SFL Power Rankings: More Questions Than Games

Coming out of Week 3 I personally expected to see Queen City fall, possibly out of the top 16, and for Sin City to take their place but there were a few lingering questions I did have. #2 Florida took a close loss on the chin vs the defending champs and it was their first loss of the season but how far would they drop if much at all? Was #4 Albuquerque’s win over #3 D.C. enough to garner a few more 1st place votes this week? Was #20 Atlanta’s win over a sinking Charleston enough to pull them back up into the rankings? Check out the answers below because boy were some of these close.

VOTING BREAKDOWN

First things first, a note on rankings and ties: If two or more teams tie on points the initial tiebreaker is did any team receive a first-place vote and then they sort from there. If that doesn’t work, I also have the teams ranked the old way whereby teams are sorted by average placement 1-25 and hopefully the tie is broken there as from there I go by the heart of the cards and let fate decide. This week Queen City & Sin City were tied on points at the cutoff and Sin City took the spot-on average placement (15.53 vs 16.07) so sorry Queen City for knocking you back but maybe last week was a fluke for both teams and the rankings will right themselves next week. With that out of the way, the main sticking point I see here this week is nobody really knows how good or bad a lot of these teams are as rankings are very stratified for the top half. Is Minnesota faltering despite an elite roster? Is Bossier City as good as their scoring suggests? Did relocating to Washington finally break the curse? Is Vancouver that good or is Oklahoma City just that bad? I don’t see too many of these questions being answered this week, but the league landscape feels in flux and honestly that’s a welcome change from previous dynastic eras.

zero potential

#16 Sin City (1-2)

After starting 0-2 this season and not looking at all like the Canton team they were previously known as, the Samurai pulled a Classic game out of their belt and blanked a #5 Lexington 34-0. Did they go back to the well and revive an old book? I did hear some reports of a potential mishap with the construction of the Miners book but a bagel is a bagel and Sin City may just be back to terrorizing offenses. This week they welcome in a high flying #8 Washington squad that has a zero of their own in the loss column and would like to see it stay that way after this matchup. The potential for a zero is feeling high here and we’ll see who can come away with it soon. 

WEEK 4 PREMIER MATCHUP

#11 Carolina Skyhawks @ #15 Fort Worth Toros(-2.5) | O/U 41.5 | JAN. 27th 8:15 PM EST

There’s not much going on this week in the way of top matchups but this one here on Monday Night does intrigue me. Carolina, once again, seems to be figuring things out and has a surefire star in the rushing game with Riley Quintero. Fort Worth has played two extremes of teams in Los Angeles & Baltimore leading to a blow out and getting blown out, respectively. As we’ve talked about before it is still a bit too early to pin a team down on where they are at or where they may end up but this game here can show us where these two squads look to be as they meet in the middle to solidify an identity.