Troy Aikman has a weekly column where he puts the teams in order on offense and defense from best to worst, according to a special formula. I found the offensive and defensive rankings to be legitimate, but the overall rankings are a little scewed.

http://www.nfl.com/news/story/9851329

The NFL has us as the 3rd rated offense behind the Saints and Eagles. Aikman has us second to the Chargers, which makes more sense. On defense, we are 16th in the league. That is completetly misleading considering all the problems we have had stopping the run. Aikman puts us at 27th. I would put us somewhere in between. I guess Aikman forgets that we have a decent secondary.

While the offensive and defensive rankings are more appropriate than the NFL's, the combined ratings are worse. New England is #1, meaning that they are the most "complete" team. I disagree with this. New England has had some injuries on defense and their recievers don't get open on a consistent basis. It gets worse. 7-5 Jacksonville is 4th. They are struggling to make the playoffs. Before Leftwich was injured they had a QB controversy and recievers that couldn't catch a cold. Coming in at seventh place are the Colts. The defense brings us down in the rankings even though we have the second best offense.

That is the problem. We are 10-2, yet 7th in Aikman's ratings, which I think are more accurate in most aspects than the NFL's. It is neat to see which teams are given the label of most complete. I would rather have our team than most of the teams ahead of us.

There is an old saying that stats are for losers. I would like to think that we are better than the seventh best team in the league. Hopefully the Colts can prove them wrong. We have after all, played a tougher schedule than most of the teams ahead of us. If strength of schedule was included we would definately be top 3.