NFL Power Ratings 2026 Rebuilt: Every Team Moved, and What the Tiers Mean

We Rebuilt the NFL Power Ratings Board. Every Team Moved — Here's Why, and What the Tiers Mean.

Our published NFL power ratings weren't getting the full offseason roster picture. We fixed it, re-ran the model, and all 32 teams moved. What changed, what the six tiers mean, and why the Jets jumped two points without playing a game.

Benny Ricciardi

FSWA Award Winner · Ran 4Deep Sports · Led FTN Marketing · Traded Bonds on Wall Street

August 21, 2026

Every team on our NFL power ratings board has a different number today than it had yesterday. All 32 of them. Twenty-eight moved in the rankings.

Nobody played a game. Here's what happened, and what the board actually means.

The short version

Our published board was not being built from everything it was supposed to be built from. The biggest gap: the free-agency picture wasn't reaching the ratings we published. Retirements were getting through. Signings, in effect, were not.

That is a plumbing failure, not a modeling one — the method is unchanged, and nothing we do was re-thought. The model simply wasn't being handed its full input set before it published. We fixed it, topped the roster tracker up with signings recorded since early May, and re-ran the whole thing.

Then every number moved, because it should have.

First, what the number is

PWR is points per game above an average team on a neutral field. That's the entire definition. A team at +3.5 is expected to win by about three and a half points against a PWR 0 opponent, with home field taken out of it. A team at −3.5 loses by the same.

It splits into three pieces that all sit on that same points scale, which is what lets them add straight up:

PWR = Off PR + Def PR + ST PR

That's deliberately a boring unit. A rating of 63.4 means nothing until you know its scale. A rating of +3.5 tells you the expected margin. ## The six tiers The tier next to each team is a plain-English bucket for that number, so the board is skimmable. | Tier | PWR range | Teams (2026) | |---|---|---| | **Elite** | +7.0 and up | *none* | | **Contender** | +4.0 to +7.0 | SEA, NE, LAR, BUF | | **Playoff** | +1.0 to +4.0 | GB, JAX, DET, PHI, HOU, DAL, CHI, BAL, DEN, SF | | **Average** | −2.0 to +1.0 | IND, ATL, PIT, TB, KC, CIN, LAC, NYG, WAS, CAR | | **Below Avg** | −5.0 to −2.0 | CLE, NO, MIN, MIA, TEN, ARI, NYJ | | **Rebuild** | below −5.0 | LV | **The tier is derived from the rating and never feeds back into it.** Nothing we price — model lines, win totals, championship odds — reads the tier. It's a reading aid. Nobody is Elite. Seattle leads at +5.63 and the cutoff is +7, so the top tier sits empty. We publish it that way rather than squeezing the ladder so somebody occupies the top, because a scale that moves to guarantee a #1 isn't telling you anything. ## What moved | Team | Was | Now | Δ | Rank | |---|---|---|---|---| | **NYJ** | −6.28 | **−4.12** | **+2.16** | 32 → 31 | | **TEN** | −5.73 | **−3.58** | **+2.15** | 31 → 29 | | **DAL** | +0.59 | **+1.90** | **+1.31** | 15 → 10 | | CLE | −3.22 | −2.11 | +1.11 | 29 → 25 | | WAS | −1.99 | −1.09 | +0.90 | 25 → 23 | | … | | | | | | NYG | −0.22 | −1.08 | −0.86 | 18 → 22 | | LAC | +0.42 | −0.65 | −1.07 | 16 → 21 | | MIA | −2.03 | −3.19 | −1.16 | 26 → 28 | | **MIN** | −1.16 | **−2.46** | **−1.30** | 22 → 27 | The pattern is exactly what you'd expect from a board that had been missing free agency: **the teams that moved most are the teams whose offseason mattered most.** The Jets and Tennessee were being scored as if their additions hadn't happened, and both climbed out of the Rebuild tier. Dallas gained a full 1.31 points and moved into the Playoff tier. Minnesota went the other way. At the top, Seattle stays first but comes down from +6.43 to +5.63 — the gap between the Seahawks and the field was overstated. New England and the Rams swap into second and third. Las Vegas is now the league's worst team at −6.16, a spot it had previously been sharing. ## The other thing we fixed While we were in there we found the tier *labels* were being graded against an earlier version of the number than the one we publish — so a label could describe a draft of a rating rather than the rating printed beside it. At its worst that put 18 of 32 teams in a bucket our own published cutoffs said was wrong, and three of the six tiers could never be printed at all. That's corrected too. Every tier on the board now comes from the same finished number sitting next to it, and the ladder in that table is the ladder on every surface we publish it. We also found a few pages had been serving an older copy of the board than the one pricing our games. Everything now reads from one source — the hub, the [ratings board](/nfl/ratings), the [free tool page](/tools/nfl-power-ratings), the embeddable widget, and the version AI agents pull — with a check that fails loudly if they ever drift apart again. ## Why say any of this Because the alternative is that 32 numbers change overnight and nobody explains it. We publish a [track record](/track-record) that includes the engines losing money, so quietly re-running a model and hoping nobody diffed the board would be a strange place to start being cagey. If you'd built anything off the old numbers — a shortlist, a filter, a read on a team — you should know they moved and why. The method behind the ratings is unchanged and documented at [how we build them](/nfl/about), with the vocabulary in the [glossary](/learn/glossary). What changed is that the board now gets built from everything it's supposed to. Season starts September 9. From there the ratings update on played games rather than roster moves, which is a very different and much more interesting problem. *Educational analysis, not financial advice. Model outputs are estimates, not guarantees — trade responsibly.*

Frequently Asked Questions

What does PWR mean in NFL power ratings?

PWR is a team's rating in points per game above an average team on a neutral field. A team at PWR +3.5 is expected to win by about three and a half points against a PWR 0 opponent with no home-field advantage in play. It breaks into three parts — Off PR, Def PR and ST PR — that sit on the same points scale, so they add directly to the total.

What are the NFL power rating tiers and their cutoffs?

Six tiers, each a plain-English bucket for a range of PWR. Elite is +7 or better, Contender +4 or better, Playoff +1 or better, Average is down to −2, Below Avg down to −5, and Rebuild is anything under −5. The tier is a label for the number, never an input to it.

Why did the NFL power ratings change for every team in August 2026?

Because we found the published board was not being built from the full set of offseason inputs — most importantly the free-agency picture was not reaching it. We corrected that, refreshed the tracker with signings recorded since May, and re-ran the model. All 32 ratings moved and 28 of 32 ranks changed. Nothing about the method changed; the model simply saw everything it was supposed to see.

Which teams moved the most in the 2026 NFL power ratings?

The Jets rose the most, from −6.28 to −4.12, and Tennessee moved nearly as far, from −5.73 to −3.58 — both out of the Rebuild tier. Dallas gained 1.31 points and climbed from 15th to 10th, into the Playoff tier. Minnesota fell the most, from −1.16 to −2.46, and Las Vegas is now last at −6.16.

Who is the best NFL team in the 2026 power ratings?

Seattle, at PWR +5.63, ahead of New England at +5.30 and the Rams at +5.18. No team reaches the Elite tier, which starts at +7, so the top tier on the board is currently Contender.

Where can I see the full NFL power ratings board?

The full 32-team board is free at predictionmarketspicks.com/nfl/ratings with every team's PWR, rank and tier, and the same board is available to AI agents through our nfl_power_ratings tool. No account required.