NFL Power Rankings 2016: Predicting Post-Week 2 Standings

Monday morning overreaction time is over. There’s no need to fire out any more of your hottest NFL takes about what you learned in Week 1.

While it’s dangerous to be too reactive to Week 1’s results, the season is already one-sixteenth over, and many of the games we saw over the weekend had playoff implications.

Let’s examine the league’s pecking order with one week of meaningful play in the books. Then, we’ll focus on what went wrong for some of the teams whose stock fell after their first games.

Arizona Cardinals (No. 7)

In a Week 1 where none of the NFC’s top contenders played very well, the Cardinals put forth the most underwhelming performance. Despite playing at home against a New England Patriots squad minus Tom Brady, Rob Gronkowski and Rob Ninkovich, Arizona fell 23-21.

Fans of a losing team often like pointing to one play as the reason for the loss, and that play for Cards fans Sunday was a poor snap leading up to the potentially game-winning field-goal attempt. However, if a game against a severely undermanned team has to come down to that, there were obviously bigger problems.

Arizona struggled in all three phases of the game. Its normally excellent passing game couldn’t get into a rhythm in the first half, and David Johnson was having a lackluster game on the ground until a spectacular 45-yard scamper in the fourth quarter. The defense made quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo look awfully comfortable in his …

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