Power Rankings (Week 16)

Rank	Team	Power Ranking
1	New England Patriots	1.000
2	Atlanta Falcons	0.922
3	New York Jets	0.836
4	Pittsburgh Steelers	0.820
5	Baltimore Ravens	0.817
6	Philadelphia Eagles	0.815
7	Chicago Bears	0.791
8	Green Bay Packers	0.757
9	New Orleans Saints	0.707
10	Tennessee Titans	0.701
11	San Diego Chargers	0.697
12	New York Giants	0.697
13	Miami Dolphins	0.692
14	Kansas City Chiefs	0.687
15	Jacksonville Jaguars	0.685
16	Indianapolis Colts	0.679
17	Cleveland Browns	0.678
18	Oakland Raiders	0.646
19	Tampa Bay Buccaneers	0.641
20	Seattle Seahawks	0.613
21	St. Louis Rams	0.601
22	Houston Texans	0.593
23	Minnesota Vikings	0.585
24	Washington Redskins	0.582
25	Dallas Cowboys	0.577
26	San Francisco 49ers	0.574
27	Detroit Lions	0.565
28	Arizona Cardinals	0.550
29	Buffalo Bills	0.547
30	Denver Broncos	0.540
31	Cincinnati Bengals	0.496
32	Carolina Panthers	0.452

Power Rankings (Week 15)

This Week:

Ranking	Team	Power Ranking
1	New England Patriots	1.000
2	Atlanta Falcons	0.957
3	Pittsburgh Steelers	0.869
4	New York Jets	0.841
5	Baltimore Ravens	0.822
6	Philadelphia Eagles	0.821
7	Green Bay Packers	0.813
8	Chicago Bears	0.798
9	New Orleans Saints	0.761
10	New York Giants	0.747
11	Miami Dolphins	0.740
12	Jacksonville Jaguars	0.727
13	Cleveland Browns	0.725
14	Tennessee Titans	0.717
15	San Diego Chargers	0.707
16	Kansas City Chiefs	0.697
17	Tampa Bay Buccaneers	0.684
18	Indianapolis Colts	0.670
19	Oakland Raiders	0.664
20	Seattle Seahawks	0.658
21	St. Louis Rams	0.641
22	Minnesota Vikings	0.632
23	Houston Texans	0.625
24	Washington Redskins	0.623
25	San Francisco 49ers	0.623
26	Arizona Cardinals	0.603
27	Dallas Cowboys	0.583
28	Denver Broncos	0.572
29	Detroit Lions	0.562
30	Buffalo Bills	0.536
31	Cincinnati Bengals	0.487
32	Carolina Panthers	0.451

Power Rankings (Week 14)

This week's:

Rank	Team	Power Ranking
1	New England Patriots	1.000
2	Atlanta Falcons	0.997
3	Pittsburgh Steelers	0.912
4	New York Jets	0.908
5	Green Bay Packers	0.851
6	Chicago Bears	0.846
7	Philadelphia Eagles	0.839
8	Baltimore Ravens	0.829
9	New York Giants	0.776
10	Tennessee Titans	0.767
11	Cleveland Browns	0.765
12	New Orleans Saints	0.757
13	Kansas City Chiefs	0.734
14	Jacksonville Jaguars	0.727
15	Miami Dolphins	0.726
16	Oakland Raiders	0.719
17	Seattle Seahawks	0.706
18	San Diego Chargers	0.701
19	Tampa Bay Buccaneers	0.694
20	Houston Texans	0.682
21	St. Louis Rams	0.680
22	Indianapolis Colts	0.669
23	Washington Redskins	0.654
24	Minnesota Vikings	0.651
25	Denver Broncos	0.635
26	Dallas Cowboys	0.611
27	Arizona Cardinals	0.603
28	San Francisco 49ers	0.601
29	Detroit Lions	0.582
30	Buffalo Bills	0.534
31	Cincinnati Bengals	0.493
32	Carolina Panthers	0.464

So let's take a look at the magnitudes of the power rankings.  The Falcons and the Patriots are neck and neck, then a gap, then the Jets and Steelers, then a gap, and then the rest.  The Colts are getting hammered, while the Browns are still hanging around.  One of the failures of my rankings is how to judge a team like the Titans, which came strong out of the gate, and now is kind of falling apart due to quarterback issues.

Power Rankings (Week 13)

Pretty good shake-up at the top.  Here we go:

Ranking	Team	Power Ranking
1	Atlanta Falcons	1.000
2	New England Patriots	0.991
3	New York Jets	0.977
4	Pittsburgh Steelers	0.929
5	Baltimore Ravens	0.869
6	Chicago Bears	0.855
7	Green Bay Packers	0.854
8	Philadelphia Eagles	0.849
9	Tennessee Titans	0.782
10	Kansas City Chiefs	0.775
11	New Orleans Saints	0.773
12	Cleveland Browns	0.773
13	New York Giants	0.769
14	Miami Dolphins	0.757
15	San Diego Chargers	0.752
16	Tampa Bay Buccaneers	0.739
17	Houston Texans	0.732
18	Seattle Seahawks	0.728
19	Indianapolis Colts	0.727
20	Jacksonville Jaguars	0.727
21	Oakland Raiders	0.704
22	St. Louis Rams	0.688
23	Washington Redskins	0.682
24	Minnesota Vikings	0.645
25	Denver Broncos	0.631
26	San Francisco 49ers	0.622
27	Arizona Cardinals	0.617
28	Detroit Lions	0.602
29	Dallas Cowboys	0.576
30	Buffalo Bills	0.576
31	Cincinnati Bengals	0.521
32	Carolina Panthers	0.485

Power Rankings (Week 12)

This week I looked at home field advantage.  My metric was pretty simple, from 2004-2009, I summed up all the win ratings for home games, and divided it by all the win ratings from away game.  In the end I have a percentage, the average percentage increase for home games (compared to away games).  I'm not truly measuring the advantage a home stadium provides, but rather, the difference in how well a team plays at home vs. on the road.  For instance, I'm not determining if a team's a good home team or a bad road team.  Anyway, below are the breakdowns (ranked highest to lowest):

Team	Home Field Increase
Minnesota Vikings	40.59%
Kansas City Chiefs	39.60%
Houston Texans	37.42%
Arizona Cardinals	35.76%
Baltimore Ravens	29.16%
Tampa Bay Buccaneers	25.09%
Buffalo Bills	23.19%
Chicago Bears	23.17%
Cleveland Browns	19.23%
Seattle Seahawks	18.51%
Washington Redskins	17.62%
Pittsburgh Steelers	16.80%
Dallas Cowboys	16.66%
Detroit Lions	16.30%
San Diego Chargers	15.28%
New Orleans Saints	15.13%
St. Louis Rams	14.84%
Indianapolis Colts	14.65%
Atlanta Falcons	11.94%
Tennessee Titans	11.80%
Denver Broncos	10.81%
San Francisco 49ers	10.35%
New York Jets	8.84%
Green Bay Packers	6.32%
Oakland Raiders	5.53%
New York Giants	4.38%
Jacksonville Jaguars	3.67%
Cincinnati Bengals	3.34%
Miami Dolphins	2.19%
Carolina Panthers	0.63%
Philadelphia Eagles	-0.50%
New England Patriots	-3.76%

Can't say I'm too surprised by the numbers.  For instance, 3 of the top 5 home field advantages are domes (providing advantageous playing conditions as well as keeping in the noise); and one of the other top 5 home field advantages is that noted Kansas City crowd.  On the other end of the scale, the Eagles and the Patriots actually play better on the road.  Now for these numbers, I only did one regression, that is, I didn't take into account the home / away disparity for the team a team was playing.  For instance, if Minnesota is a noted bad road team, I did not take that into account when they played Green Bay @ Green Bay (I know, sounds a little convoluted, but like my normal power rankings, I would like to incorporate some recursion).  Another odd note, adding a home field advantage component when trying to pick games using my Power Rankings doesn't help; the pure weekly rankings are still the best way to go.  I'll explore the recursion problem in the near future, and see if I can get the prediction a little better.  And, as always, this week's rankings:

Rank	Team	Power Ranking
1	New York Jets	1.000
2	New England Patriots	0.989
3	Pittsburgh Steelers	0.940
4	Atlanta Falcons	0.936
5	Philadelphia Eagles	0.885
6	Green Bay Packers	0.877
7	Baltimore Ravens	0.860
8	Tennessee Titans	0.810
9	Chicago Bears	0.794
10	Indianapolis Colts	0.765
11	Jacksonville Jaguars	0.763
12	Cleveland Browns	0.751
13	New Orleans Saints	0.733
14	Kansas City Chiefs	0.728
15	Tampa Bay Buccaneers	0.723
16	Miami Dolphins	0.722
17	New York Giants	0.721
18	Seattle Seahawks	0.714
19	Oakland Raiders	0.704
20	San Diego Chargers	0.703
21	Washington Redskins	0.699
22	Houston Texans	0.688
23	St. Louis Rams	0.651
24	Denver Broncos	0.637
25	Minnesota Vikings	0.611
26	Arizona Cardinals	0.596
27	Detroit Lions	0.594
28	San Francisco 49ers	0.576
29	Dallas Cowboys	0.568
30	Buffalo Bills	0.545
31	Cincinnati Bengals	0.510
32	Carolina Panthers	0.441

What's surprising is Cleveland is getting a lot of love, best 3-6 team ever.  Raiders took a dive, and still no love for the Chargers.

Power Rankings (Week 11)

So how good is my ranking system, based solely on points per yard (and then put through the regressive formula)?  Well, the obvious metric is how well the ranking system picks winners, how many times the higher ranked team wins.  Below, I iterate through 6 seasons (calculate the power rankings each week, and see how well those rankings pick winners).  I compare it against the most simple ranking system I could think of, based solely on wins / losses (if two teams have the exact same record, I just randomly picked one to win).  Also, I throw out the first two weeks (can't really calculate wins / losses with so few games).  Enjoy:

Year	Picked Correctly
	Simple Ranking	My Ranking
2004	60.7%	70.1%
2005	64.3%	68.3%
2006	58.5%	61.6%
2007	65.6%	69.6%
2008	61.8%	67.9%
2009	62.1%	66.1%

So, as you can see, I'm slightly better than just always picking the team with more wins.  I'm right about 67% of the time, vs. 60% for the simple approach.  Apparently, 2006 was a screwy year.  And below, this week's ranking:

Rank	Team	Power Ranking
1	New York Jets	1.000
2	New England Patriots	0.964
3	Atlanta Falcons	0.940
4	Pittsburgh Steelers	0.934
5	Baltimore Ravens	0.878
6	Philadelphia Eagles	0.862
7	Green Bay Packers	0.850
8	Tennessee Titans	0.821
9	Indianapolis Colts	0.803
10	Cleveland Browns	0.774
11	Chicago Bears	0.760
12	Seattle Seahawks	0.759
13	New York Giants	0.746
14	Oakland Raiders	0.741
15	Miami Dolphins	0.740
16	Tampa Bay Buccaneers	0.728
17	Jacksonville Jaguars	0.722
18	New Orleans Saints	0.707
19	Kansas City Chiefs	0.701
20	Houston Texans	0.701
21	St. Louis Rams	0.679
22	Denver Broncos	0.678
23	San Diego Chargers	0.675
24	Washington Redskins	0.657
25	Arizona Cardinals	0.633
26	Detroit Lions	0.628
27	Minnesota Vikings	0.623
28	San Francisco 49ers	0.606
29	Cincinnati Bengals	0.548
30	Dallas Cowboys	0.517
31	Buffalo Bills	0.506
32	Carolina Panthers	0.452

Power Rankings (Week 10)

And here we go:

Rank	Team	Power Ranking
1	Pittsburgh Steelers	1.000
2	New York Jets	0.951
3	Atlanta Falcons	0.914
4	Baltimore Ravens	0.891
5	New England Patriots	0.888
6	Tennessee Titans	0.842
7	Green Bay Packers	0.819
8	Philadelphia Eagles	0.816
9	Indianapolis Colts	0.804
10	New York Giants	0.796
11	Cleveland Browns	0.788
12	Tampa Bay Buccaneers	0.758
13	Houston Texans	0.740
14	Oakland Raiders	0.736
15	Kansas City Chiefs	0.732
16	Seattle Seahawks	0.726
17	Chicago Bears	0.719
18	St. Louis Rams	0.718
19	New Orleans Saints	0.716
20	San Diego Chargers	0.680
21	Miami Dolphins	0.674
22	Washington Redskins	0.671
23	Arizona Cardinals	0.666
24	Detroit Lions	0.661
25	Jacksonville Jaguars	0.652
26	Minnesota Vikings	0.632
27	Denver Broncos	0.607
28	Cincinnati Bengals	0.571
29	San Francisco 49ers	0.550
30	Carolina Panthers	0.458
31	Buffalo Bills	0.454
32	Dallas Cowboys	0.445

Still surprising that the Jets still sit up so high.  And it's still showing the AFC's dominance over the NFC.  Lo and behold....the Cowboys are the worst team.  No complaints here.

Power Rankings (Week 9)

Well I can't say the results aren't strange.  Generally speaking, it seems teams aren't punished that much for keeping it close against good teams, it's playing lousy against bad teams that hurts you.  Case in point, the Patriots hold the best record, but could have lost to Buffalo and San Diego.  Still, something about these numbers speaks a little strange, so I'm still going to do some tweaking.  And I'm still interested in coming up with a picks system.  Anyway, here you go.

Rank	Team	Power Ranking
1	Pittsburgh Steelers	1.000
2	New York Jets	0.989
3	New England Patriots	0.964
4	Baltimore Ravens	0.889
5	Atlanta Falcons	0.873
6	Houston Texans	0.870
7	Tennessee Titans	0.833
8	Green Bay Packers	0.832
9	Indianapolis Colts	0.817
10	New York Giants	0.796
11	Tampa Bay Buccaneers	0.794
12	Seattle Seahawks	0.771
13	Kansas City Chiefs	0.768
14	Philadelphia Eagles	0.760
15	Chicago Bears	0.743
16	St. Louis Rams	0.724
17	New Orleans Saints	0.718
18	Cleveland Browns	0.710
19	Miami Dolphins	0.707
20	Oakland Raiders	0.703
21	Washington Redskins	0.689
22	Arizona Cardinals	0.688
23	Jacksonville Jaguars	0.667
24	Detroit Lions	0.660
25	San Diego Chargers	0.634
26	Minnesota Vikings	0.617
27	Denver Broncos	0.615
28	Cincinnati Bengals	0.586
29	San Francisco 49ers	0.544
30	Dallas Cowboys	0.493
31	Buffalo Bills	0.481
32	Carolina Panthers	0.478

 So what to make of these?  Well, I think the most useful takeaway is separating good teams from bad teams.  For instance, Jacksonville is a bad team, Tampa Bay is good.  Learn something.

Week 8 Picks

Okay, that title is false; I didn't actually make picks.  I was trying to find out the best way to predict a winner, if I could go strictly with Power Rankings, or if momentum comes into play.  I never came up with a good way to approximate momentum, and Power Rankings was the best way to predict.  So....go ahead and put together your own picks...

Power Rankings (Week 8)

No changes to the formula; I did a little playing around with the win rating but didn't see any big improvement.  However, this coming Thursday I'll post again, predicting this week's game.

Rank	Team	Power Ranking
1	Pittsburgh Steelers	1.000
2	New York Jets	0.928
3	New England Patriots	0.856
4	Baltimore Ravens	0.834
5	Tennessee Titans	0.825
6	Houston Texans	0.818
7	Indianapolis Colts	0.788
8	Atlanta Falcons	0.780
9	New York Giants	0.731
10	Seattle Seahawks	0.722
11	Kansas City Chiefs	0.717
12	Green Bay Packers	0.690
13	Washington Redskins	0.690
14	Tampa Bay Buccaneers	0.671
15	Chicago Bears	0.669
16	Philadelphia Eagles	0.667
17	St. Louis Rams	0.647
18	Cleveland Browns	0.633
19	Denver Broncos	0.627
20	Arizona Cardinals	0.625
21	Miami Dolphins	0.608
22	Jacksonville Jaguars	0.604
23	Oakland Raiders	0.591
24	Minnesota Vikings	0.552
25	Cincinnati Bengals	0.552
26	New Orleans Saints	0.535
27	Detroit Lions	0.517
28	Dallas Cowboys	0.500
29	San Diego Chargers	0.498
30	San Francisco 49ers	0.429
31	Carolina Panthers	0.422
32	Buffalo Bills	0.380

 No big shake-ups in the rankings, the top 4 teams are still there.  The NFC is kind of all over the place from week to week, are the top 3 teams in the league Atlanta, NY, and Seattle?

Power Rankings (Week 7)

To test my rankings, I went back to old seasons (2004 through 2009) and calculated a final regular season power ranking.  Next, I compared how these final rankings compared to playoff performance: if someone ranked higher than another team (and subsequently beat them) then hey, a plus; if a lower ranked team beat a higher ranked one, a minus.  Then finally, I tweaked through a whole range of coefficients on the Scoring Efficiency, Yardage Efficiency, and Margin of Victory.  Basically, I tried to find which coefficients best predicted playoff performance.

Fortunately, the behavior was really weird.  For three of the seasons I looked at, Scoring Efficiency was the only value that mattered.  If I set all the other items to zero (and used only Scoring Efficiency), then I best predicted the post-season.  So for this week's power rankings, I used this equation for the win rating:

Win Rating = exp(-1/(3* Scoring Efficiency ))

Thus, the only thing I'm using to rate a team is how they score; if it takes them a few yards to score points, that's good, if it takes alot, it's bad.  It's interesting; bad teams have drives that stall, turnovers, etc.  Good teams score on every drive, and force turnovers.  I'm going to explore what this means in the next couple of weeks, we'll see how it goes. 

And here's this week's power rankings:

Team	Power Ranking
New York Jets	1.000
Pittsburgh Steelers	0.978
New England Patriots	0.900
Baltimore Ravens	0.885
Houston Texans	0.797
Indianapolis Colts	0.797
Tennessee Titans	0.792
Atlanta Falcons	0.792
Philadelphia Eagles	0.767
Seattle Seahawks	0.730
New York Giants	0.725
Green Bay Packers	0.716
Chicago Bears	0.708
Denver Broncos	0.707
St. Louis Rams	0.701
Jacksonville Jaguars	0.695
Arizona Cardinals	0.695
Washington Redskins	0.683
Kansas City Chiefs	0.681
Miami Dolphins	0.645
Minnesota Vikings	0.624
Tampa Bay Buccaneers	0.608
New Orleans Saints	0.594
Cincinnati Bengals	0.578
Cleveland Browns	0.573
San Diego Chargers	0.572
Detroit Lions	0.550
Oakland Raiders	0.544
Dallas Cowboys	0.522
San Francisco 49ers	0.456
Buffalo Bills	0.412
Carolina Panthers	0.388

J-E-T-S baby.  But actually, the Jets, Ravens, Steelers, and Patriots are all pretty equal.  Let them slug it out.