NFL Power Rankings Week 5: Chiefs Take No. 1, Patriots Shock Bills

The basement remains occupied. Miami held undefeated Minnesota to 15 points and still lost because the Dolphins could manage only 10. Through four games, Miami has scored 46 points and allowed 101, the worst point differential among the AFC's winless teams. Until somebody at the bottom wins, the Dolphins have not supplied a reason to move them.

Tennessee again managed to remain within striking distance and again left without a win. The 24-18 loss to Baltimore makes four straight defeats to begin the season. The defense is competent enough to prevent embarrassment. The offense has not been good enough to turn that into much of anything.

Tampa Bay actually moves up despite losing because the bottom of the league remains a highly competitive neighborhood. Rookie Jalon Daniels made his first NFL start with Baker Mayfield sidelined, and the Buccaneers stayed within three points of Green Bay before losing 17-14. Mayfield is expected to miss at least three weeks with the dislocated thumb, so the Bucs remain in survival mode.

The Chargers have played several opponents competitively. They have also lost to all of them. Seattle's 30-23 win pushed Los Angeles to 0-4 with a minus-39 point differential through four games. Eventually the distinction between “better than the record” and “the record” disappears.

Houston finally found some offense. Unfortunately, Dallas found four more points. The Texans' 34-30 loss was their best offensive performance of the year, which earns them the smallest possible promotion, but 0-4 remains the loudest statistic attached to this team.

The Jets scored 12 points in Chicago and never seriously threatened to change the result. New York is now 1-3, and the same issues keep cycling through different Sundays: penalties, inconsistency and an offense that rarely makes anything look easy. There are worse teams. That is about the nicest thing available here.

New Orleans spent the first three weeks being competitive enough to remain interesting. Atlanta removed the ambiguity Monday night. A 45-24 home loss drops the Saints to 1-3 and raises new questions about whether those earlier close games represented progress or simply delayed the correction.

The Seattle upset already feels like it happened a month ago. Washington lost 30-13 to Indianapolis and was forced down to its third quarterback after Marcus Mariota injured his knee with Jayden Daniels already unavailable. The encouraging news is that Daniels is expected to practice fully and is currently slated to return against the Giants.

Arizona keeps producing stretches of competent football without producing enough wins. The Cardinals allowed the Giants to pull away for a 36-24 victory and now sit at 1-3. Close losses gave Arizona some patience earlier. Four weeks in, the record gets a larger vote.

This week's biggest drop belongs to Pittsburgh. The Steelers' win over Cincinnati launched them into the top half last week; losing 27-24 to Cleveland immediately complicates that argument. Pittsburgh is not twelve spots worse than it was seven days ago. The league around it simply supplied considerably stronger evidence this week.

Indianapolis has turned those early close losses into actual progress. The Colts handled Washington 30-13 in London and are back to .500. Jonathan Taylor's 95 rushing yards and two touchdowns helped turn what began as a competitive game into Indianapolis' most convincing performance of the season.

Detroit's defense has officially become more than an occasional inconvenience. Allowing Carolina to score 32 points is a difficult result to explain away, especially after the Lions appeared to be stabilizing. The offense can keep them competitive almost every week. The defense is making sure “competitive” has to do a lot of work in that sentence.

The Bengals have lost two straight after opening 2-0. Sunday's 22-17 home loss to Jacksonville was damaging enough before Ja'Marr Chase left with a concussion and Tee Higgins suffered an adductor injury. Cincinnati still has too much talent to bury, but both the results and the injury report are now moving in the wrong direction.

Carolina may have quietly become one of the season's strangest teams. The Panthers now have wins over Atlanta and Detroit after beating the Lions 32-26 on Sunday night. Their losses keep them from climbing even higher, but twice in four weeks Carolina has beaten a team that looked substantially better on paper.

It was not beautiful, but Green Bay desperately needed it. The Packers beat Tampa Bay 17-14 and stopped the bleeding after Atlanta ran them out of the building one week earlier. Jordan Love and the offense still need more consistency, but .500 looks substantially better than the alternative.

Once is a bad night. Twice is a trend worth discussing. Philadelphia followed its 27-7 loss to Chicago with a 24-20 home defeat against the Rams. The roster is too good for a full panic button, but consecutive losses have removed almost all of the early-season benefit of the doubt.

Dallas continues its season-long commitment to making every Sunday unnecessarily dramatic. The Cowboys escaped Houston 34-30 and are back to .500 after four weeks. The offense can clearly score enough to matter. Whether the rest of the roster can make life less exhausting remains an open question.

The Rams stay put despite earning a meaningful 24-20 road win over Philadelphia. Puka Nacua returned and produced 125 receiving yards, giving the offense something it badly missed. Los Angeles remains difficult to categorize, but beating the Eagles prevents another slide and puts the Rams back at .500.

This looks dramatic, but the middle of the rankings became crowded very quickly. Losing 24-14 at San Francisco is hardly disqualifying, and Denver still owns quality wins over Jacksonville and the Rams. The Broncos remain dangerous; they just no longer have a résumé that supports the top-six treatment they received last week.

The Giants keep losing quarterbacks and winning football games. Jameis Winston threw three touchdown passes in the 36-24 victory over Arizona, while the defense supplied a game-sealing 98-yard pick-six. Jaxson Dart is out for the regular season, Winston remains the starter and newly acquired J.J. McCarthy is being worked into the quarterback room. Somehow, the Giants are 3-1 through all of it.

And just like that, the Jacksonville humiliation feels considerably farther away. Drake Maye and the Patriots went into Buffalo and handed the Bills their first loss, 29-26. New England's problem has never been a lack of talent; it has been week-to-week consistency. Beating the No. 1 team from last week's rankings buys back quite a bit of credibility.

Apparently Atlanta just needed everyone to stop watching. The Falcons followed their 35-14 destruction of Green Bay with a 45-24 Monday-night win over New Orleans. That is 80 points over two weeks after scoring almost nothing during their first two games. We are not erasing September. We are acknowledging that this looks like a completely different football team.

We have officially run out of reasons not to move Cleveland. The Browns beat Pittsburgh 27-24 and now own three wins through four games. The offense still is not something anyone should confuse with Kansas City, but the defense keeps games manageable and Cleveland keeps finishing them. Eleven spots is a lot. So is 3-1.

The Bears have gone from Week 2 disaster to one of the league's hottest teams. Following the 27-7 demolition of Philadelphia with a 23-12 win over the Jets gives Chicago consecutive convincing victories. Whatever happens when the quarterback situation settles, the defense has bought this team plenty of time.

The New England blowout was not an isolated spike. Jacksonville followed it by going into Cincinnati and winning 22-17. The Jaguars have now produced consecutive wins over teams we considered legitimate contenders, which makes it increasingly difficult to classify them as anything other than one themselves.

Baltimore keeps winning games that somehow feel more difficult than they need to be. The Ravens beat Tennessee 24-18 to reach 3-1, but Lamar Jackson's ankle injury adds an obvious variable heading into Week 5. He is considered day-to-day, which prevents a more substantial drop for now.

The undefeated season is over. The legitimacy conversation is not. Las Vegas went punch-for-punch with Kansas City before falling 30-27, and Kirk Cousins threw for 365 yards against the league's new No. 1 team. The Raiders drop because other teams won, not because Sunday exposed them as frauds.

Nobody gets to keep No. 1 after losing at home to a division rival. Buffalo's 29-26 loss to New England was close enough that there is no reason for a dramatic collapse, but the Bills made enough mistakes to give the Patriots the opening they needed. D.J. Moore also aggravated his shoulder injury, although early reporting suggests it is not expected to become a long-term absence.

The Washington loss looks more like a speed bump after Seattle handled the Chargers 30-23. The Seahawks have responded to their first defeat rather than letting it become a pattern. Four weeks in, the defending champions still have one of the league's strongest overall rosters and deserve to be back near the top.

Pretty football remains optional. Winning does not. Minnesota beat Miami 15-10 to reach 4-0, and the Vikings have become remarkably comfortable dragging opponents into ugly games and watching them drown there. They even managed this one without Justin Jefferson, who was ruled out with an ankle injury.

San Francisco stays exactly where it was and has a perfectly reasonable argument for No. 1. The 49ers beat Denver 24-14 with the defense controlling most of the afternoon and remain one of only three undefeated teams. The difference between San Francisco and Kansas City right now is basically a coin flip; the Chiefs get the slightest edge for beating another unbeaten team.

There is your new No. 1. Kansas City survived its toughest test yet, rallying past previously unbeaten Las Vegas 30-27 behind Patrick Mahomes and a huge 177-yard rushing performance from Kenneth Walker III. The concern is health: Tyquan Thornton, who had 111 yards and two touchdowns against the Raiders, is expected to miss roughly 12-16 weeks with a dislocated ankle. None of that changes the bottom line: the Chiefs are 4-0.