It's Tuesday, which means that Power Rankings are the flavor of the day. Not surprisingly, the Green Bay Packers took a slight tumble across the board following a three-touchdown loss to the New Orleans Saints on Sunday, but their opponent and the tough environment likely kept them from falling too far.
In SB Nation's rankings,Green Bay fell from the third spot a week ago down to seventh, a four-spot difference that appears to reflect the lopsided score of Sunday's game. However, it is worth noting that the Packers are in the highest position of any team with three losses, as they are slotted in ahead of a cluster of 4-3 and 5-3 teams in the high single digits and teens.
The decision to rank them here is probably an acknowledgement of the injuries that hobbled the Packers' offense in Sunday's game, as well as recognition that the 3-4 Saints are a very good team at home, regardless of their record. Those Saints, on the other hand, are the highest-ranked team below .500, as they slide in at the 20th position. Their inability to win road games likely is a contributor here, and they will need to prove that they can find some victories outside of the Superdome if they expect to make any noise in the NFC playoffs.
As for other interesting notes, we find the Detroit Lions rising four spots from 8th to fourth this week. These Lions have lost at home to the Bills (who are admittedly better than most people thought in the preseason), and have been adept at digging themselves into holes early in games. However, the wins in the past two weeks have shown a tendency to overcome their own early struggles - albeit with the help of no small amount of luck in the form of a Drew Brees interception and a Delay of Game penalty that wiped out a missed field goal attempt on Sunday.
As for the other two NFC North teams, the Bears and Vikings share matching 3-5 records, and are slotted in at 24th and 25th in the league, respectively.
As for other rankings sources, seven is apparently the magic number. ESPN has the Packers in that spot, dropping them down just one place from last week with the comment "The Packers got plenty of yards (on Sunday), just not enough points." Yahoo!'s Shutdown Corner blog has Green Bay in seventh also, but they put the Lions at 10th as a result of their struggles to beat teams with losing records.