
Before the 2022 season, Dan Hanzus of NFL.com wrote this:
Will the Broncos let Russ cook? Russell Wilson now stands as the centerpiece of the Denver Broncos. Pete Carroll’s stubborn reliance on running the ball didn’t always sit well with Wilson, and there’s logic to the idea of Wilson’s offensive philosophies having more traction with new Broncos coach Nathaniel Hackett.
Hanzus had Denver 8th in his preseason power rankings. Eighth.
I’m not trying to pick on Hanzus, even though Denver ended up 32nd of 32 NFL teams in points scored per game. It’s not like he refereed my son’s soccer game last week. Everyone has their bad takes.
But, I used his opinions in my member NFL predictions last year. Even in hindsight, I do not regret this decision. Let me explain.
For the past 7 NFL seasons, I have created a wisdom of crowds preseason model based on 20 subjective power rankings. While no one ballot is perfect, the combination of an ensemble is a powerful predictor of team strength. At least that is the hope.
During the last few days before the start of the season, I collect power rankings from across the internet. I gravitate towards big media sites like ESPN and CBS with lengthy articles that imply some thought was put into the rankings. I avoid smaller sites with only a list of teams.
To turn the subjective into numbers, I use my NFL team rankings based on margin of victory adjusted for strength of schedule. Data from the past 10 years gives me an estimate of the strength of a team compared to NFL average.
For example, the best team has been 7.6 points better than an average NFL team on a neutral site. These ratings give a number to every team in a subjective power ranking. The wisdom of crowds estimator is the average of the 20 rankings.
During the first six weeks of the season, I looked how this model performed when the prediction differed from the closing market by a point or more. The predictions went 55.1% against the spread in these games (262-212 and 10 pushes).
I was shocked at these results. Remember, these preseason wisdom of crowds rankings have zero data from regular season games.
I suspect that this accuracy comes from overreaction, as the market will move on a team based on performance. In the NFL, it seems like a handful of games is not enough to make an accurate opinion in a league with strong regression.
Note that this is my hunch. I do not have any data driven analysis to back this up.
As you might expect, the accuracy of the wisdom of crowds predictions decreases as the season progresses. However, they are still 52.5% over the entire season.
These wisdom of crowds predictions tend to be more aggressive than my market based preseason models. For example, the wisdom of crowds has Kansas City by 8.4 points over Detroit tonight, more than than 8.1 from the market model.
Here are the 2023 preseason NFL wisdom of crowds rankings.
1. Kansas City, 7.60.
2. Philadelphia, 7.05.
3. Cincinnati, 5.87.
4. San Francisco, 5.58.
5. Buffalo, 5.20.
6. Dallas, 3.49.
7. New York Jets, 3.39.
8. Baltimore, 3.02.
9. Jacksonville, 2.68.
10. Miami, 2.38.
11. Los Angeles Chargers, 2.09.
12. Detroit, 1.33.
13. Seattle, 1.24.
14. Pittsburgh, 0.87.
15. Cleveland, 0.09.
16. New York Giants, -0.29.
17. Minnesota, -0.61.
18. Green Bay, -0.80.
19. New Orleans, -0.95.
20. New England, -1.71.
21. Denver, -2.24.
22. Atlanta, -2.57.
23. Washington, -2.61.
24. Tennessee, -2.65.
25. Chicago, -3.15.
26. Carolina, -3.25.
27. Las Vegas, -4.50.
28. Tampa Bay, -5.55.
29. Los Angeles Rams, -5.75.
30. Indianapolis, -6.25.
31. Houston, -6.86.
32. Arizona, -8.36.
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