Official NFL playoff predictions and my arbitrary ranking system.

What, I get injured and you no longer predict my team will
make the playoffs?  You Mr. Sports blogger are going to be
arrested by the prediction police because your predictions
now contradict each other, this is not Vegas, you cannot
bet both sides here.  

I had some fun on Google drive and created a spreadsheet where I ranked every team's talent by my own imaginary metric.  Make sure you look over at the second page titled "sorted" to see the teams ranked best too worst.

A few notes on the rankings: 

• Every positional group is scored to a value between 1-5 or 1-10.  1-10 scores are reserved for quarterbacks, the offensive line, or defensive line.  
• I factored pass blitzing linebackers such as Aldon Smith as part of the defensive line unit, because much of the value of this unit (why they are worth up to 10 points) is from their impact against the opposing passing game.  
• The X-Factor ranking is a small bump for a strong home field advantage (Seattle, Denver, etc), or the presence of a particularly good team organizer/leader/motivating factor (the return of Sean Payton, or simply having Manning/Brady/Russell Wilson on your team).  
• The X-Factor can also be a negative number, like I gave to the Niners and Ravens to account for the extra difficult path back to the Super Bowl, or to the Jets for being the Jets (-1 for a bad QB controversy and -1 for Rex Ryan not understanding how to work with a quarterback).  Jerry Jones' meddling earned a negative mark for the cowboys.  The Steelers earned a -1 for their injury history.  
• Most of the points are completely made up from my gut assessment, but I did consult football outsiders innovative stats and rotoworld for help, but my gut made the final decisions.  
• Where there was a tie I just picked the team that I thought would pull it out.  I felt confident in picking the Packers over the Bears, but considerably less confident in picking the Saints over the Falcons.  
• I absolutely went back and fudged the numbers (a little) to make them match what I thought they would be.  Most of the playoff teams were unmolested, but I originally I ranked Tampa Bay as the best in their division and the equal of contenders like Seattle and Houston.  I think Tampa will be close in the playoff hunt, but I do not think they will run away with their division.  I also scored down the Cardinals and Bears.  The cardinals have real talent, but they are the worst team in their (incredibly tough) division, and the bears are good, but like Tampa they are not title contenders, not until their line shows real improvement.  

The not scientific playoff prediction: 

AFC:  1-Broncos, 2-Patriots, 3-Texans, 4-Ravens, with the 5-Bengals (who I did not expect to include) and the 6-Chiefs (who I did expect) slipping into the wildcard.  

NFC: 1-New York Football Giants, 2-49ers (who were dropped to below the giants due to the difficulty of the western division), 3-Packers, 4-Saints, and the superior 5-Seahawks and 6-Redskins (who I also thought would score lower) will be forced to travel to play against inferior teams.  

This leaves the Colts, Falcons, and Vikings falling out of of the playoffs.  

I will write something on every one of these teams (unless I already have; my article on Alex Smith covered the Chiefs and my article on the regression of the Colts while they/Luck actually improve as a team has them thoroughly covered).