Week 15 power rankings: Are the Lions a top-five team now?

Even though the Detroit Lions won on Sunday, it felt like a bit of a letdown after their previous decisive win over the New Orleans Saints. With three difficult games left and a star quarterback dealing with a throwing hand injury, the Lions are facing a lot of pessimism for a team that has won eight of their past nine games.

That pessimism is small but noticeable in this week’s power rankings. Detroit moved down a tad in a few rankings, but shockingly, CBS Sports thought the opposite. After disappointing performances from the Seahawks and Raiders, Pete Prisco jumped the Lions all the way to No. 4, the highest they’ve been on any list all season. In fact, if you look at the top of the league, outside of the Patriots and Chiefs, there doesn’t seem to be much of a consensus on which teams are the league’s elite. Take a look:

• SB Nation: 8th (no change)
• NFL.com: 7th (no change)
• Yahoo! Sports: 8th (down 1)
• CBS Sports: 4th (up 3)
• USA Today: 7th (down 1)
• ESPN: 9th (down 1)

With all of the shuffling at the top of the league that went on in Week 15, it should come as no surprise that the Lions remain in the top 10 this week.

Detroit heads to New Jersey this week to take on the New York Giants. The Giants are fresh off of a huge “Sunday Night Football” victory over the Dallas Cowboys, so predictably, experts are very high on them. Two rankings have the Giants rounding out the top five. Still, the Lions and Giants are ranked awfully close to each other, setting up a huge game on Sunday afternoon. Here’s where the Giants currently sit:

• SB Nation - 7th
• NFL.com - 8th
• Yahoo! Sports - 9th
• CBS Sports - 8th
• USA Today - 5th
• ESPN - 5th