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Power Rankings: Going trendy can make you stupid
By Pete Prisco
CBS SportsLine.com Senior Writer
Tell Pete your opinion!
Updated Oct. 24

Sometimes when we try and predict the football season, we look for reasons not to pick teams, rather than reasons to pick them.

We often look for a trendy pick, a team like the Miami Dolphins, hoping to be right when it hits.

Some fans have been smart enough to believe in Indy all the way.
We avoid the obvious, trying to pick the good teams apart until we convince ourselves they won't be that good again.

Then, after seven weeks, we look at the standings and the trendy pick is languishing near the bottom and those obvious picks for the playoffs, the ones right in front of our faces, are right back at the top.

Take the Indianapolis Colts. All offseason the doubters looked for ways to pick them apart. There was talk that Peyton Manning had alienated his teammates with his comments after the playoff loss, a notion that the Colts flatly denied.

There was all the talk that losing Edgerrin James would cripple the offense. It hasn't. In fact, the running game is more explosive.

And now, almost halfway through the season, the Colts are 6-0, Manning is on fire again and they're the best team in the AFC, maybe the league.

So much for all that talk that the window is closing.

The Colts are second in the CBS SportsLine.com Power Rankings behind the Chicago Bears, but a case could be made they deserve the top spot. Of the teams near the top, the Colts are alone in terms of playoff teams that many picked apart before the season started.

How many said the Chicago Bears didn't have enough offense? Or that Jake Plummer and the Denver Broncos weren't good enough to even win their division?

Then there are the Patriots. They are in the fourth spot in the rankings and have all but clinched the AFC East, with nine games left. Before the season, many speculated that their losses in free agency, players like Willie McGinest and Adam Vinatieri, would doom their chances to win another division title.

Wrong again.

The Patriots are quietly having a good season, off to a 5-1 start, and they will be there in the playoff picture again.

The trendy Miami Dolphins, the team many expected to take the division title from them, will be lucky to end the season at .500.

Moral of the story: It's not wise to look for flaws on good teams or pretty girls. They're that way, no matter how you might try and think otherwise.

http://www.sportsline.com/nfl/powerrankings

there a writer that summed it up well enough