2016 NFL Power Rankings Week 3

I made it before midnight!

1. Carolina Panthers

2. Denver Broncos

3. Seattle Seahawks

4. Arizona Cardinals

5. Cincinnati Bengals

6. Kansas City Chiefs

7. New England Patriots

8. Atlanta Falcons

9. Tampa Bay Buccaneers

10. New York Jets

11. Philadelphia Eagles

12. Baltimore Ravens

13. Pittsburgh Steelers

14. Minnesota Vikings

15. New York Giants

16. Buffalo Bills

17. Green Bay Packers

18. Tennessee Titans

19. Miami Dolphins

20. Dallas Cowboys

21. Houston Texans

22. Detroit Lions

23. Oakland Raiders

24. Chicago Bears

25. Cleveland Browns

26. Los Angeles Rams

27. San Diego Chargers

28. Washington Redskins

29. Jacksonville Jaguars

30. New Orleans Saints

31. Indianapolis Colts

32. San Francisco 49ers

2016 NFL Power Rankings Week 2

Here it is, we finally made it. Last season is weighted as 2.8 games (so 1 game in 2015 = .175 games in 2016).

1. Carolina Panthers

14-0 last year, never crack top 5. 1-1 this year, and now they're first by a lot. They killed it on offense against the 49ers, and I guess that'll do it.

2. Arizona Cardinals

Hey it's another 1-1 team that dominated week 2 and was really good last season.

3. Seattle Seahawks

And another! Well, their defense dominated...

4. Denver Broncos

Finally, our top 2-0 team! But they're also a missed field goal away from being yet another 1-1 team that was great last year.

5. Cincinnati Bengals

Holy shit another one, it doesn't stop!

6. Pittsburgh Steelers

Finally, someone with two convincing wins. Well, not actually that convincing, as you can see by me not being convinced.

7. Kansas City Chiefs

Wait, didn't they just get shat on? But their defense played really well, and that makes my algorithm confident that it's actually decent.

8. New England Patriots

Garropallopallo!

Remember when the 2012 49ers were having one of the greatest seasons of all time, and then they found a superstar backup who spectacularly led them to a 42-13 loss to Seattle and then not a superbowl? Yeah, Bill Belichick isn't that fucking stupid.

9. New York Jets

My model is finds exactly zero teams at all convincing from here on out. The Jets are just the best of a mediocre bunch.

10. Tampa Bay Buccaneers

I'm kinda convinced. I don't blame anyone for losing to Arizona, Arizona's fucking good as hell.

11. Atlanta Falcons

I'm actually very convinced by their defense. Convinced that it SUCKS am I right? But on a serious note, it is seriously bad. But they can put up points.

12. Green Bay Packers

Best offensive player in the league.

13. Houston Texans

Whoops, that last line was actually meant for the Texans. JJ Watt is the best offensive player in the league. And it's not close. Also, Aaron "The" Donald is the best defensive player.

14. Tennessee Titans

They're... good? Like actually though, my model thinks they're good this year (but really bad last year, that's why they're in the middle right now. #averages)

15. New York Giants

16. Baltimore Ravens

17. Minnesota Vikings

18. Miami Dolphins

19. Chicago Bears

20. Detroit Lions

21. Buffalo Bills

22. Jacksonville Jaguars

They fucking killed it against the Chargers. Not even joking, they really played ok. That's why they're here and the Chargers are 27th. (For those of you who were too busy reading about quantum bayesianism and might mention the Jaguars' awesome performance this game in casual conversation without knowing the score, it was 38-14. Chargers.)

23. Washington Redskins

24. Philadelphia Eagles

NUMBER ONE IN DVOA WHOOOOOOO! LET'S FUCKING GO AARON SHATS. IT'S ON MOTHERFUCKER. (For those of you who are too busy reading about quantum bayesianism to know Aaron Schatz, he made Football Outsiders. The site I let do all the work for my power rankings last week. I don't actually have beef with him. But it's on.)

25. Los Angeles Rams

The defense is actually really good.

26. Oakland Raiders

The defense is actually really not.

27. San Diego Chargers

28. Dallas Cowboys

Lolz.

29. Cleveland Browns

30. New Orleans Saints

31. Indianapolis Colts

32. San Francisco 49ers

And in last place, the (Colts and) San Francisco 49ers. I wouldn't have it any other way.

2016 NFL Power Rankings Week 1

There's no way I'm gonna finish downloading all of last season's games before week 2 starts Thursday night. So for week 1, just look at the DAVE ratings from Football Outsiders. That's the best you're gonna find out there until I publish the results of my earth shatteringly good model next Tuesday. And believe me, it's gonna be great. Like America. Again. Football.

2016 NFL Power Rankings Preview: More Stats, Better Stats

Switching it up... ON A MONDAY.

These aren't the power rankings. Which you probably could tell based on the conspicuous absence of the numbers 1-32 running down the left hand side of the page. Instead, this is an introduction to the new and improved method I'll be using. Before, I didn't have all the stats. Now, I do. I'll be using play-by-play data for every NFL game (more stats) and using a more robust regression model for handling opposing strength (better stats).

Most importantly though, this blog post represents something bigger than just a new model. It represents me desperately buying as much time as possible before you realize that I started writing this model the Friday after the NFL season started, and that it's taking longer than I expected to handle all of pro-football-reference's bugs in their play-by-play data (They don't give the offensive team for each play, so I have to rely on their expected points column to figure it out, but on kickoffs, they're inconsistent about which team they're showing the expected points for). My timeline is to finish the parsing-out-the-bugs part of the model tonight and then the regression part tomorrow, but I have to do a bunch of testing on last season's data to make sure everything's working right before I can publish, so I won't be hitting the weekly Tuesday deadline that I'd set for myself before the season.

But yes, this means that for every week starting week 2, the rankings will be going up on a Tuesday.