NFL power rankings: Cowboys stay on top, Patriots and Raiders battle for AFC supremacy

In the NFC, there’s the Cowboys and then there’s everyone else. A revitalized Dallas franchise is barreling toward a first-round bye in the postseason thanks to the league’s best record and a two-game lead in its conference with only five weeks to go.

At 10-1, the Cowboys have outpaced the NFC, but their biggest threat has come from inside their own division. The New York Giants are the only team to hand Dak Prescott and Ezekiel Elliott a professional defeat after beating Dallas in Week 1. At 8-3, Eli Manning’s team is now the closest thing they have to competition in the conference. New York has won six straight games, but nothing on the team’s schedule is more important than a Week 14 return date with the Cowboys. The outcome of that game could be the difference between home-field advantage and a bye week vs. a Wild Card road trip to start the playoffs.

Elsewhere in the NFC, the Seahawks fell a bit this week after their loss to the surging Buccaneers, but they’re still a solid top-five team. The Vikings also dropped due to their Thanksgiving Day loss to the Lions, but the NFC North race is tight enough that they could make a comeback.

There’s more competition at the top of the AFC. The Patriots and Raiders currently hold the conference’s top two spots thanks to matching 9-2 records, though each team struggled to dispatch underwhelming competition in Week 12. New England needed a touchdown in the game’s final two minutes to beat the 3-8 Jets on the road. Oakland let the Panthers score 25 straight points and trailed in the fourth quarter of a home game, but rebounded in time for Derek Carr to lead the Raiders to a comeback victory.

Carr suffered a dislocated finger in the win, and if the budding MVP candidate isn’t full strength his Oakland team could be vulnerable to a raid from within its own division. The 8-3 Chiefs and 7-4 Broncos have staked their claim as two of the AFC’s biggest threats. After their Sunday Night Football overtime win against the Broncos, the Chiefs climbed a bit in this week’s rankings. Not much separates them from Denver, though.

The fourth AFC West team, the 5-6 Chargers, also showed how dangerous they can beat after beating the South-leading Texans on Sunday.

But while the West can stake its claim as the NFL’s toughest division, the AFC South and North fall on the other end of the spectrum. Houston and Baltimore are in line for playoff berths despite middling seasons. Behind them, the Colts and Steelers lurk, waiting for an opportunity to return to glories past.

Finally, the scene at the bottom of the power rankings remains depressingly unchanged. Cleveland remained winless at 0-12 and is now just four games from matching the 2008 Detroit Lions as a woeful footnote to league history. San Francisco kept pace in the race to next year’s No. 1 overall draft pick by losing its 10th straight game. Chicago and Jacksonville, each mired at 2-9, remain a step ahead of them.