Week 17: Final 2012 Power Poll Rankings

We have come to the end of the 2012 season. A season of which I hope includes the reemergence of a Seattle Seahawks football team that will last for many years. Seattle finished the 2012 season ranked second in the power polls, right behind Denver. The NFC West also finished as the strongest division despite a dismal season in Arizona. The Rams improved greatly and moved into the top half of the league.

In the final week of play many teams stayed ranked in the spot or just moved one spot up or down. The biggest move was by the Titans who jumped five places to finish at 23rd. The Steelers moved up three spots to 15th, and the Cowboys and Browns both fell three places to finish 17th and 26th, respectively.

The top twelve rankings all belong to playoff teams however the seeding is quite different.

The table above shows the order of how NFC and AFC teams would be seeded according to the final rankings. Of course, seeding is determined over an entire season so it’s just a demonstration of the current strength or weakness of a team and where they are in the playoffs. The AFC is nearly identical to the order of AFC teams ranked by 12thManRising’s writers.

In the NFC you can see that the teams that finished strongest are more mismatched when compared to their playoff seed. Seattle is arguably the hottest NFC team right now and they are seeded fifth with a game this Sunday at Washington. The Falcons have been somewhat inconsistent in the end of the season but have the ability. Of course Matt Ryan still needs to win his first playoff game. San Francisco also gets a bye but is battling some injuries and the loss of Mario Manningham following the game in Seattle. Both those teams have home field but are very beatable after a bye week.  Seattle on the other hand will have win on the road in the playoffs which hasn’t been done since the ’90s. This is a big test for a very dynamic football team who will be playing a similarly hot Redskins team.

I’m going to breeze through some of the other highlights. The NFC West finished as the strongest division, followed by the NFC North, which makes sense since both divisions also sent two teams each to the postseason.

The weakest divisions were the AFC West and AFC East. Each of them had only one team above .500.  The NFC West had two teams well over .500 and a third team that was just half of a game below due to a tie.

Here are charts showing the AFC West and East (the divisions with the least parity) followed by the NFC East (the division with the most parity).

I think that’s enough charts for now. I hope this was useful or at least entertaining for the 2012 season. That’s all until next September.