THE POWER RANK

NFL Rankings, Week 7

By 3 Comments

Effect of lockout
What does The Power Rank say?
Have good leadership

Through the first six weeks of the season the results are decidedly lopsided.

Some of you faithful of The Power Rank are scratching your heads and thinking “Tom is off his rocker this week, doesn’t he remember that the average of all The Power Rank ratings always equals zero”? Even more of you must think I am insane, as the Power Rank shows that 18 teams have a rating over zero, while only 14 are below that magical mean.

But there is more to The Power Rank than just averages.  To illustrate the lopsidedness of the league so far this season I created the following graph which shows the distribution of NFL teams by their rating (rounded to the nearest integer):

As you can see, the “0” row, which should be at the center of the main bulk of the teams, is actually closer to the high side of the middle of the main pack of teams.  The reason for this are the transcendent outliers, the top three teams:  #1 New England (10.63), #2 Green Bay (10.11), and #3 Baltimore (9.27).  These three teams have been so consistent and solid that the Power Rank shows them as head-and-shoulders above all other competitors.

To be fair, there is a team that is as transcendentally bad as the top three are good (Sorry Temple).  The Rams (#32, -9.68) are just struggling as a franchise even though the recent acquisition of Brandon Lloyd may provide the team with a target for Sam Bradford and the spark they have been missing.  Until that turnaround happens St. Louis is still stuck in their hole far below the rest of the Power Rank field.

After removing these outliers the mean of the remaining 28 teams drops from 0 to -0.76, a fairly significant drop in Power Rank terms.  Only six pairs of teams in the Power Rank are separated by a rating gap of more than 0.76:

#2 Green Bay (10.11) and #3 Baltimore (9.27)

#3 Baltimore (9.27) and #4 Detroit (6.58)

#5 San Francisco and (6.12) and #6 New York Jets (4.08)

#19 Washington (-0.28) and #20 Atlanta (-1.50)

#21 New York Giants (-1.64) and #22 Minnesota (-3.44)

#31 Kansas City (-6.93) and #32 St. Louis (-9.68)

0.76 rating points are significant enough that adding them to #18 Philadelphia (0.24) would move them four steps higher to #14, just ahead of current #14 Chicago (0.98).

To make matters worse, emergent powerhouses Detroit (#4, 6.58) and San Francisco (#5, 6.12) are stranded somewhere in the no-man’s-land between the blob of average teams and the island of Super Bowl favorites.  Personally I think they belong with the majority of teams, but we may have some Lions or Niners faithful in the audience that would beg to differ.  To please those fans, I also calculated the average ratings of only the yellow teams, making the assumption that the Lions and Niners are poised to continue their meteoric rises to join the ranks of the Patriots, Packers, and Ravens.

The average rating of the 26 yellow teams comes out to an unimpressive -1.27, a full half a point lower than the average with Detroit and San Francisco in the group.  That means that the average performance rate of the yellow teams fall somewhere between the Redskins (formerly) Grossman powered team, and the Atlanta Failcons.

A lot of people went in to this season expecting chaos due to the lockout, players not being ready, and teams being in turmoil with new staff unable to get familiar with their athletes.  I think what we are seeing here is a graphic representation of that chaos.  The teams at the very top (New England, Green Bay, and Baltimore) all have had very few roster and organizational changes between this year and last.  Stadium lockouts didn’t prevent Aaron Rodgers from calling a captain’s practice with Greg Jennings and Jordy Nelson.  I’d bet my left hand that Ray Lewis was on top of his teammates, making sure they stayed fit and ready to come back and win.

On the other hand teams without strong veteran leadership, teams that made significant roster moves (Eagles), and especially teams that are under new head coaches have been left adrift in this sea of yellow.  One thing is certain.  12 teams are going to be in the playoffs.  It is likely that the cream of the early crop, the teams highlighted in blue and green, will make the cut.  But that will leave seven spots for teams from the yellow blob of mediocrity.

Are the 2-3 Cowboys (#7, 3.86) a playoff team?  Their record would suggest that they are not.  In fact, their record is tied with the #31 Chiefs (-6.93).  And what about the future of the 4-2 Giants (#21, -1.64)?  The Power Rank is not impressed, but they are getting wins.

Keep your eyes open.  The surprises of the 2011 season are just beginning, and truly anything can happen.  Just ask the Bengals and their newly gained draft picks…

NFL Rankings, Week 3

By Leave a Comment

With only 3 weeks of data in the books, I’m going to call this week’s update premature infatuation.

As Ed’s well crafted haiku suggests, the dominant Pittsburgh Steelers start at the top of our rankings this season. They helped cement their position by beating Atlanta (currently ranked #2) and Tennessee (currently ranked #6) in their first 3 weeks, in addition to absolutely crushing a weak Tampa Bay team.

Pittsburgh’s wins over both Tennessee and Atlanta were not completely dominating victories. They beat Tennessee by 8 and Atlanta by 6 in overtime. So why would The Power Rank suggest that Pittsburgh with a rating of 18.25 would beat a 2-1 Indianapolis team, ranked surprisingly low at #19 with a rating of -1.23, by a margin of 19.5 points at a neutral site?

For new fans of the The Power Rank, this is a great example of how the system works. Pittsburgh’s wins over Tennessee and Atlanta were not dominant but these teams have crushed their competitors. Other than the loss to Pittsburgh, Tennessee has crushed both the Raiders and the Giants by a combined margin of 44 points. In Atlanta’s other two games, they crushed a 2-1 Arizona by 34 points and edged out reigning Super Bowl champs New Orleans on their home turf.

So Pittsburgh gets credit for beating teams that have beat other teams that have in turn beat other teams. This actually goes on and on around the league to consider the relative strength of every team and then the value of each week’s victories.

A surprise in The Power Rank this week is my 2-1 Packers (#3) being ranked higher than the 3-0 Bears team (#5) that beat them on Monday night. The Packers come out on top in the rankings because of the strength of their victories against a tough Philadelphia team and their blowout of the Bills. Chicago on the other hand barely beat Detroit by a controversial call on Calvin Johnson’s non-TD catch in week 1, and then edged out a stalled Cowboys team by a score in week 2 before taking a win in week 3 from a Packers team that did everything in their power to lose the game.

Cleveland is another surprise, ranked at #15 with a positive rating of 0.63 in spite of their 0-3 schedule. With no wins yet they are ranked higher than twelve teams that have at least one win, including five teams that have two wins. Cleveland achieved this odd week 3 feat by losing all of their games by a combined margin of 12 points, and two of their close losses were against 3-0 Kansas City (#9) and 2-1 Baltimore (#7).

I hope these odd cases help illustrate the nature of the The Power Rank and how it functions beyond the actual records and total point differentials. Cases like these and the margin between the best and worst teams in the league will self correct as more data is entered every week and the ranking becomes a more reliable predictor of the true strength of each team.

Until then, avoid premature infatuation with both the early rankings here at The Power Rank as well as the current league standings. There’s a lot of football left to play and a lot of data to be processed.