Another 30 points for Mahomes and the Chiefs offense. Ho hum. Wake up me when they go over 40. Just kidding. I’ll watch every second they’re on national TV.

Washington Post (Mark Maske — 4th from 4th) QB Patrick Mahomes and the Chiefs just kept cruising with the victory at home over the Broncos. At this point, the surprise isn’t that Mahomes threw for 303 yards and four TDs; it was that he threw an interception.

Chicago Tribune (Brad Biggs — 3rd from 3rd) Speedster Sammy Watkins delivered with 107 receiving yards and two touchdowns in a victory over the Broncos.

Once again, the Los Angeles Rams — still undefeated, but probably still shaking after a narrow victory over the Green Bay Packers — were the pundits’ unanimous pick for first place in their Week 9 power rankings.

It seems that the scribes didn’t learn anything new about the Chiefs in their 30-23 win against the Broncos. Every single one of them left the Chiefs in exactly the same position as last week. So what really happened here is that the pundits were more impressed by the 30-20 win the New Orleans Saints had against the Minnesota Vikings — and in all honesty, that’s probably fair.

Based on many of their comments about the Chiefs, it’s pretty clear that the pundits expect the Chiefs to be 9-1 when they face the Rams in Mexico City. So in the eyes of the pundits, unless either team (or the Saints) stumbles before then, it’s not likely we’ll see much change in the top three before the big showdown.

The Arizona Cardinals and the Indianapolis Colts both moved up four spots, sharing the honor for the biggest rise of the week. It didn’t do the Cardinals much good, but the Colts at least escaped the cellar-dwellers. The Baltimore Ravens took the biggest fall. Their second straight loss — this one to the Carolina Panthers — dropped Baltimore out of the top 10 in our calculations.

The Colts also generated the most disagreement this week. CBS Sports’ Pete Prisco thought their 42-28 defeat of the Oakland Raiders should push them up eight spots. Others were less impressed — especially Nate Davis of USA Today, who thought the win only merited an increase of one position. Opinions vary, but I’d have to go with Nate on that one.

Snark of the week

I’m going to resist the temptation to quote the MMQB’s Mitch Goldich again this week — he made me laugh three times while reading the MMQB Power Poll — but I believe in giving everybody a shot. So I’ll go with the aforementioned Nate Davis, and his comment about the Browns:

Maybe the factory will be a little happier now that Hue Jackson and Todd Haley have been removed from the Sadness Assembly Line.

And on Wednesday...

My reading of the tea leaves suggests that the number-crunchers will have a new number one when we assemble all the data. How will that change the Week 9 Arrowhead Pride True Power Rankings? Check back on Wednesday, and you’ll see!