No NFL team looks dominant this year. Here are four theories why.

The bumpy beginnings of alleged powerhouses have opened a vacuum atop the NFL. After six weeks, the toughest question in the league is not why franchises can’t develop quarterbacks or where Mike McDaniel buys his pants. It’s simply this: Who is the best team?

Ever an inherent NFL feature, parity has reached an extreme in the first third of this season. A cluster of 22 teams sits between 4-2 and 2-4. No team survived Week 5 undefeated, the earliest that has happened since 2014. All but four teams have multiple losses. Only two are 5-1, and one of them, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, has won four games in the final minute and ranks 14th with a plus-14 point differential.

Where have all the dominant teams gone? After conversations with people within and around the league, four theories emerged.

The continued spread of analytics and the introduction of artificial intelligence as a game-planning tool have changed the NFL’s competitive calculus. The gap between smarter teams and dumber teams still exists, but there are fewer dumb teams, and that gap has shrunk.

Not every franchise uses analytics and technology with equal enthusiasm and skill, but their widespread adoption has led teams and coaches to similar strategies and tactics. It’s harder to find an edge and harder still to maintain it, even over the course of one game.

Offseason analysis of opponents is more in-depth than it has ever been. Patterns that once may have taken countless hours of film study to unlock, if they could be discerned at all, are now easily tracked and analyzed. It always has been a copycat league. Now teams have a quicker grasp of what to copy, and copying happens more rapidly.

The collective bargaining agreement limits how often teams can practice in the preseason and how many times they can wear full pads. Armed with player-tracking data and a growing trove of information, some teams have prioritized injury prevention and scaled down training camp practices beyond what the CBA dictates.

Many teams don’t play starters, especially starting quarterbacks, even one snap in the preseason. The dearth of traditional training camp effectively makes the first month of the regular season an extended version of the preseason. Teams do not fully form before Halloween.

A dominant team may be lurking, yet to emerge. After Week 6 last year, the Eagles were 3-2 with a minus-six point differential. They went 15-1 the rest of the season, playoffs included, and annihilated four playoff opponents by an average of 17 points.

Then again, great teams typically show themselves early: In the past 20 years, only one Super Bowl champion — the 2010 Green Bay Packers at 3-3 — started worse than 4-2.

NFL defenses have deployed zone coverage on 71.1 percent of plays this season, according to TruMedia. The rate has steadily increased since Pro Football Focus began tracking it in 2019, when defenses used zone 58.9 percent of the time.

It may not seem that strategic shift would heighten parity. But zone defenses limit big plays, hide defensive talent deficiencies and stifle the brilliance of great quarterback-receiver tandems. They also promote short completions, which keep the clock moving and shorten games, therefore making them more susceptible to volatility — the fewer plays, the fewer opportunities for the better team to separate.

Randomness is inherent to a six-week sample. Injuries can turn the league into a snow globe, reconstructed every week. If the Los Angeles Chargers had not lost two elite offensive tackles, they may be a powerhouse. If Rashee Rice had not been serving a six-game suspension, the Chiefs may look like a juggernaut. Things happen. Over a full season, the identity of the best teams will grow clearer.

Who might those teams be? The Seattle Seahawks are a stealth candidate. The Seahawks rank second in point differential at plus-49 and first in defense-adjusted value over average, an advanced metric that evaluates a team’s overall quality. Both of their losses came after their opponent scored go-ahead points in the final two minutes.

The Colts’ hot start continues to look less like a fluke. It’s true that they have played an easy schedule. But their plus-79 point differential ranks first by 29 points — the chasm between them and second is larger than the difference between second and 12th. The Colts are the lone team with an average result of a victory by more than one score.

The usual candidates still hover. The Chiefs get Rice back this week and, if not for a game-scrambling, 99-yard pick-six against the Jacksonville Jaguars, they would be 4-2. The Eagles still have the talent to coalesce into a force, just like last year. The Lions have been decimated by five injuries in their secondary, but all of those players should return. The Green Bay Packers are 3-1-1 and have a transformative defensive presence in Micah Parsons. The Bills have the MVP behind center.

Any of those teams could materialize as the NFL’s dominant power. There are no great teams yet. The fun of this season may be discovering them once they surface.