Week 12 NFL power ratings: How to value all 32 teams, including Bengals without Joe Burrow, for ATS picks
Get the edge over the sportsbooks in Week 12 and beyond by developing a power rating system to stay ahead of the lines
There might be only 10 good teams left in the NFL after the Bengals lost star quarterback Joe Burrow to a wrist injury. In my weekly power ratings, a zero rating means a team is average, and after scouring the league, the only three teams I can find it within myself to put at that level behind the top 10 are the Texans, Vikings and Broncos, and you can certainly argue against any and all of them if you'd like.
I can't put the Chargers at that average level because their commitment to being just below it verges on performance art at this point. I'm not putting the Rams there with Cooper Kupp potentially unavailable next week. The entire NFC South doesn't meet the average standard (I'd take any of my zero-rating teams straight up on a neutral field against the lot). The Browns' offense with rookie Dorian Thompson-Robinson projects to be bad enough to drag the elite defense down to below-average ranks. If anything, I may have the most confidence in recent basement dwellers like the Bears and Cardinals to make the leap into my average tier now that they have their quarterbacks back in the fold.
I certainly won't have the Bengals even getting close to average with Burrow out for the season. The offense was terrible earlier in the year when he was working his way back to full health, and I can't imagine Jake Browning doing any better of a job running the show than that version of Burrow. The defense has been an adventure all year, and it ranks only ahead of the Broncos in yards per play on the season, though Denver's numbers are skewed by the Broncos' historically bad start.
With a defense that's arguably the worst in the NFL and a starting QB that is also in that conversation, I've dropped the Bengals nine points from where I had them heading into Week 11. Eight of that comes from the downgrade to Browning, and the other is a reflection of their performance on Thursday. That still puts four teams below them in my power ratings, so even if this feels like an aggressive move, I might not have dropped them far enough.
If you need a refresher on how to build spread power ratings, why they're important for beating the market and how successful I've been with this system at SportsLine, check out the Week 1 version of these power ratings. You can also check out SportsLine on Sunday afternoons as I give my initial power ratings adjustments for each team to get ahead of the market openers before diving in fully for this Tuesday feature. Otherwise, we'll jump right in.
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