Week 14 NFL Pundit Power Rankings: Chiefs drop to fourth

The Kansas City Chiefs returned to their winning ways on Sunday, defeating the Oakland Raiders 40-33 on the road. Meanwhile, the New Orleans Saints scored just 10 points against the Dallas Cowboys — 11 points less than their previous low for the season — and lost the game 13-10. Using logic that escapes me, the pundits have decided this means the Saints should fall to second, the Patriots — with less win than the Chiefs — should rise to third, and the Chiefs should fall to fourth.

Other power rankings we noticed this week:

Bleeding Green Nation (Brandon Lee Gowton — 2nd from 3rd) Losing Kareem Hunt unquestionably hurts this team’s ceiling. With Pat Mahomes around, though, the Chiefs are still in pretty good shape.

Washington Post (Mark Maske — 3rd from 3rd) The Chiefs managed to endure the turbulence of Friday’s release of running back Kareem Hunt to win Sunday in Oakland. That wasn’t much of a test, given the state of the Raiders. The loss of Hunt is significant, and it cannot be assumed that the Kansas City offense will maintain its level of excellence when the competition toughens.

Mile High Report (Pete Baron — 3rd from 3rd) You let the Raiders hang with you. You might want to shore that defense up some as the playoffs loom large.

Chicago Tribune (Brad Biggs — 3rd from 3rd) Kareem Hunt’s ugly exit should be overcome from a football standpoint, as QB Patrick Mahomes is enjoying an amazing season.

NBCSports.com (Scott Bair — 3rd from 3rd) These Chiefs don’t need Kareem Hunt to win it all.

Houston Chronicle (John McClain — 2nd from 3rd) The Chiefs have a tough schedule. They host the Ravens and Chargers and visit the Seahawks before closing at home against the Raiders.

Based on the comments most of them made, the pundits thought the Chiefs should drop in the rankings because Kareem Hunt is no longer on the team — and because they didn’t beat the Raiders by 40 points.

Trouble is, I’d bet that in ten minutes, I could locate an article by every one of these writers about how the NFL is a passing-oriented league, and running backs are a dime a dozen.

Certainly Kareem Hunt is a special player, and he will be missed in the Chiefs offense. But I have $100 that says the writers wouldn’t have made such a big deal about Hunt’s loss if he had ruptured an Achilles in practice on Wednesday. They just presumed the team would collapse after Hunt’s release, and figured the seven-point win proved their point.

With regard to the Raiders... what did these (theoretically) seasoned writers think was going to happen in an AFC West road game between two teams that have been body-slamming each other for six decades? To be sure, the Raiders have been buried alive by a few teams on the way to 3-10 — but none of those teams were in the AFC West.

Don’t misunderstand: I didn’t expect a seven-point win over the Raiders would push the Chiefs to the top of the heap again. But I sure didn’t expect for the Chiefs to fall.

But there is one silver lining: this week, we don’t have CBS Sports’ Pete Prisco to kick around.

In lieu of the usual analysis, I’ll point out that this week’s SBNation rankings have been removed from the final calculation. As a number of commenters pointed out before all the rankings were in, not only were this week’s rankings written by someone other than Rebecca Toback — the usual author — but it wasn’t really even a power ranking. Instead, it was more like a tongue-in-check poke at power rankings. Nobody seriously thinks the Los Angeles Chargers should be ranked second and the Washington Redskins last — even with Mark Sanchez at quarterback.

And yes... I realize that to use the term “power rankings” as if there is some stringently regulated standard for them is — to say the least — ironic.

So we’ll put SBNation in time-out this week, and see if they return to their usual routine next week.

Snark of the week

Lots of good snark this week, so it was a tough decision. But I finally settled on a a pair of consecutive comments from Bleeding Green Nation’s Brandon Lee Gowton about two teams that are separated by a certain bay:

31. Oakland Raiders - Officially eliminated from playoff contention.

32. San Francisco 49ers - Same deal as Oakland. Bay Area football? More like Bad Area football. Nailed it.

Check with us on Wednesday, and we’ll go through the data from the number-crunchers, throw it in the barrel and give you Arrowhead Pride’s True Power Rankings!