THE POWER RANK

Podcast: Peter Bukowski on football analytics and the Green Bay Packers

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On this episode of The Football Analytics Show, I’m joined by Peter Bukowski, who hosts Locked On Packers podcast and covers the team for SB Nation. He has also written for Sports Illustrated and Bleacher Report.

Among other topics, we discuss:

  • How analytics informs his coverage of football (7:41)
  • How my work helped Peter in the early days of analytics (11:39)
  • His model that helps with betting the NFL (17:37)
  • The play that has helped Aaron Rodgers and the Packers offense thrive this season (21:25)
  • How analytics informs the defensive philosophy of the Packers (28:58)
  • Tennessee at Green Bay on Sunday night, week 16 (34:02)
  • The two teams the Packers would rather not face in the playoffs (37:33)

Peter also tells a great story about the power of the Internet at 5:14.

To listen here, click on the right pointing triangle:

To listen on Apple Podcasts, click here.

How do the markets rank Green Bay without Aaron Rodgers?

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Green Bay has been without QB Aaron Rodgers for 3 games, which lets us get a market estimate of his worth. We’ll do this through my market rankings which take closing point spread and adjust for schedule with my ranking algorithm.

After week 6, the markets rankings had Green Bay 5th in the NFL, with a rating of 3.9 points. This implies Green Bay would beat the average NFL team by about 4 points on a neutral field.

These current NFL market rankings only consider the 3 games for Green Bay since Rodgers got hurt.

1. New England, 8.07
2. Atlanta, 6.33
3. Pittsburgh, 4.71
4. Dallas, 4.49
5. Kansas City, 4.38
6. Seattle, 3.75
7. Philadelphia, 2.53
8. Los Angeles Rams, 1.98
9. Carolina, 1.84
10. New Orleans, 1.72
11. Tennessee, 1.52
12. Oakland, 1.20
13. Denver, 1.11
14. Minnesota, 0.99
15. Cincinnati, 0.01
16. Los Angeles Chargers, -0.05
17. Tampa Bay, -0.06
18. Baltimore, -0.12
19. Jacksonville, -0.19
20. Detroit, -0.67
21. Buffalo, -0.85
22. Washington, -1.04
23. Arizona, -1.32
24. New York Giants, -2.19
25. Houston, -2.22
26. Miami, -2.55
27. Chicago, -3.85
28. New York Jets, -4.55
29. Green Bay, -5.57
30. San Francisco, -6.21
31. Indianapolis, -6.21
32. Cleveland, -7.31

According to the markets, Green Bay has dropped into the bottom 5 of the NFL. They would now be expected to lose by 5.6 to the average NFL team on a neutral field.

While this 9.6 point drop seems too large for me, it does roughly explain the point spread against Baltimore. Giving 2.5 points for home field to Green Bay, these market rankings imply that Baltimore should be about a 3 point road favorite. The markets favor Baltimore by 2.

Members of The Power Rank have access to ensemble predictions that include these market rankings. To get a free sample of these predictions for both college football and the NFL, sign up for my free email newsletter.

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Podcast: Rufus Peabody and the NFL Conference Championship Games

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Rufus Peabody, ESPN’s predictive analytics expert who makes his living investing in the sports markets, joins me on the Football Analytics Show to discuss the NFL playoffs. He’s also half of the excellent Massey-Peabody rankings and predictions for football.

Among other things, we discuss the following.

  • The balance between a quantitative model and subjective adjustments
  • The one factor for Massey-Peabody that tips the balance against the spread in Green Bay at Atlanta
  • The new results on home field advantage that impacts the NFC title game
  • How our models differ on New England’s pass defense
  • Rufus’s book recommendation for those interested in randomness
  • The perils of small sample size in sports

You’ll find Rufus incredibly humble for someone who has had his success in sports analytics, and I’m lucky to consider him a friend.

To listen on iTunes, click here.

To listen on the site, click on the play button.

Does Aaron Rodgers draw more pass interference penalties?

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On my recent appearance on Beating the Book, we were discussing Aaron Rodgers and why he wasn’t playing as well. Host Gill Alexander thew out the idea that Rodgers’ performance might not seem as bad if we included drawn pass interference penalties.

I dug into the 2016 play by play data through week 10 to find out. Rodgers has drawn 7 pass interference penalties, just above the team average of 6.

Drawing pass interference penalties doesn’t seem like a skill, as Drew Brees has 3 while Blake Bortles and Ryan Fitzpatrick have 12 and 11 respectively.

Rodgers does seem to draw pass interference penalties deep down the field. Here are the yardage gains on these penalties: 44, 18, 30, 40, 13, 28, 66. If you include these plays, it would help a pass offense that has averaged 5.8 yards per attempt, 26th in the NFL.

Here are the full results for defensive pass interference penalties for all teams during the first 10 weeks of the 2016 season.

  • Arizona, 7.
  • Atlanta, 6.
  • Baltimore, 6.
  • Buffalo, 4.
  • Carolina, 6.
  • Chicago, 4.
  • Cincinnati, 9.
  • Cleveland, 6.
  • Dallas, 2.
  • Denver, 9.
  • Detroit, 9.
  • Green Bay, 7.
  • Houston, 6.
  • Indianapolis, 5.
  • Jacksonville, 12.
  • Kansas City, 1.
  • Los Angeles, 5.
  • Miami, 2.
  • Minnesota, 4.
  • New England, 5.
  • New Orleans, 3.
  • New York Giants, 7.
  • New York Jets, 11.
  • Oakland, 12.
  • Philadelphia, 3.
  • Pittsburgh, 5.
  • San Diego, 8.
  • San Francisco, 3.
  • Seattle, 6.
  • Tampa Bay, 7.
  • Tennessee, 9.
  • Washington, 6.

NFL rankings after week 4, 2016

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nfl2016_w4Yikes, that’s not good.

I’m a little embarrassed Green Bay tops my public NFL rankings after week 4. The Packers haven’t looked good this year.

But it shows you the noise in NFL data after only four weeks. These rankings use both my preseason numbers as well as team rankings based on margin of victory adjusted for strength of schedule.

Green Bay ranks 3rd in these team rankings, and it’s better than of the four teams ahead of them this preseason. And the Packers might get their act together.

However, I don’t think Green Bay is the best team in the NFL. My member rankings use data from other sources and come up with a more reasonable rank of 9th for Green Bay.

These public rankings will get better over the coming weeks. Stay tuned.

To check out the NFL rankings, click here.