Power rankings system devised and compiled weekly by Stemshul. “Expert” analysis by paradroid.

It’s time for your Week 6 fix of football recap-ening! The Lions are finally in the S-tier, probably for the first time since these rankings have been tabulated. Of course, the 49ers are so far ahead that we created an S+tier just for them. Detroit, Philly, and K.C. all held serve last week. The victory which helped propel S.F. into their own category came at the expense of Dallas, a team that seems to make very little sense. Let’s take a closer look.

In their victories (over the bad Giants, the Rodgers-less Jets, and the fading Pats), the Cowboys have outscored their opponents 108 – 13. That’s an average score of 36 – 4.3. In their two losses (to the bad Cardinals and the spectacular 49ers), they’ve been outscored 70 – 26 (average score of 35 – 13). How can a defense be that dominant and that porous? Well, the opponents have a little to do with it. The Patriots and Giants are 32nd and 31st in points per game, respectively, and the Jets are 24th. The Dallas defense has a little to do with that, of course, but none of those offenses are setting the league on fire. Arizona has a slightly more respectable unit at 19th in PPG, but the 28 points they scored against Dallas is tied for the most points they’ve scored in a game this year. And San Francisco’s 42 points scored in last week’s drubbing was the most points they’ve scored all year. In the end, the most obvious reason for the wild swings in form is …yup, turnovers! It’s hard to lose when you win the turnover battle decisively. In their three wins, the Cowboys forced nine turnovers and conceded none. In their two losses, they conceded five and forced one. It’s a pretty prosaic bit of analysis, but it’s nevertheless true. They’re simply going to have to protect the ball if they want to win. So I don’t know if they’re actually any good or not yet. Time will tell.

Detroit eased past a weak opponent (the Panthers) 42 – 24 in a game that wasn’t really that close. It was 28-10 at halftime and the 14 second half points for Carolina flattered to deceive, because by that point Detroit had their foot off the gas (and that last touchdown was in pure garbage time). Detroit did win the turnover battle (three to nil), but one of the things that’s been good to see this year is that the Lions don’t need to win the turnover battle to win the game. In fact, In their first four games, the Lions were minus two in turnover differential and were still sitting at 3-1. It’s also been nice to see them not playing down to their opponents, a tradition for Detroit Lions teams for decades. And finally, they’ve been overcoming injuries. Amon-Ra St, Brown and Jahmyr Gibbs both missed Week 5, and there have been plenty of defensive backs and offensive lineman missing time all year. Overcoming adversity is what Dan Campbell promised in that first knee-biting press conference, and the Lions are delivering. And while some of his quotes are a little goofy sounding, I quite liked this one, which was uttered during this past week: “…but if you’re hunting us, you don’t have to look far. We’re going to be on your front porch when you open the door.” Pass me the Kool-aid, coach Campbell!