My NFL power ratings

[Punker]

Based on my rating system which I devised loosely based on the Elo chess rating system. I "seeded" the rating pool by having all teams start 2005 with the same approximate rating, then running through all games of last year to get them their reasonably accurate starting ratings for 2006.

(having seen other posts, here's a bit better description of the factors the forumla takes into account: Win/Loss, point spread, opponent rating, and whether the game was on the road or not - ie, a road win is worth more points than a home win). I then factor in a small adjustment each week based on major injuries/players returning (eg, Seattle got the max downgrade due to Alexander, while Carolina got the max upgrade due to Smith).

1 Indianapolis
2 Denver
3 Chicago
4 Jacksonville
5 Seattle
6 San Diego
7 Minnesota
8 Pittsburgh
9 Baltimore
10 New England
11 NY Giants
12 Washington
13 Carolina
14 Cincinnati
15 Miami
16 Atlanta
17 NY Jets
18 St Louis
19 Arizona
20 Kansas City
21 New Orleans
22 Philadelphia
23 Tampa Bay
24 Buffalo
25 Dallas
26 San Francisco
27 Green Bay
28 Cleveland
29 Detroit
30 Oakland
31 Tennessee
32 Houston

[Wes Mantooth]

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...
2 Denver

14 Cincinnati

21 New Orleans


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BIMO

[highlife]

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2 Denver DOWN
8 Pittsburgh DOWN
11 NY Giants DOWN
12 Washington DOWN
14 Cincinnati UP (are you joking?!?!)
15 Miami DOWN (are you joking?!?!?)
21 New Orleans UP (3-0?!?!?!)
22 Philadelphia UP (are you joking?!?!?)
25 Dallas UP


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These are the worst rankings I have ever seen. I'll give you credit though, it took guts to post this.

[capone0]

Did you read the introduction. He based his ranking on LAST year and THIS YEAR. Read the whole description of his formula before you start bashing it.

[davelin]

[ QUOTE ]
Did you read the introduction. He based his ranking on LAST year and THIS YEAR. Read the whole description of his formula before you start bashing it.

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He used last year to develop a starting point for this year, but these rankings (if I understand them correctly) are entirely for this year.

[kyro]

Miami at 15?

They're 1-2, against teams with a combined record (not counting games against Miami) of 0-6. The two losses were by double digits, and the one game they won, was by 3 points. Also, they've played 2 games at home. I'm not sure how any statistical ranking system could possibly have Miami any higher than 22ish.

[highlife]

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Miami at 15?

They're 1-2, against teams with a combined record (not counting games against Miami) of 0-6. The two losses were by double digits, and the one game they won, was by 3 points. Also, they've played 2 games at home. I'm not sure how any statistical ranking system could possibly have Miami any higher than 22ish.

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And as someone who has watched almost every minute of every Miami game so far this year...they shouldn't be higher than 30ish.

[capone0]

Therefore this years rankings are based somewhat on last years rankings. That's the only rationale explanation for some of the picks. How is Philly so low and NO so long. Maybe it's because NO was the 2nd worst team in the league last year. Right now his rankings are very heavily influenced by last years results.

[PokerFink]

Then how is Cincy #14? There's simply no excuse for that, they won the division last year!

[Punker]

Fair enough - the ratings are still heavily influenced by last year. I'm working from a theory that teams cannot massively improve themselves (or get massively worse) over the course of the offseason. I also believe that when emotion gets involved, there is a tendency to overrate (or underrate) teams.

So, let's look at some of the more controversial picks...

New Orleans: entered the year as one of the absolute lowest rated teams. They started the year by beating two other fairly weak teams: Cleveland and Green Bay. Neither of these wins moved them very far up the rankings. The win over Atlanta did move them up quite a bit.

Philadelphia is a similar case - they started the year as a very low ranked team and have beaten two of the lowest ranked teams so far, and lost to the only half decent team they have played (regardless of the circumstances of how it happened, they DID lose). They haven't "proved" their way up the rankings yet, no matter how good they looked beating SF and Houston (which a lot of teams can do).

For Cincinnati, they started off the year surprisingly low. They had a strong record last year, but a closer look shows that of their 11 wins, they beat Cleveland, Houston, Tennessee, GreenBay, Baltimore (who were quite lowranked at the time), Baltimore again, Cleveland again, and Detroit. So, of their 11 wins last year, 8 came against extremely weak opposition, earning them little in the way of rating points. They also hurt their ratings by dropping their last two games resting starters last year. I do hope they will go up as I like Cincy [img]/images/graemlins/tongue.gif[/img]

Denver obviously is influenced by their 2005 results, but they have also scored two reasonable quality wins this year over New England and Kansas City. This system (as with Philly) doesn't look at how pretty your results are - just the actual results.

Miami: they obviously started off the year fairly high rated due to their string of wins at the end of the year last year (even against weak opposition, 6 wins in a row will boost your rating a fair amount), and due to Pittsburgh's start of year high rating, they didn't lose too terribly much for their game 1 loss. The week 2 loss to Buffalo really pummelled them down the rankings, and the week 3 win over Tennessee didn't really do much for them. No doubt, they've looked awful, but they need to lose to one more weak team before they really get hammered in the rankings to where many might believe they belong.