Week 16 NFL Pundit Power Rankings: Chiefs fall to third place

No one should be surprised that the Kansas City Chiefs would fall in this week’s NFL power rankings after their 29-28 loss to the Los Angeles Chargers on Thursday. The only question was how much the Chiefs would fall. So here’s your answer: from second place to third in our aggregated power rankings.

Other power rankings we noticed this week:

NBCSports.com (Cam Ellis — 3rd from 2nd) It’s got to be maddening to be 11-3 and still fighting this hard for home-field and a bye week.

Bleeding Green Nation (Brandon Lee Gowton — 3rd from 1st) Andy Reid’s Chiefs are 2-2 in their last four games. They’re still good but they haven’t looked quite as dominant.

Washington Post (Mark Maske — 5th from 1st) The Chiefs still can secure the No. 1 seed in the AFC by winning out. But getting a victory at Seattle won’t be easy, and trust in the Chiefs has been eroded by their inability to hold on to a trio of 14-point leads Thursday night against the Chargers.

NJ.com (Joe Giglio — 3rd from 2nd) Kansas City is an excellent team, but it has lost all three (Patriots, Rams, Chargers) of its big-time head-to-head games.

NESN.com (Joshua Schrock — 3rd from 3rd) KC’s poor secondary play finally caught up to it against the Chargers. The Chiefs still are in the driver’s seat for the No. 1 seed in the AFC, but one more loss could send them to the wild-card round — on the road.

Mile High Report (Pete Baron — 5th from 1st) Patrick Mahomes is legit and will terrorize the AFC for the next 15 years, but something isn’t right in KC. I really thought this team would be immune to their late season collapse, but the losses (at home even) are mounting and the rumblings and confidence in this team is waning. Are we beginning to see the yearly collapse of a ‘Regular Season’ juggernaut?

Well, there’s at least one silver lining: we can go back to hating Pete Prisco.

Or... maybe not.

You really can’t argue that the Chiefs shouldn’t have fallen in the power rankings this week. In fact, it’s a little surprising they didn’t fall more. Most of the pundits — following their usual pattern — put the Chargers ahead of the Chiefs. But it wouldn’t have been terribly out of character for most of them to conclude that the Chargers loss proves that the Chiefs don’t have a defense that can help them in big postseason games, and mark them down even further. Based on their comments, some — but not all — did exactly that.

The Chiefs-Chargers game seemed to trigger a bigger shakeup in the top tier than we’ve seen for a while. Among the top teams, only the New Orleans Saints held steady this week.

The Pittsburgh Steelers moved back into the top tier, and the Dallas Cowboys fell out. In the bottom tier, the Cincinnati Bengals and Washington Redskins busted out, while the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and Detroit Lions took their places behind bars.

Another chart this week — this one about the team the Chiefs will face on Sunday.

The Seattle Seahawks have had an interesting ride with the pundits this season. Undervalued by the pundits through most of the year, they ended up being a bit overvalued through the last few weeks — that is, until losing to the San Francisco 49ers on Sunday.

Snark of the week

The Seahawks are also the subject of the week’s best snarky pundit comment — this one from USA Today’s Nate Davis:

Just when they thought their kicking situation was solved... Sebastian Janikowski winds up in space against a capable return man. Oof.

That’s it for the pundits. Join us on Wednesday, and we’ll run through the data from the number-crunchers, and calculate the Week 16 True Power Rankings!