‘Dancing with the Stars 23’ rankings: Laurie Hernandez, Calvin Johnson, James Hinchcliffe favorites entering week 4

We’re another week into “Dancing with the Stars” season 23, and as a result of that, we are back with another addition of show rankings! These are not necessarily clear depictions of where everyone stands, but we hope that they are at least used for some sort of guideline as to who some of the major contenders are, and also who is in danger.

As per usual, we’re basing these on the following criteria: Performance quality, scores, voting history, perceived popularity, and even the popularity of your professional partner.

11. Vanilla Ice and Witney Carson (last week: 8) – We may be getting a little too cute here, but we are taking into account recent scores factored in with memorability. Not only did the rapper have the worst score of the remaining Stars last week, he was safe before the results show. Therefore, we’re not sure just how much his fan base is being tested. They may be feeling vulnerable.

10. Amber Rose and Maksim Chmerkovskiy (9) – Amber’s dancing has yet to draw huge scores, but we think more than that we could see her recent back-and-forth with Julianne Hough over some of her comments only hurting her. People who watch this show don’t tend to respond well to drama.

9. Maureen McCormick and Artem Chigvintsev (11) – We still don’t think that Maureen is particularly long for this competition, but at the same time kudos to her and Artem for winning a Face Off and showing that they’ve got a little momentum.

8. Ryan Lochte and Cheryl Burke (10) – Ryan may not be a great dancer, but him surviving last week despite being only one of six Stars in danger of going home suggests that he may have some sort of a voting block working to back him up this season.

7. Babyface and Allison Holker (6) – We think there is a tier between everyone we’ve mentioned so far, and where we are going to go next. Babyface is somewhere in the middle since one week he’s really good, and then the next he’s disappointing. If he struggles again, we could envision him in danger.

6. Jana Kramer and Gleb Savchenko (7) – They did win their way to safety this past week, but that may have been a little deceptive since they ended up beating Babyface. There are people still to come on this ranking that technically did better dances.

5. Marilu Henner and Derek Hough (4) – We do think that Marilu is being very consistent, and she managed to survive a little bit of danger last week. Here’s the question: Is she almost too consistent? There’s nothing we’re seeing from her that we find particularly exciting.

4. Terra Jole and Sasha Farber (5) – Terra momentum is strong! She had the third-best dance of this past show, but just had the misfortune of having to go against Calvin in the duel. She’s one of those cases where it’s good to have a chip on your shoulder in the ballroom, provided that you can use it as motivation to continue to impress.

3. James Hinchcliffe and Sharna Burgess (2) – The issue James is going to have this season is that we don’t know how big his fan following really is, so he needs to stay in the metaphorical winners’ circle in the scores to have a good shot. He remains very good, but someone’s doing it better.

2. Calvin Johnson and Lindsay Arnold (3) – We have someone new at the top of the leaderboard! Calvin’s proving that you can be a super-tall guy and still be graceful out there; we think that he does have fans, so his issue from here on out will be finding that consistency in dances that may not suit him as well.

1. Laurie Hernandez and Val Chmerkovskiy (1) – It’s going to take heaven and earth to convince us to move Laurie from this spot, given that we still think she’s incredibly popular coming off the Olympics and that she has the best ability to tackle any dance out of the people left.

Want to get some other news when it comes to “Dancing with the Stars”? Then be sure to head over here right now, or sign up over here to get some other TV news worth dancing over via our official CarterMatt Newsletter. (Photo: ABC.)