Since the NFL starts tonight, here is our pre-season poll ranking the top 10 teams in the National Football League. As always, the poll does not reflect how I think the teams should be ranked; it reflects how they would be ranked if the AP did a poll for the NFL similar to the one it does for college football. We will be updating this poll throughout the season:
1. Green Bay Packers
2. New England Patriots
3. New York Giants
4. San Francisco 49ers
5. Baltimore Ravens
6. Houston Texans
7. Philadelphia Eagles
8. Pittsburgh Steelers
9. Chicago Bears
10. Dallas Cowboys
The AP does have an NFL Ranking now they all The AP Pro32. Let's see how close you came.
ReplyDelete1. Green Bay Packers
2. New England Patriots
3. New York Giants
4. San Francisco 49ers
5. Baltimore Ravens
6. Houston Texans
7. Pittsburgh Steelers
8. Philadelphia Eagles
9. New Orleans Saints
10. Atlanta Falcons
I did pretty well, especially considering that I had put Dallas in as a sort of joke, thinking that they would get extra votes in the pre-season, much like Notre Dame does.
ReplyDeleteBut this is great. Now there's no reason to continue the HP Poll. In the future, we will simply refer to the actual AP poll.
One of the things that is so peculiar about conventional wisdom is the lag between it and the beat of reality. All of these voters actually watched the Giants beat the Packers and the Patriots last season, but that really didn't jibe with their understanding--and so they still don't quite buy it. I understand that they can come up with all sorts of rational arguments why the Packers or Patriots might be better than the Giants, and I understand that not everyone believes that the Super Bowl playoffs don't do such a super job of identifying the NFL's best team of a given season. But I am surprised that these two positions somehow add up to the majority opinion over the well-the-Giants-are-the-defending-champs-so-they-must-be-the-No.-1-team logic.
ReplyDelete