NFL: Re-ranking this year's Super Bowl contenders from the pretenders

With the NFL season now in full swing, it’s time for us to re-assess exactly where teams stand on their chances of making it to the Super Bowl. 

Before the season started, indeed before the preseason had even got going, we put together our list of the teams that we thought were going to be contending for the Super Bowl, who was likely to be fighting for the #1 draft pick, and pretty much everything in between.

But of course, as players develop, teams change personnel both on and off the field, players get injured, you really need to start to think again of just where various teams stand at certain points of the season, and whether or not their ambitions have changed.

For instance, how big of an impact does T.J. Watt’s injury have on the Pittsburgh Steelers chances this season? Well as graphics like this from back in September show you, it is pretty sizeable:

Steelers with and without T.J. Watt since he entered the league in 2017, via @pfref. pic.twitter.com/O5mYOy6TMz

Ad who could have thought that the New York Giants would be performing quite the way they have this season after years of ineptitude at the quarterback position and not having a winning season since 2016? So it only makes sense that with all teams having played five games (except for the Washington Commanders and Chicago Bears who played on Thursday night), we take another look at what various team's expectations should be, at least in our eyes.

Similar to the previous one, we will break the teams into the following tiers:

Serious Super Bowl contenders: This should be pretty self-explanatory, but these are the teams we think will do deep into the playoffs and should be in a position to at least reach the conference championships

Might need some luck: The