ESPN Power Ranking touts Rams as team to beat in the NFC West Division, barely

If you want credible discussions about how the Los Angeles Rams stack up in the NFL for the 2025 NFL season, then you need to come back in about three months. You see, it will take that long for all 32 NFL teams to navigate the early weeks of the 2025 NFL Free Agency market, the 2025 NFL Draft, and signing undrafted collegiate free agents and other NFL players to round out the team's 90-man roster.

Until you know who is and is not, on the roster, any projections of success or failure for 2025 are wild speculations. But why let logical facts get in the way of a good story that is bound to be controversial and tug on fans' heartstrings, right? Clearly, that is the plan of ESPN, who followed up the morning after the Philadelphia Eagles defeated the Kansas City Chiefs in Super Bowl LIX by a score of 40-22 by publishing their 2025 Power Rankings for all 32 NFL teams.

Even after a dominating win by the Eagles, they plunge to a ranking of fourth, while their opponent, the Kansas City Chiefs, emerge as the top-ranked team. How does that make any sense?

Of course, I'm not here to fight any power-ranking battles for other teams. But I do want to place the Rams power ranking place under the microscope. Per Tankathon.com, the LA Rams will draft 26th out of 32 teams. Since that works in inverse order of how team's finished in 2024, the Rams ended the 2024 NFL season as the seventh-ranked team in the NFL.

That means that the folks at ESPN have the Green Bay Packers, the Los Angeles Chargers, the Cincinnati Bengals, the Minnesota Vikings, and the Houston Texans all leap-frogging the Rams in terms of success in 2025. And that makes no sense.

Let's start with NFC North teams. While we know that the NFC North had tremendous success in 2024, how likely is it that the Detroit Lions, the Green Bay Packers, and the Minnesota VIkings all perform as well or better in 2025? We know that the Vikings are leaning towards letting starting quarterback Sam Darnold sign elsewhere in free agency. That is a huge setback for a team that will now entrust seldom played QB J.J. McCarthy.

While the Packers seem to be well positioned, the Detroit Lions coaching staff suffered a number of key defections that will make it difficult for them to enjoy a similar level of success in 2025.

Meanwhile, the Rams coaching staff is relatively unscathed. While the team did lose several talented positional coaches, the team returns all three coordinators and most of the team's positional coaches. The team has never had this many coaches returning, and that fact places the team on track to enjoy the benefits of continuity after a solid 2024 NFL season.

One area that ESPN did get 'right' from their early power ranking is setting the Rams up as the top team in the NFC West Division. But the set the San Francisco 49ers just one mark behind them, at 13th-best team. I'm not convinced that an aging and injury-prone 49ers roster is an instant success in 2024, particularly knowing that they lose the benefit of a cheap quarterback. That's right, the 49ers front office must shovel heaps of cash to starting QB Brock Purdy.

It's way too early to form lucid arguments over where any NFL teams line up for 2025. But the Rams have a knack of exceeding early expectations. If they are projected to win the NFC West Division and compete in the 2026 NFL Playoffs this early, I expect that the team will have a sensational 2025 NFL season.

As always, thanks for reading.

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