NFL

2020 NFL Power Rankings: Week 15

Jerome Yurchisin  —  @MathWithJerome Dec 16th, 2020

The Cleveland Browns nearly cramped up Lamar Jackson on Monday night, until he squeezed out some clutch plays and dropped the Browns another game in the standings.

Week 14 had more than a few blowouts -- a bunch of teams stunk it up. Let’s see how this week’s action shook up our rankings.

Risers and Fallers

For the second straight week, the NFC East saw some big swings in the playoff picture. According to numberFire’s playoff odds model, the Washington Football Team's postseason chances shot up 27.8 percentage points (to 70.4%), while the New York Giants’ hopes of a playoff game dropped 33.2 percentage points (to 19.4%).

Washington’s defense fueled their win over the San Francisco 49ers with an interception return and fumble return for touchdowns. They acquired -27.49 Defensive Net Expected Points (NEP), and that wasn’t even the best Defensive NEP performance of the week.

Washington’s defensive rank (by Adjusted Defensive NEP per play) shot up to 3rd (from 13) after Week 10.

Daniel Jones was sacked six times against the Arizona Cardinals (with three fumbles, losing one) in Week 14, dropping -15.37 Passing NEP. The fumbles weren’t unique to Jones, as Colt McCoy was sacked twice, as well (-6.16 Passing NEP).

Here are our Week 15 NFL Power Rankings:

Teams Ranked 32nd to 23rd

Rank Team nERD Record Playoff Odds Rank Change Off. NEP Rank Def. NEP Rank
32 New York Jets -14.99 0-13 0.00% 0 32 30
31 Jacksonville Jaguars -11.14 1-12 0.00% 0 30 26
30 Cincinnati Bengals -9.04 2-10-1 0.00% -1 29 25
29 Detroit Lions -7.46 5-8 0.20% 1 20 32
28 Dallas Cowboys -6.47 4-9 0.70% 0 22 27
27 Houston Texans -5.27 4-9 0.00% -4 16 29
26 Las Vegas Raiders -5.22 7-6 11.90% -1 12 31
25 Denver Broncos -5.15 5-8 0.00% 1 31 11
24 Philadelphia Eagles -4.55 4-8-1 10.20% 3 26 17
23 New York Giants -3.41 5-8 19.40% -1 27 13


In case you were wondering, matching the New York Jets’ unsurprising position at the bottom of our rankings, Sam Darnold is still at the bottom of Passing NEP and Total NEP.

Jalen Hurts put together an impressive performance in his first career start and provided the spark the Philadelphia Eagles were looking for to upset the New Orleans Saints. This also resulted in a hop up three spots (to 24th) in our rankings and improved the Eagles' nERD rating by 1.44 points.

Teams Ranked 22nd to 13th

Rank Team nERD Record Playoff Odds Rank Change Off. NEP Rank Def. NEP Rank
22 Cleveland Browns -3.11 9-4 80.90% 2 9 28
21 Carolina Panthers -2.03 4-9 0.00% -1 14 22
20 New England Patriots -1.6 6-7 1.60% -3 24 12
19 Chicago Bears -0.91 6-7 15.40% 2 28 6
18 Atlanta Falcons -0.78 4-9 0.00% 1 19 14
17 Los Angeles Chargers -0.5 4-9 0.00% 1 18 15
16 Minnesota Vikings 0.77 6-7 22.40% -2 11 18
15 Seattle Seahawks 1.57 9-4 98.90% 1 5 23
14 Indianapolis Colts 1.58 9-4 81.30% 1 21 10
13 Miami Dolphins 1.97 8-5 44.80% 0 23 5


Our power rankings put the Chicago Bears at 19th heading into Week 15 after handily defeating the Houston Texans 36-7.

Mitchell Trubisky got his second chance to be the Bears' starting quarterback and put up some good numbers. Trubisky put together a 63.89% Passing Success Rate in Week 14 (second behind Russell Wilson’s 70.37%) and a personal season-high Passing NEP of 12.28.

The Bears are one of three teams after this week to have a large gap (of exactly 22 spots) between their Offensive NEP and Defensive NEP rankings (28th and 6th, respectively, for the Bears).

Teams Ranked 12th to 1st

Rank Team nERD Record Playoff Odds Rank Change Off. NEP Rank Def. NEP Rank
12 Washington Football Team 2.31 6-7 70.40% 0 25 3
11 San Francisco 49ers 2.92 5-8 9.70% -3 17 9
10 Tennessee Titans 3.15 9-4 91.50% -1 2 24
9 Buffalo Bills 3.29 10-3 99.40% 2 4 21
8 Arizona Cardinals 3.67 7-6 55.40% 2 6 16
7 Baltimore Ravens 4.55 8-5 88.70% 0 13 7
6 Kansas City Chiefs 5.28 12-1 100.00% 0 3 20
5 New Orleans Saints 6.66 10-3 100.00% -3 7 8
4 Green Bay Packers 6.73 10-3 100.00% 1 1 19
3 Pittsburgh Steelers 6.98 11-2 100.00% 0 15 2
2 Tampa Bay Buccaneers 7.8 8-5 97.40% 2 8 4
1 Los Angeles Rams 10.64 9-4 99.80% 0 10 1


Washington (ranked 12th overall) and the Titans (10th) are the two other teams with the same 22-spot disparity between offensive and defensive rankings.

After managing just 60 rushing yards a week ago against Cleveland, Derrick Henry broke out in a big way versus the Jacksonville Jaguars, rushing for 215 yards and 2 touchdowns on 26 carries.

So it’s no surprise that Henry led all running backs in Rushing NEP at 11.44 in Week 14, but he wasn’t tops across all positions.

If you missed it, Monday night’s matchup between the Baltimore Ravens (ranked 7th) and the Browns may have been the game of the year.

The last game of Week 14 saw Lamar Jackson finish seventh in Passing NEP per drop back and first in Rushing NEP, Baker Mayfield finish sixth in Passing NEP, and Kareem Hunt finish second in Receiving NEP among running backs.

There was a lot of offensive goodness in FirstEnergy stadium as the two teams scored the most points in the final two minutes of a game since 2013 (20 points, including the last-play safety).

The Los Angeles Rams stay atop our rankings after running over the New England Patriots and added 1.85 points to their nERD rating (which was best in the league for Week 14).

This week brings the last-ranked Jets to Los Angeles in what is a huge 25.63-point disparity in nERD ratings between the two teams. NFL odds has the Rams as a 17-point favorite.