Steelers. The accidental playoff team…

Week 11 Predictions:

All the various official and unofficial power rankings have inspired me to start tracking my own rankings and predicting matchups each week. The column on the far right is based on a weighted average of each teams’ actual win percentage, their pythagorean win percentage, and everyone’s favorite concept, "regression towards the mean" plus an adjustment for home field advantage. Since I started keeping track in week 6, I have correctly picked the winner 63% of the time and Vegas is at 68%, which is pretty close. Unfortunately, in head-to-head disagreements with Vegas I’m 5-9 which is pretty rough.

As with most weeks, power rankings and vegas agree basically across the board. Only differences right now are MIN@DEN and PHI@KAN. My numbers and the power rankings are backing Dobbs and the Vikings, while Vegas goes with the home team Broncos. Maybe the Broncos have started to right the ship, but that MNF win was a weird one and Dobbs has been impressive with Minnesota thus far. Current line is -2.5 Denver, which basically means 50/50 plus home field. To me that feels appropriate, though the power rankings would seem to imply there’s a wider gap between the two teams.

The other disagreement is Chiefs and Eagles (spread is -3 for KC). Another coin toss albeit for very different reasons. My numbers agree with the power rankings that Philly is the slightly better team, but then home field advantage tips the scales in favor of Kansas City aligning me with Vegas. Either way, should obviously be a good one.

My numbers also have Green Bay as favored vs the Chargers, at odds with both Vegas line and the power rankings. Not feeling good about that one.

For anyone that is interested here is the results from my algorithms with explanations of what they mean below.

PR_T is the ranking number here. It is an average of RP, RD, and RT (all using standard deviation in an attempt to give them equal weight), and then add in the WAE.

RP is a mean average of how many points the team scores against the average opponents’ scores. Losing by 3 points to a team that usually wins by 10 nets 7 points to the total (before dividing by games played). Beating a team by 3 points that usually loses by 7 nets -4 to the total (before dividing by games played).

RD is very similar to RP except it is what percentage of the score was by the team. A team that beat another by 30-20 had 60% of the score. This again is compared to the opponent’s opponents average. The teams score is the mean average of that.

RP favors offense a bit where RD favors defense a bit.

RT is one that I started tracking a few year ago. It is like RP and RD, but instead of using points it uses time. The winning team gains the seconds remaining in regulation after the winning score and the losing team gets that time subtracted. It is also compared against the opponent’s opponents average and is presented in standard deviation from the mean form. The value here is divided by 36 to make it more like a percentage of a game as opposed to raw seconds. This has been pretty darn good as a power ranking method.

WAE is “Wins Above/Against Expectation”. This uses the strength of schedule and win% to give a rough estimate on how many wins the team is above or below what an average team would have with the schedule that has been played. An average team with a .500 schedule would expect to be .500. An average team with a .600 schedule would expect to be .400. If you multiply the WAE by how many games have been played, it shows how many games the team won or lost compared to what an average team would be expected to do.

Bounce (formerly “Over”) is something else that I’m monitoring. I created it last year specifically because the of the Vikings season. This column is a measurement of how teams are performing against the stats. I’m still trying to work my head around it. A zero here does not mean the team is playing exactly as the stats I made up suggest. This is not completely worked out.

Regardless, the lower the number in the Bounce column is the more a team is losing more than it probably should. The higher the number, the more the team is winning when it probably should lose. For reference, last year after week 16 (last I ran the numbers that season), the Vikings were 5.070 in this column. The next highest was the Colts at 2.399. The lowest was the 49ers at -2.887.

Below is the rated performance of each team this week using mostly the same method. It doesn’t add the WAE.

I’m just happy to not be the worst :) having Kyler back was so nice, looking forward to the rest of the season, even if we have some rough games coming up. Most likely not going to win most of them, but they should be fun to watch now.

Damn Top 3 in the league and we’re a week out from Thanksgiving. Am I dreaming?

Chiefs-Eagles Monday Night Football for the Super Bowl of being ranked #1 on the week 11 Power Rankings

Got bumped up two spots during our bye week, lol.

Maybe losing on the road to the two teams that were in the Super Bowl and on the road vs a divisional opponent won’t be looked at as being horrible losses now that pretty much every bad team has multiple losses to much worse competition.

Holy shit we’re top ten!

There are obvious pitfalls, such as the prospect of playing without Tua Tagovailoa or Tyreek Hill should either be injured

Is this weird to write about people like this everyone, or is it just me? Like I get the Tua injury history aspect of it but Tyreek has never missed a game as a Dolphin, like it just seems kinda callous to be like; “Well you’re doing well, but if your two most important players got hurt, hoo boy that would stink. Wouldn’t it?”

Especially considering that it’s from the NFL’s rankings compared to a different outlet

Buffalo at 15 is moronic.

The Steelers being ahead of us in a lot of these is weird to me. Do people forget that we wiped the floor with them head to head while missing about a third of our starting lineup?

Going up two by the doing nothing, I love it!

Houston at 12 is being undervalued at this point. They are playing better than that

If you told me in September that I would be saying we’re ranked too low in November, I would call you a lunatic trying to hurt me.

We’re ranked too low!

Steelers still second in the division. Steelers still lowest in the rankings. Maybe after beating the browns again they’ll be third or something.