Started off preseason ranked 8th... Lost my first game to the number 9 team 65-20.... 2nd week my team gained 2 spots now ranked 6th???? In no way does a 65-20 beat down at home gain 2 spots in the rankings..

the first three weeks rankings are driven a lot by last season, roster strength and less by results.

You should expect a big drop in weeks 4 and 5.

Yeah, but what the OP is stating is that rankings do not fluctuate that much in real life, so why does it here? I won my first 4 games starting at #2 in the country and after starting 4-0 I was #10... that doesn't happen

In real life you have voters voting on things. They tend to keep teams high that they expect to be there at the end of the year and don't start dropping them until they start losing. The AI ranking system doesn't have that human "benefit of the doubt" logic, so it basically goes based on previous year's rankings + prestige. After 3-4 weeks the AI logic works a bit better and changes are less drastic.

We'll continue looking at it for patches and future versions.

The ranking system is somewhat broken in my opinion. A team that loses 65-20 would never go up in rank under any circumstances. They may only drop a few spots, but they would never go up. This should be re-examined and adjusted a bit.

Wouldn't worry about the early season polls. It seemed to work nearly perfect in the previous game when it matters most (playoffs).