NFL Power Rankings Week 8: "Life Is Darn Good In Dallas."

Here's a rundown of the many power rankings published today and their take on where the Cowboys rank this week. A little further down you can see how that compares to the rest of the NFC East.

Opinion-based rankings

Week 8 Rankings (previous rankings in parenthesis)

SI.com (Peter King): 1st (1st): "Tony Romo is completing 69 percent, DeMarco Murray is on pace to rush for 2,087 yards, and the Cowboys can play defense. Life is darn good in Dallas."

Bleacher Report: 1st (1st): "The decision to move the Dallas Cowboys to No. 1 overall last week was met with some wild criticism. The fact that the Cowboys shut down an NFC East rival in Week 7 may not silence those critics, but in my opinion, there is no team playing better football right now. The myth that the Cowboys defense isn't good should be quieted by now, as Rod Marinelli's unit is outperforming every expert's preseason prediction. And another myth, that Tony Romo isn't good under pressure or in the second half, continues to be wrong. Romo, with legit help around him, is playing his best football, even if his numbers are down. The Cowboys aren't a flawless team, but for another week, they look unbeatable when all cylinders are clicking."

ProFootballTalk: 1st (2nd): ""Glory days, well they’ll pass you by." Maybe sooner than later. But not yet."

USA Today: 2nd (2nd): "With his record seventh consecutive 100-yard rushing day to start a season, hard to argue against DeMarco Murray as the league MVP right now."

SB Nation: 2nd (2nd): "The Cowboys won their sixth straight by sticking to their smashmouth equation. They represent the NFC's most impressive team to date. The offense is riding DeMarco Murray and the efficient play of Tony Romo, but the defense also has been surprisingly stout."

ESPN: 2nd (3rd): "DeMarco Murray has an NFL-record seven straight 100-yard rushing games to start the season and the Cowboys get a home game against a Brian Orakpo-less Redskins defense. Look out."

Bleeding Green Nation: 2nd (3rd): "Dallas is red hot with six straight wins. Running back DeMarco Murray has already rushed for 913 yards. Not including the Cowboys, only three teams own a total rushing yard count higher than that."

CBSSports (Kirwan): 2nd (3rd): "I am impressed with the Cowboys' balance on offense and a defense that is playing better than the talent on the field. I considered moving them to the top spot until I saw what Denver did to the 49ers."

Newsday: 2nd (3rd): "Playmakers Tony Romo, DeMarco Murray and Dez Bryant all at their best in another statement win by the Cowboys, this time over the Giants in a key NFC East matchup."

NFL.com: 2nd (4th): "DeMarco Murray has really shown us something this season. And I'm not talking about productivity -- I'm talking about durability. The holes were not there much of the day against the Giants, yet Murray made something out of nothing en route to 128 rushing yards. And Tony Romo? Completed some unreal throws in some tight windows."

M-Live: 2nd (4th): "The Cowboys offense keeps churning. They've averaged 29.8 points during this six-game winning streak."

Penn-Live: 2nd (4th): "While DeMarco Murray was running into the record books with seven 100-yard games at the start of a season, secret weapon Gavin Escobar had a pair of touchdown receptions against the Giants. The second-year tight end now has five TDs among 16 career catches."

CBSSports (Prisco): 3rd (4th): "DeMarco Murray just might carry them to a division title. And what about the improvement of that defense? "

Washington Post: 3rd (4th): "They continue to hand the ball to RB DeMarco Murray at a potential record-setting rate, and Murray continues to churn out rushing yards. QB Tony Romo is playing extremely efficiently and it’s becoming increasingly difficult to debate the fact that the Cowboys are the NFC’s top team at the moment. They get to host the Redskins and just-promoted QB Colt McCoy on Monday night. It’s a dangerous game mostly because it’s a divisional matchup and therefore it falls squarely into the anything-can-happen category. But there’s little doubt that the Cowboys are the better team."

Shutdown Corner: 3rd (4th): "The win over the Giants is more impressive than it looks on the surface. If there was ever a letdown spot for Dallas, it was after winning at Seattle and hearing all week how great they were. And they still won by 10."

Foxsports: 3rd (4th): "The Cowboys’ blueprint was successful again. Aside from an early-game Tony Romo interception that led to a touchdown, the Cowboys controlled the tempo, ate up clock and protected the ball."

Stat-based rankings

Aikman Efficiency Ratings: 3rd (4th): This metric combines seven stats into one number: yards per rush, yards per pass play, turnovers per game, first downs per game, third-down percentage, points per game (unit on field) and points per red zone possession.

Numberfire: 4th (3rd). These rankings are based on expected point differential against a league average team. If the team's rating is 10, they would be expected to win by 10 points against a league-average opponent. This week, the Cowboys would be expected to win by 5.2 points to such a league-average team.

Teamrankings.com: 5th (2nd). This site measures the relative strength of all teams using team performance, home/away status, margin of victory and other factors.

Massey-Peabody: 6th (4th). These guys generate their predictions by working up from play-by-play data to calculate a performance figure for rushing, passing, scoring and play success.

WhatIfSports.com: 6th (4th). These guys simulate every possible match-up in the NFL 100 times, and use the winning percentages from those nearly 50,000 games to evaluate every team, with updated rosters and depth charts.

Football Outsiders: 7th (10th). FO have the Cowboys with the 3rd-ranked offense (+5), the 19th-ranked defense (+5) and the 22nd-ranked special teams (-2).

ColdHardFootballFacts: 8th (9th). This indicator ranks teams based on their average ranking across a range of CHFF's Quality Stats.

Oddsshark: 9th (14th). Oddsshark use a multitude of stats to establish an offensive and defensive power ranking, which they then adjust for the strength of schedule.

Covers.com: 12th (13th). "Despite having the best record in football and riding a six-game winning streak, the Cowboys are getting no respect. Double-digit favorites on Monday after being double-digit dogs two games ago."

Sagarin NFL rankings: 13th (15th). These are rankings based on W/L record, points differential and schedule strength.

The table below summarizes the power rankings for the four NFC East teams. As usual, we'll update the remaining rankings once they're available.

	Week8	Week7	Week8	Week7	Week8	Week7	Week8	Week7
Pro Football Talk	1	2	4	5	23	22	27	30
USA Today	2	2	4	4	23	20	27	26
SBNation	2	2	4	4	21	16	26	30
Newsday	2	3	6	6	20	18	27	27
ESPN	2	3	3	4	21	20	26	28
M-live	2	4	3	3	19	18	27	27
NFL.com	2	4	3	3	20	18	25	27
CBSSports	3	4	4	5	15	14	27	30
Foxsports	3	4	2	3	18	19	28	28
Shutdown Corner	3	4	2	3	24	23	28	29
Avg.Opinion-based	2.2	3.2	3.5	4	20.4	18.8	26.8	28.2
Aikman Ratings	3	4	23	24	19	16	22	22
Numberfire	4	3	7	7	16	17	21	24
Team Rankings	5	2	2	6	15	16	24	26
Massey Peabody	6	4	13	16	21	23	25	25
Whatifsports	6	4	10	9	17	21	24	26
Football Outsiders	7	10	6	6	22	21	24	23
Cold Hard Football Facts	8	9	14	15	21	21	23	25
Oddsshark	9	14	4	5	21	23	20	28
Covers	12	13	10	12	21	20	26	25
Sagarin	13	15	5	9	21	19	26	25
Avg. Stat-based	7.3	7.8	9.4	10.9	19.4	19.7	23.5	24.9
Total	4.7	5.5	6.4	7.5	19.9	19.3	25.1	26.6

Been a while since we've seen the Cowboys ranked this high, which just makes it all the sweeter.