The Oakland Raiders may have finished with one of the worst records in football in 2018, but an early 2019 power ranking has them outside of the cellar.
On Sunday, the 2018 NFL season came to an end, as the New England Patriots beat the Los Angeles Rams in Super Bowl LIII. For the Oakland Raiders, the season came to a close a lot earlier than that, as they were the first team eliminated from playoff contention in 2018.
With the 2018 campaign barely buried, it is never too soon to take a look at how the teams stack up for the 2019 season. Power rankings are always fun to dive into, and one major outlet already has one hot off the presses.
It may be early, but here we go, as the first 2019 NFL power rankings were released by Elliot Harrison of NFL.com on Tuesday. In it, the Raiders are not at the bottom, but only near the bottom, kicking off the rankings at No. 24 overall.
In the piece, Harrison speaks to Derek Carr’s season in 2018, where he set career-highs in passing yards, and the fact that the team not only has draft capital, but cap space as well. No. 24 makes sense this early in the offseason, but a big couple of months could force experts to start moving them upwards.
The team at the bottom of Harrison’s initial rankings is the Arizona Cardinals, who will be rolling with a rookie head coach (Kliff Kingsbury) for the second straight season. The Miami Dolphins come in at No. 31, followed upwards by the Jacksonville Jaguars (30), New York Jets (29), Washington Redskins (28), Cincinnati Bengals (27), Denver Broncos (26), and Tampa Bay Buccaneers (25).
The Bengals, Broncos, Buccaneers, Dolphins, and Jets all will have new head coaches as well in 2019.
Of course, the Super Bowl champion New England Patriots come in at No. 1 in the early rankings, as there appears to be no slowing down that train. Drew Brees and the New Orleans Saints are at No. 2, with the Los Angeles Rams (3), Kansas City Chiefs (4), and Indianapolis Colts rounding out the top-5.