Seattle Seahawks

NFL Power Index Week 9: Seahawks in free fall

Published Jun. 30, 2017 6:28 p.m. ET

foxsports

The complete NFL Power index ranking for Week 9 of the 2016 NFL season. The Seattle Seahawks continue to drop sharply due to the poor performance of their offense.

Two week ago, the Seahawks were ranked 2nd in the NFL Power Index. Now they’re 12th and sinking like a rock. What happened? The answer to that is simply “their offense happened.” Or perhaps it is more accurate to say that it didn’t happen.

It’s been three weeks since Russell Wilson threw a touchdown pass. To avoid getting pummeled because of the terrible blocking in front of him, Wilson has become Captain Checkdown. Without a running game to help, the entire offense has ground to a halt.

Meanwhile, Seattle’s defense has been on the field for insanely large periods of time. That, combined with injuries, as allowed the defensive stats to erode as well. With both sides of the ball faltering statistically, the drop in their NFL Power Index should be expected.

It isn’t a surprise to see the Patriots at the top of the index again. What is a surprise is to see the gap between them and the rest of the NFL. This suggests that they are the league’s only elite team so far this season.

Also illustrating that point is Arizona moving up from 5th to 3rd despite an embarrassing loss to Carolina. Arizona didn’t do anything worthy of moving up, and actually lost ground in overall power. The problem is that both Minnesota and Buffalo dropped significantly more in Power than Arizona did.

Here are the updated NFL Power Index rankings for Week 9:

Rank	Last	Team	ST	Pt Dif	3%	TO	Power
1	1	New England	16.8	11.8	6.65	3	85.64
2	2	Atlanta	11.4	4.4	-3.84	2	69.10
3	5	Arizona	15.4	6.7	6.07	3	68.44
4	4	Buffalo	20.2	7.8	-3.76	8	68.03
5	3	Minnesota	23.8	5.9	1.68	11	62.97
6	6	Denver	14.7	7.6	-1.69	5	61.22
7	7	Dallas	17.8	9.1	-0.51	4	60.70
8	14	Kansas City	25.4	3.2	-3.75	9	59.26
9	9	San Diego	19.4	1.7	3.56	-3	58.67
10	10	Philadelphia	16.4	10.9	-3.54	6	58.59
11	12	Green Bay	18.4	4.1	17.06	-2	58.17
12	8	Seattle	19.6	6.6	-1.59	1	56.14
13	17	Oakland	12.4	1.3	3.94	7	54.03
14	11	Pittsburgh	15.3	2.9	4.44	-1	53.82
15	13	Miami	13.5	-1.8	2.9	-5	53.15
16	19	Washington	27.4	0.2	-1.26	0	50.92
17	15	Tennessee	16.7	-0.2	9.32	-3	50.70
18	16	New Orleans	16.8	-3.8	10.26	0	49.24
19	18	Cincinnati	21.9	-2.2	-3.7	2	48.89
20	20	Baltimore	14.1	-0.9	-1.26	2	46.94
21	27	Chicago	12.0	-7.7	-1.59	-2	44.34
22	22	Detroit	15.2	-1.4	-6.64	2	43.75
23	26	Carolina	7.4	-2.0	-0.25	-7	42.71
24	24	NY Giants	17.0	-1.1	-8.34	-7	42.17
25	21	Indianapolis	16.1	-2.6	-3.01	-1	42.08
26	25	Los Angeles	21.5	-4.9	-2.75	-3	39.32
27	23	Tampa Bay	20.2	-4.8	4.5	-2	38.77
28	28	Houston	13.5	-4.9	4.7	-7	38.18
29	29	Jacksonville	19.9	-6.8	-16.39	-8	31.34
30	31	NY Jets	17.3	-6.9	0.27	-8	31.06
31	30	Cleveland	18.8	-9.8	-6.75	-4	25.76
32	32	San Francisco	13.2	-12.3	-6.6	-2	19.54