Week 14 True Power Rankings: Chiefs hold in third — plus more cool charts

On Tuesday, our Week 14 Pundit Power Rankings showed the Kansas City Chiefs falling to fourth place in our aggregated pundit rankings model after their 40-33 victory over the Oakland Raiders. The team took a hit with the number-crunchers, too, but stays in third place overall.

Here’s what the crunchers say about the NFL this week:

The Chiefs drop to third place with the number-crunchers after edging down with a couple of them — while the Los Angeles Rams edged up in a couple to take over second place.

As we saw last week, the top tier of teams remained the same with the crunchers; we simply see some shuffling. After pulling out a win against the Chicago Bears, the New York Giants moved up out of the bottom tier, where the San Francisco 49ers took up residence after an ugly loss to the Seattle Seahawks.

Speaking of the 49ers... since last week, I’ve been looking at some other charts like the ones we presented last week. The one for the 49ers is interesting.

Again, we see that in the case of the 49ers, the rankings of the pundits and Elo follow each other fairly closely — but so do all of the other data models except DVOA, which has valued the 49ers much more highly than the other systems for most of the season. If you’re a fan of the DVOA system — as many folks are — you might conclude that the 49ers are a much better team than their record would indicate. Could this mean that once Jimmy Garoppolo returns in 2019, they could see a lot more success? We shall see.

But you don’t always see this kind of thing with a team that has a poor record. Just take a look at the same chart for another one: the AFC team that (for now) resides across the Bay.

By just about every system, the Oakland Raiders have been ranked at (or near) the bottom for pretty much the whole season. Jon Gruden might be building for the future in Las Vegas, but right now the foundation looks like it is being constructed on the kind of ground that is most prevalent around Sin City: sand.

And here’s one more — this one for a team that’s now in the playoff discussion.

Elo started the Houston Texans low on the basis of last season. The pundits, however, thought the Texans might be pretty good, but (unsurprisingly) jumped ship after the team started 0-3. Once they started winning, Elo — along with the pundits and most of the other data systems — showed a steady rise. But once again, DVOA thought the Texans were pretty good much earlier than the pundits and the other models. Everybody agrees that the Texans are pretty good now. But whether they have the juice to make noise in the postseason remains to be seen.

Let’s put it all together in the Week 14 True Power Rankings.

The Chiefs remain in third overall — but the two NFC teams above them are tied in first place.

Again, we see movement at the top, but just among the previous week’s top teams. The Lions moved into the bottom group, and the Buccaneers moved out.

As we saw their chart, the crunchers like the 49ers better than the pundits — but neither think the team is particularly good. Up closer to the top, the crunchers still like the Denver Broncos and the Baltimore Ravens better than the writers do.

And now... the weekly reality-check: the Week 14 cruncher grades.

With that, we’re on to the Week 14 games — and hopefully, a Chiefs win that will drop the Ravens down a peg or two. Join us again on Tuesday, and we’ll load up all the data from this week’s games and let ‘er rip!