NFL Power Rankings after the first quarter of the 2020 season

29. Houston Texans (0-4)

Oh boy, how far we have come. The Texans have been a perennial division winner and with QB Deshaun Watson at the helm, they were expected to compete for the AFC in future years. While the firing of coach/GM Bill O’Brien is a positive thing in my opinion, because he was started to run this franchise into the ground, they are still left with the mess he left behind and they are not even competitive this year. Every other team in the league has at least two takeaways on the season, while the Texans still have a goose egg next to their name in that category and that combined with a bottom-five third-down offense (34.9%) has them at just 24:15 time of possession, which is almost two minutes less than the next-closest team in that category. Houston has also allowed an NFL-high 16 sacks and while a lot of that is on Watson extending plays to where it would be better to just get rid of the ball (and we have seen that in the past), he feels like he has to do those things and you can’t blame him that much for it. Their point differential of -46 on the season is only “surpassed” by the two dumpster fire teams from New York and maybe the worst part about this is that they have let their rookies play less than half the snaps of any other team so far (85) – so you can’t even fault inexperience.

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30. Washington Football Team (1-3)

While I am curious to why Washington moved on from QB Dwayne Haskins after losing to one of the juggernauts in the Ravens, I can’t say that the offense really gave me any hope. They are dead-last in the league in third-down offense, converting exactly a third of those, tied with their division-rival Giants at only 4.6 yards per play offensively and they only get 3.6 yards per rush. I have talked about this in my Week 4 recap video, as Washington has only had three 20+ yard plays outside of their two main playmakers in Terry McLaurin and third-round pick Antonio Gibson. Their defensive line had a dominant showing in week one against the Eagles, who we have learned can’t do anything with all the injuries they have suffered, and the back-seven is nothing special outside of corner Kendall Fuller. They should be better with Chase Young coming back and Kyle Allen has better knowledge of the Scott Turner offense, but there hasn’t been much to cheer about after surprising people in the season-opener. Still, they are only a half game out of first place in the NFC East.

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31. New York Giants (0-4)

The Giants have scored just 47 points through the first four games and they have scored just three touchdowns up to this this point, which is less than 21 individual players around the league. QB Daniel Jones is getting a lot of blame for that, but he has been getting knocked around every single game and he has barely gotten any help, Jones’ 137 rushing yards make up for 45 percent of the production on the ground and the rest of team is averaging 2.8 yards per carry, compared to 7.6 for the New York’s QB. On defense, Big Blue has the biggest collection of linemen to clog up lanes in the run game and James Bradberry has been one of the very best corners in the league, but as a group, they don’t stand out in any single metric and they allow an NFL-worst 53.6 percent of third downs to be converted. The best thing Joe Judge’s team has going for itself is that they have the least amount of penalty yards against them (20.8).

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32. New York Jets (0-4)

Just like in my preseason power rankings, where people tried to tell me they are definitely not the bottom team, the Jets find themselves at No. 32. They have been outscored by 66 points leading into Week 5, which isn’t nearly as bad as the Dolphins started last year for example, but that looks way too small when I look back at those matchups. The Bills were up 21-0 on them in Week 1 and a late touchdown made the score seem a lot closer, the 49ers lost like half their starters and still blew them out their homefield, the Colts never had to do anything special on offense to pump up the score and then last week they can’t come through in a must-win situation, when the Broncos had a former undrafted free agent start his first ever game in the pros. And they aren’t just bad – they are also undisciplined, getting flagged eight times a game for 83.8 yards, which is the second-most league-wide.

Make sure to also check out my detailed recap of the week four here!