NFL Week 3 Power Rankings

1. Denver Broncos

They've dominated all of their games. This offense compares to some of the best of all time. And the Von-Miller-less defense is nearly elite as well. The Broncos are the class of the NFL.

2. Seattle Seahawks

The only other elite team in the NFL, it seems. As in, nobody else in the entire league looks impressive at all. You'll see when you look at who's #3. But back to the Seahawks. The passing game is dominant, the defense is great (the second string defense, not so much. It looked fairly well matched with the Jag's offense), and the running game is mediocre. After being the #3 rushing team in the league last year, their O-line is missing a lot of blocks this year, resulting in a bottom-10 ypc for the team that leads the league in attempts (They should probably pass it more). This is the biggest difference between 1 and 2. But it's not a small drop off. The Broncos are much better than the Seahawks.

3. New York Jets

They deserve this spot. Wilkerson and the defense have been as good as anyone this year, and the offense is starting to look reasonably good, too, with Geno Smith leading the way (and improving). I hate to make this comparison, but the Jets look reminiscent of last year's Seahawks.

4. Philadelphia Eagles

I've mentioned a lot that I don't care about turnovers. I'm much more impressed that they kept the game close despite the -6 TO differential. They were the better team out there. That offense minus the fluke plays still looks dominant.

5. Houston Texans

They had some bad luck against the Ravens, and the score ended up way worse than it should have been. The Texans still have the best defensive player in the world (by a lot), and they'll probably be the Seahawks' hardest game all year. That matchup looks as good as any next weekend.

6. New York Giants

They were bad. That loss wasn't bad luck: The Giants just played terribly (and the Panthers played really well). But one game doesn't make a season, and they still have the pieces in place to compete with anyone from here on out (except maybe those top 2).

7. Tampa Bay Buccaneers

Surprised to see them so high? Maybe not, considering the team in front of them, but still. Their defense has been really good, and while the O looks bad, they've played against two of the league's best defenses. They could easily be 2-1 as well.

8. Pittsburg Steelers

More bottom feeders in the top 10! But that offense came alive on Sunday night. Now they just have to repeat it while not turning the ball over all the time.

9. Cincinnati Bengals

Good win for them in a really interesting game. Despite the hiccup in the middle, they dismantled the Packers' (admittedly bad) defense, and no one is expected to stop Rodgers and co. They beat the Packers the same way the 49ers did: in a shootout. But they won because their defense held up just enough.

10. New England Patriots

Week 3 was the first time they looked any good all season. Not to say their offense looked that good week 3. But they're winning the way they did back when they actually won Superbowls. Dominant defense. Let's see if they can keep it up.

11. Oakland Raiders

They played the Broncos pretty close. Kinda. But Pryor still looks like a game changer, and you can't blame them for failing to slow down an offense that nobody else has slowed down either. This team is not nearly as bad as people are making them out to be.

12. Green Bay Packers

This team has a fun game every week. As long as watching good defensive football doesn't matter to you. These guys are like a worse version of their 15-1 all-offense-no-defense team. Which still makes them pretty good.

13. Cleveland Browns

Despite the shootout nature of their last game, I'm still much more impressed with their defense than their offense. 6 sacks while holding AD to 3.5 ypc is impressive.

14. Carolina Panthers

They played really well on Sunday. Maybe the best of any team all season. Unfortunately, they didn't the first two weeks, so we still need to see a little more from them before we give start giving them too much credit.

15. Detroit Lions

I love this offense. Well, I love their passing offense. A lot. That alone can win you a lot of games in this league. And that alone is what they have. This is another team that will be in a lot of fun games.

16. San Francisco 49ers

God, how do you lose by 20 to the Colts??? To be fair, they didn't even get that badly outplayed, but the Colts, despite what the media will have you believe, are not a good team. I am worried about the passing game though. They just don't have the receivers to do damage against anyone (except for the Packers, who can't even defend a hail mary against a 5'10'' receiver).

17. New Orleans Saints

The defense (well, at least their passing defense) looked a lot better this week, and the offense looked pretty good, too. But not that good. They just throw the ball a lot when they're already up.

18. Dallas Cowboys

They finally looked good! On offense and defense! Then again, it's the Rams, who really aren't that good (you're going to have to scroll down this list a long way to find them). But beating any team as badly as they did is impressive (unlike the Cowboys' first 2 games).

19. Buffalo Bills

The game wasn't as close as they ended up making it, but the Jets are a good team, and the Bills played with them until the very end.

20. Atlanta Falcons

This team just isn't that good. Especially the defense. I still believe in Matt Ryan (to an extent), but I don't really trust Atlanta to beat anyone very consistently.

21. Baltimore Ravens

That was an impressive win against Houston, but it wasn't as impressive as the score would suggest. Their offense still hasn't looked good this season, especially their running game.

22. Indianapolis Colts

THIS TEAM ISN'T ACTUALLY THAT GOOD. But 22nd is better than they were last year, so I give them props for that.

23. Tennessee Titans

Jake Locker looked so good! Or maybe that was just the Chargers' defense. Either way, their offense looked a lot better than it did the first couple of weeks.

24. Miami Dolphins

See first sentence of #22.

25. Kansas City Chiefs

I want to point out how lucky they were in the turnover battle on Thursday. And then see #24.

26. San Diego Chargers

Their defense is so bad it made the Titans look good at offense. And their offense is good (Rivers seems to have turned it around), but it's just not good enough to make up for the D. This team could be like last year's Saints (best case scenario).

27. Washington Redskins

I'm still waiting for RG3 to look like the RG3 of old. It's going to happen. Just maybe not this season. Oh, and the defense sucks.

28. Chicago Bears

How are there so many bad 3-0 teams this year??? But the Bears have been outplayed in at least 2 of the 3 games they've played this year, and pretty badly at that. They have scored a lot on D though. That luck should even out. See #24.

29. Arizona Cardinals

I don't even want to talk about this team. There's not much to like, especially on offense, but they're not bad enough to be entertaining either.

30. Minnesota Vikings

Their D is so bad, they gave up 31 to the Browns. And the Browns offense is bad. Really bad. The Vikings offense isn't that great either. Even AD looks like a normal person.

31. Jacksonville Jaguars

They're not last! Give credit to the Seahawks' 2nd string for that. But they're close to last, and they don't look like they can win a game.

32. St. Louis Rams

This team just got dismantled by a Cowboys team that wasn't all that good. They have a win at least, and they're not actually as bad as the Jags, but it's time to give up on them. They can go suck for Clowney. Even though Clowney can't get off blocks or fit in their system. Maybe Bridgewater? No, they already have ridiculous amounts of money locked up paying for Bradford. Maybe they can trade their pick and draft a bunch of left tackles (and move them all inside).

NFL Rankings Week 2

Here are my week 2 rankings:

1. Denver Broncos

Just dominant. Far better than anyone else in the league.

2. New York Giants

Still. Still playing well, still having bad luck. And losing to the team above doesn't carry much shame.

3. Philadelphia Eagles

Holy shit. That offense is back. Better than ever. The defense might have its issues, but they still are one of the scariest teams to face in the league.

4. Green Bay Packers

They looked good Sunday. Really good. Aaron Rodgers just had an all time great game. As many yards and only two fewer touchdowns than Matt Flynn in his last start.

5. Houston Texans

Kinda surprised to see them this high, but the defense is good, and the offense came together when they needed it to.

6. New York Jets.

Yes, the Jets. After completely outplaying the Patriots on Monday night only to blow it with a bunch of late picks, that defense has me looking out. It's one of the best in the NFL so far.

7. Seattle Seahawks

They drop after a 29-3 drubbing of the previously 3rd ranked team. But their offense, and especially the passing game, looked like total shit, so it's not that much of a surprise.

8. Atlanta Falcons

Even with Roddy White's high ankle sprain, the passing game looks good. That's all this team really has going for it, but that might be all it needs.

9. San Francisco 49ers

They were outplayed, sure, but their defense actually did a spectacular job against Russell Wilson. Before the lightning, the 49ers had caught more passes from him than the Seahawks receivers. That's a point that gets missed a lot when the score is as lopsided as this one.

10. Oakland Raiders

Huh? I don't believe in this team. This is just my algorithm not being able to realize that everyone is going to look amazing against the Jags. But who knows? Maybe there's something there. It's gotta be Pryor, because there's not much else that's that good about them.

11. Tampa Bay Buccaneers

For all that they get shit on, they've played really well defensively in both games. Maybe their offense isn't the best, but I expect them to get at least somewhat back on track. I could even see them beating the Pats. Maybe.

12. Cincinnati Bengals

This looks like a pretty good football team. Not as good as last week, which is interesting to say when they lost, but Dalton played a lot worse against the Steelers, and given how the Titans dominated against Ben and company, I expected better from a legitimately good team like the Bengals.

13. New Orleans Saints

Classic case of a great offense and bad defense. But it looked a little better on Sunday. Or maybe that was just the Bucs.

14. Buffalo Bills

They won at the last minute, but they dominated all game. They deserved this one.

15. Kansas City

Again, it feels weird to say regression when they win in week 2, but they're going to look a lot worse against a non-Jags team.

16. San Diego Chargers

Just like the Eagles team they just beat. Revitalized and really good offense, awful D. But the offense isn't quite as good as the Eagles'. The defense probably isn't either. But hey, their in the AFC. Why can't they get a wild card?

17. Detroit Lions

Just another average team with an exciting offense. There seem to be a lot of those.

18. St. Louis Rams

They actually played pretty well against the Falcons. If not for the fluke play (Osi's pick 6), they could have won. But I still haven't seen anything to convince me this team isn't just average at everything.

19. Cleveland Browns

Their defense actually looks really good! The offense, not so much. It's probably the second worst in the league.

20. Chicago Bears

They keep winning, but not that impressively. They're not actually much different than the lions. Big-armed QB with 1 great receiver, bad but not horrifically bad defense.

21. New England Patriots

Maybe they're trying to go back to their superbowl winning ways of no receivers and great defense? I don't believe in it this year. They just aren't that good a football team. Without Brady, they could be a second coming of this year's Jags.

22. Miami Dolphins

They won, but the Colts are not good and they didn't win very convincingly. They're just like the team below them: not that good at anything.

23. Arizona Cardinals

They got the win, but this is just a team stewing in mediocrity. They'll get last in the division, but they'll compete in a lot of games.

24. Indianapolis Colts

Andrew Luck has taken the step. Maybe not to the elite level, but he doesn't suck anymore. Good for him. But his team's still bad.

25. Minnesota Vikings

They might just be really bad at defense. And passing. But they're actually worse at defense. Which might be saying something.

26. Pittsburg Steelers

They looked better against a good team, but not good enough. At least their D is pretty good.

27. Baltimore Ravens

More of the top of the AFC North from a few years ago. They shut down the Browns, but that's not saying much. They couldn't even score a point in the first half. Better than allowing 7 passing touchdowns though.

28. Tennessee Titans

I thought their D might have finally turned it around. And then they blew it. Badly. That game was all but wrapped up, and they just couldn't hold it together. But hey, at least it was a lot better than their offense!

29. Washington Redskins

They can't stop anyone. Maybe the Eagles and Packers are really good (I think they are), but they don't even look like they're trying (they clearly are, they're just bad at it). I'm going to need to see something more. Maybe Robert can make up for it once he gets healthier though.

30. Dallas Cowboys

Their D is bad, they don't throw much very far downfield to anyone other than Dez, and I just don't think they're a very good football team. Maybe not 30th bad, but pretty bad.

31. Carolina Panthers

Before the year, I thought they'd be pretty good. After week 1, I still thought they'd be pretty good. But in week 2, they looked really bad. They Bills crushed them. It seemed close, but it wasn't. I'm starting to doubt them.

32. Jacksonville Jaguars

This team could go 0-16. They're that bad. They have no offense, and their defense only looks good compared to their O. In their week 3 game, they are the biggest underdogs (based on opening lines), 19.5 points, in 20 years (to the Seahawks). You might get even odds on a shutout. Upset special. As in, it would be really special if they ever made an upset (which would only require them winning a game).

2013 NFL Team Rankings for Week 1

Let me preface these rankings with a brief introduction. As they are entirely computer based, and based off of just this season at that, there are elements that cannot be controlled for at this point. For example, the algorithm doesn’t look at any Jaguars games or Broncos games other than week 1, so the Chiefs can be overly rewarded for playing a bad team while the Ravens can be overly punished for playing a good team. However, with these rankings, we can still see what demonstrated skill is likely to be repeatable and which is not (such as 6 turnovers for the Giants). The rankings are all computer, and the comments on the teams are all me. Enjoy:

1. Denver Broncos

This is what happens when your quarterback has the best game of anyone since the merger. Given their schedule, 14-2 or 15-1 looks well within their reach as long as Peyton stays healthy. The scary thing is they’ll be even better when they get back one of the five best players in the entire NFL in Von Miller. Watch out.

2. New York Giants

Surprise! When you turn the ball over 6 times, you should lose by a lot. At least that’s what should happen when you have some of the worst luck I’ve ever seen. Those turnovers aren’t going to happen again. Eli Manning and the passing game being almost unstoppable other than the turnovers? Much more repeatable, although I still expect a regression.

3. San Francisco 49ers

The best team in the league last year gets off to the same kind of start in this one. That’s a good Packers secondary that they lit up. I’d say I expect them to stay in the top 3 for a while, but anything can happen in their huge week 2 matchup (see the team at 4)

4. Seattle Seahawks

A dominant defense and a superstar quarterback were barely able to mask some huge issues on that offensive line. But with that combination, they’re still one of the toughest teams to beat in the league, especially at home. It’ll be a huge test next week against the 49ers. Both those teams should be in the mix for the NFC championship until the very end no matter how much they beat up on each other.

5. Kansas City Chiefs

This team was really bad last year. The Jags were too. But while Jacksonville looks like they’re just repeating all of last year’s woes, Kansas City might have turned a corner. I still want to see them dominate this much against someone who looks like they belong in the NFL, but beating any team as badly as they did is incredibly impressive.

6. Tennessee Titans

Wow. This game was the shocker of the week for me. The Titans defense was bad last year. Not Saints bad, but really bad. And while the Steelers aren’t the most prolific offense in the NFL, shutting them down the way they did is impressive. In a weak AFC, the Titans might actually be able to squeeze into the playoffs. I’m much more impressed by their win than the Chiefs’. The Steelers were a really solid football team.

7. Cincinnati Bengals

Ahh, the Bengals. The second loser in the top 10. Dalton threw his two picks, but as I’ve mentioned before, I don’t really care. He went 26/33 against the Bears. That’s really, really, really good. A.J. Green looks better than ever. This team looks like the team to beat in the AFC North (and they’re still in first place!).

8. St. Louis Rams

The battle for 3^rd in the NFL’s best division, and the Rams deserve this one. The Cards defense is pretty good, and Bradford seems like he might take the big step this year. Cook looked legit, and Austin can be a big plus, too. It’s just too bad this team couldn’t play in a division that matches their current geographical location.

9. Houston Texans

The team that we saw in the second half last night after the east coast went to bed could be the best in the AFC. JJ Watt is still the best football player in the world, and Andre Johnson can still get open at will. The team we saw in the first half… uggghhh. You made Philip Rivers look like Peyton Manning. I expect this team to look a little more like the second half version as the season goes on, and they can probably cruise to a 2 seed, although the Titans might actually be a team to watch out for in their division.

10. Miami Dolphins

Great D. Cameron Wake is as good as ever, and they played exactly as they were supposed to. The offense is a different story. Tannehill wasn’t great, but he was good enough to get the job done. The running game on the other hand? Maybe worse than the Ravens pass defense. 20 yards on 23 carries. And the Browns might be improved, but they aren’t that good. At this point, here’s my advice to you: Just stop running the football. Entirely. Tannehill can put up enough points to win with that defense, especially against what, I must repeat, is an awful AFC.

11. Philadelphia Eagles

I believe in Chip! They passed! They ran! Oh did they run. McCoy must love Chip’s offense. And even the D too! RG3 (Robert) is an incredible quarterback, and they pretty much shut him down in the first half on their way to a 33-7 lead. They can go from the cellar to the playoffs. I give them as much credit as any other team in the league this week. Because they did it against a good team. A really good team. 

12. Oakland Raiders

I don’t know if Pryor is just this good, or if the Colts D is just that bad. Probably a combination of both. I don’t expect them to go very far this year, but they seem a hell of a lot more competitive than I though they’d be.

13. New Orleans Saints

They lit up the Falcons, who had a bad defense, and they got lit up by the Falcons, who had a good offense. But they limited their losses, and they beat a team that was 13-3 last year. That limit of their losses was mainly luck, but even the god-awful D they displayed is a huge improvement over their maybe-the-worst-ever defense last year.

14. Cleveland Browns

I finally get to talk about a game I’ve talked about before. This team is as high as it is because of that run defense. Maybe it’s luck. Maybe it’s not. But teams don’t get that lucky that often. If the offense can step up just a little bit, the Browns can compete for a playoff spot.

15. Tampa Bay Buccaneers

Bad luck, and the LaVonte David hit might have even been clean. But they were playing the Jets, and while the Jets are kind of like the Cardinals with their good D and bad O, Josh Freeman looked bad. But given the defenses of the Saints and Falcons, he might be able to still do some damage in that division.

16. Detroit Lions

17. Minnesota Vikings

The fun game of the week. Reggie Bush all over the place, the Lions looking like a pretty good team, and Adrian Peterson putting up a hell of a lot of fantasy points for someone who was pretty much shut down other than the first play. Both of these teams should be fun to watch the rest of the season as they fight for a 9-7 record in a not-as-good-as-people-think NFC North.

18. New York Jets

They got the win, and Geno Smith looked like a real quarterback, but so would a lot of people compared to Mark Sanchez. In reality, their offense wasn’t that good, and the D just carried them enough down the stretch to keep them in a position to get lucky at the end.

19. Atlanta Falcons

20. Green Bay Packers

Two of last year’s top teams whose defenses were awful in week 1, but they were both playing elite offenses, so maybe we can give them a break. Both teams still put up enough points to keep them in the game until the end. I think the 49ers are MUCH better than the Saints though, so I would be MUCH more worried about the Falcons moving forward. The Pack should do just fine, and they’ll probably win the division fairly handily.

21. Arizona Cardinals

You know, 21 isn’t so bad for this team. Carson Palmer is a huge improvement at quarterback, and while this team will likely be out of the playoff hunt halfway through the season, a lot of that can be attributed to their division (and their conference). This team might be better than half the AFC, but they still won’t sniff contention.

22. Chicago Bears

They won, but it wasn’t that impressive. Dalton dominated them, and they just look mediocre. But the Bengals are a good team, so the Bears will take what they can get. Looking mediocre against the Bengals might be a good thing.

23. Buffalo Bills

24. New England Patriots

I found it interesting that my algorithm ranked both competitors in this matchup so low. It’s almost entirely attributable to pretty inefficient passing offenses (5.5 and 5.6 yards per attempt) on both sides. Brady looked human, just as he did at the end of the Ravens game in the playoffs last year, and the Bills didn’t even have Jarius Bryd at safety. Maybe when he gets Gronk back he’ll be able to play like we’re used to, but until then, I’m not sure if Julian Edelman and co. can keep the Patriots looking like the Patriots of old.

25. Pittsburg Steelers

I’ll admit it. I had them winning the division. And I’ll admit it. They looked horrible. The D wasn’t so bad (it never is), but the offense was much, much worse than the mediocre one we saw last year. We’ll see if they can right the ship.

26. San Diego Chargers

I’ve said most of it in the Texans entry. JJ Watt can make anyone look bad. Maybe the first half was a sign of good things to come. But considering the game on the whole, neither their offense nor their defense was particularly good.

27. Washington Redskins

This team didn’t have a particularly good defense last year, but they didn’t look like they could stop anybody on the ground in week 1. However, last year, Robert led the league in yards per attempt and yards per carry on the way to a well-deserved ROY award (over Russell Wilson, who had by far the second best rookie season for any QB ever). Hopefully for the Redskins, the Eagles were just good, and this first game was just a fluke for a QB who had been injured for a while. They did seem to pick it up a little bit in the second half. Time will tell.

28. Indianapolis Colts

Just like last year, the Colts played terribly and barely beat a bad team. Unlike last year, however, Andrew Luck was actually pretty good. He wasn’t amazing by any means, and he still got sacked too much, but he was better, even considering the Raiders defense being made up of backups. The defense, on the other hand, was bad. Really bad. There’s just no way Pryor is actually that good. I don’t believe in this Colts team at all.

29. Carolina Panthers

Here’s a team I do still believe in. They won’t have to play the Seahawks D and Russell Wilson every week, and their front 7 looked really good, including rookie DT Star Lotulelei. They could still win this division.

30. Jacksonville Jaguars

They’re bad.

31. Baltimore Ravens

Denver’s good. The Ravens are average.

32. Dallas Cowboys

They got lucky to win that first game, forcing 6 turnovers. Maybe forcing isn’t the right word. Lucking into 6 turnovers is more accurate. They couldn’t stop Eli Manning. Tony Romo wasn’t bad, but he wasn’t good either. The Cowboys need to shore up their pass defense fast, or this could be a long season for them.

Which Plays Are Luck?

There are a lot of big plays that occur in football that aren’t a repeatable representation of a team’s skill. The biggie that is always thrown out is the luck involved in recovering fumbles. Who recovers a fumble will alter the course of a game, but teams show no consistency in actually being good at this “skill.” I’m willing to take it a step further. Turnovers in general are almost entirely luck. Sure, you’ll get quarterbacks who are very careful with the ball like Tom Brady and Russell Wilson, and these guys might have a slightly consistent skill in preventing turnovers, but the fact remains that the correlation between turnover margins in current vs. previous seasons is practically nill. The r^2 value is about .02, meaning that only TWO PERCENT of a team’s turnover margin in a given season can be explained/predicted by their turnover margin in their previous season. This implies that turnovers are ALMOST ENTIRELY LUCK.

Speaking of Luck, let’s use him as an example for my next point. Here’s a quarterback who last year showed a very strong disposition toward being careless with the football, turning the football over more than almost anyone else in the league (which can be expected to regress at least partially toward the mean next season), but that’s beside the point. He threw 14 passes last season in which the defense dropped a potential interception (that’s extremely high, even given how often he throws to defenders, in case you were wondering). This is a case where nobody in his right mind would believe that Luck actually has a skill in throwing passes that are hard for defenders to catch. However, all of the Colts close wins are automatically attributed to Luck’s skill. I wonder how many of those games would have gone the other way had defenders been able to hold onto the ball a reasonable amount of the time.  Clearly, wins, and especially close wins, are a terrible measure of skill, given how influenced they can be by matters of randomness, and to me, the bonus we give to our judgment of teams’ skill for winning (even more so for the credit we give to QUARTERBACKS winning) is one of the biggest mistakes we make in our sports opinions in general. This is why my algorithm completely ignores wins. It’s just not worth keeping track of random noise (By random noise, I mean wins, and when I discuss the worth of keeping track of them, I am referring to my effort to measure how good teams are.) when we have the actually meaningful statistics that can explain what causes teams to be winners in the long run.

Despite the importance we place on turnovers and especially wins, I think the hardest “luck play” for us to accept is the touchdown. Get ready for it. This is the case against touchdowns. Now, don’t go crazy just yet. I’m not saying there’s nothing to the ability to put the ball in the endzone or that teams that score more TDs don’t have better offenses. My argument is that TDs are not a skill beyond general offensive skill. If two offenses play equivalently everywhere but the endzone (equally effective at running, passing long, passing short, playing consistently), the fact that team A has scored 45 TDs and team B has scored 30 TDs can be attributed entirely to luck. Touchdowns are simply high variance plays that in the long run can be completely predicted by other measures of offensive skill. Football Outsiders has shown that red zone efficiency is completely random beyond the overall offensive skill of a team (see “The Red Zone Efficiency Myth”, by Aaron Schatz). They created a statistic, “red zone advantage,” for how much better a team is in the red zone than one could expect them to be based on their offensive skill in general, and find that the correlation between “red zone advantage” in the first seven weeks and the final 10 weeks is essentially zero (this is true on defense as well). Beyond skills we see in other areas, teams have no skill in turning good drives into touchdowns. Therefore, my metric also does not consider those when evaluating teams. All that would do is bring unwanted noise into the rankings.

So now that I’ve gotten my football heresy over with, I present the 2013 NFL Team Rankings for Week 1 (next post). Skim all the luck off the top (okay, not all of it, everything is going to have some element of luck involved), and we have our first look at the skill of every team in the National Football League.

The Baseball Analogy

Baseball has already undergone its statistics revolution. While we still have some stubbornly ignorant fans that cling to RBIs and wins, most have accepted that these have huge failings in terms of actually determining how good a player is. Everybody realizes that run support has nothing to do with the pitcher (ok, a little bit in the NL), and most can now see that the distribution of which games the pitcher allows his runs in can be chalked up to luck. In fact, what we see now for pitchers is that all they really control is their strikeout rate, their walk rate, and their ground ball rate. This leads us to some examples of the two main kinds of luck that falsely and disturbingly influence our opinions of players. The first is the "pure randomness" kind of luck. Twenty percent of non-home-run fly balls go for hits, so if a pitcher has the misfortune of allowing a .300 average on in-the-park flies, we can all acknowledge that he just had really bad luck. But this is usually only counted against a pitcher when people just plain ignore advanced statistics (either by laziness or by principle). On the other hand, we have the "clutch" kind of luck. A pitcher has the skill to strike out 20% of the batters he faces. His luck is WHICH twenty percent of the batters he strikes out. We hate admitting that this is luck. We want to say, "He rises to the pressure," that "He came to play." But these are just our feelings getting in the way. He's always ready to play. He's a professional athlete who has practiced this particular skill for his whole life. If he really could just muster up all his focus and strength to get that one strikeout with the bases loaded, he would do it every time. But he can't. And statistical studies have confirmed this. There aren't pitchers who are consistently "clutch."

Now let's look at an almost identical example in football. A quarterback's skill is to get the ball within a certain range of where his receiver can reach. Let's say he hits this spot 60% of the time. It's luck WHICH 60% of the time he does. If he happens to do it on third down, or if he happens to do it in the red zone, he's just luckier. That's all. And that's my biggest qualm with the more advanced statistical measures that I look at. They all want to attribute this luck to a quarterback's skill. Even Football Outsiders' DVOA, the best team ranking metric I've seen, not only falls into this trap, but is proud of it. They base the success of a play (at least somewhat) on the percentage of the distance-to-go that it gained for the down it was run on. While there is some value in this (both the offense and defense will use a very different play call on 3rd-and-short than on 2nd-and-long), most of this adjustment just gives importance to random noise. It's too complicated for its own good (On the other side, an oversimplification such as points or wins will "subconsciously" make this same adjustment for luck, and do it even worse than DVOA does).

And that's why I brought in an algorithm that finds a middle ground. I plan to publish the full team "power" rankings on Tuesday. However, while I think that even in the beginning they absolutely do give value beyond an intuition-based-ranking (like what you would find on nfl.com), until week 3 or so, that intuition-based-ranking is going to be more accurate than my power rankings, simply because 1 or even 2 weeks just isn't enough of a sample size, even with the algorithm, to judge team performance or to adjust for the skill of opponents better than a combination of watching the games and considering performance the previous season (which is really a subconscious Bayesian adjustment, so good for them).

The Algorithm

Unfortunately, I must state that I am not publishing the details of the algorithm for two reasons. First, while it isn't too complex, it is a hundred lines of python code, so I wouldn't be able to share it with you completely without pooping all over the front seat. Second, I think it's more fun to keep it to myself. So while you're going to get the story and the basics, don't expect the (not so) magic formula.

I came up with part of this "algorithm" before last NFL season, but at that point it was all still in the trial phase. I had the idea to skin football down to its very basics (see "The Baseball Analogy"), so I wrote a little metric that gave each team a value. Then, using previous seasons' data, I adjusted the inputs so that the teams' values correlated as highly as possible with pythagorean wins. You might ask why my metric is any better than pythagorean wins then. It all comes down to sample sizes. Pythagorean wins, in the long run, will perfectly align with how good a team is (as will actual wins). However, in a shorter run, such as 16 Broncos games, there can still be quite a lot of error. I wanted my metric to match up with how good teams actually were (hence the large sample size of seasons worth of pythagorean wins data), but I still wanted to (and managed to) have a metric that was far less susceptible to the variance that occurs during an NFL season for any given team. I chose to use pythagorean wins rather than actual wins (even though both are perfect in the long run) because there is so much error in actual wins that even over multiple seasons, the luck won't "even out." Now it was time to see my formula work in practice.

I updated this metric each week, and midway through the season, I still had some weird outliers: a few teams that hadn't been that much better than average, but which my metric ranked as some of the best teams in the NFL. In fact, my metric had ranked a 4-3 Broncos team as the best in the NFL. But we all know how that turned out. Maybe more surprisingly, it had a 6-5 Seahawks team in the top 3. Again, we all know how that turned out. And finally, it had a 3-6 Redskins team in the top 5. In case you didn't remember how these turned out, none of those teams lost again in the regular season. They did in the postseason, but as I alluded to before, the W/L results of individual games involve so much variance that they are not worth giving much consideration to. And while the metric did have its failures (for example, a high ranking for the Steelers and a low one for the Colts, though it was pretty obvious throughout the season that the colts were actually just a bad team that got lucky {no pun intended}), it also led to some other reasonably good predictions, such as the late season success of the Panthers. I was sold on it. All I had to do was adjust for its biggest failing.

This offseason, I wanted to make a more legitimate ranking of the teams, so I looked back at my old metric. The problem was that while the metric was able to discount the high variance events that didn't even out, it was not able to counter the strength-of-schedule disparities. Accordingly, I wrote a program (This is when my metric grew up and became an algorithm!) that adjusted for the opponent's skill on each play. If the Giants dominated offensively against the Saints, the algorithm would take into account that they ran 62 plays against one of the worst defenses of all time. And with that, I created this blog. Sunday week 1, it begins.

Welcome

Let this be a quick introduction to my NFL blog. My purpose is to give an unbiased and accurate ranking of the NFL teams to assist in future prediction. I am simply a college student (mathematics major) interested in statistics and the NFL who wants to see how GOOD teams ARE, not how WELL they've PERFORMED. You see, contrary to popular belief, there is a hell of a lot of variance in the game of football, and to analyze how GOOD teams ARE, one must separate the skill that a team has demonstrated from the luck that it has received. I wrote an algorithm (which I will discuss more thoroughly soon) to measure the skill-based elements of teams' performance, and this algorithm will be the sole basis for these rankings, which I will post each week. Also expect a light dose of posts in between discussing anything else going on in the NFL that I find interesting. Thanks for reading!