DEN@BUF: No change after Denver defeats Buffalo.
KC@NYG: The Giants’ victory finally helps them climb a few spots in the rankings after being mired in the middle for a while. Interestingly, Minnesota reclaims its ranking just ahead of Chicago, due to their beatwin over the Giants looking more impressive. This victory should change the outlook for the NFC East’s season, as the Giants are now ranked first in the division. KC falls back a couple of more slots.
TB@NE: We’ll have a few more graphs this week because the games are so spread out. First is after New England defeats Tampa Bay – New England is looking a lot better in the graph now. They leapfrog a few teams in the rankings, and Chicago becomes ranked ahead of Minnesota again, due to Tampa Bay (a Minnesota beatloss) looking slightly worse now.
If Buffalo beats Denver tonight, will that be the greatest beatpath upset this season?
There’s a couple of ways to look at beatpath upsets. If Buffalo wins, it won’t actually have a visible effect on the graph, because Denver has so many alternative beatpaths to Buffalo. So you can either look at the widest ranking discrepancy (and this one might be right up there), or you can look at how traumatic the effect is on the graph. The Minnesota win over the Giants combined with the Green Bay win over Atlanta had a huge, huge effect on the graph a few weeks back, so maybe that was a bigger upset.
So much for Buffalo winning.