'Power' Rankings. Still sleeping on us

94Smith

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Way too much ranking based on the last year's result. Ludicrous in a league where so much changes in the off season.

KC is not number one this season. NO is by far the team that is playing the best right now. Followed by TB. Followed by the Vikes. Of course things can change quickly, but you should rank based on this season not based on some predetermined ideas based on last season.
Heaven forbid they base their rankings on having a top 5 defense and perhaps one of the greatest QBs of all time with 3 Super Bowl rings. Better to place a team higher that was 9-8 last year and beat the hapless panthers

The NFL does not change that much . Yes there are 2 or three new teams in the playoffs in each division each year , but the other 4 or 5 will be the same
 

DarkVictory23

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So, I'm a numbers nerd and prefer Power Rankings that are a little bit more grounded in performance than these popularity contests done by pundits... so I created my own. (Yes, I am fun at parties. I swear.)

My system includes only 3 inputs, ranked equally: Current standing, offensive efficiency, and defensive efficiency. (My complete methodology is explained below for anyone who cares about that sort of thing.)

A few things to note: In the first weeks of the season, it pro-rates 2023 performance, diminishing its influence through week 4. I think that's important to note because as you'll see... the Seahawks have jumped big.

Also, the top 3 teams going into the season based on this formula (Baltimore, San Francisco, and Kansas City) have all fallen out of the top 5. This is with their 2023 numbers propping them up, too. You can see the complete ranking below (with my commentary for the top 10 plus some select others).

Because of this, yeah, at this point, I think any pundit putting the Seahawks below 16 are full of it.

Power Rankings
Week 2

1. New Orleans Saints:
The Saints are the number one ranked offense, number one ranked defense, and also undefeated. The pundits putting them below #1 aren't doing 'Power Rankings' they are doing their version of hedging their bets because they are afraid of looking stupid by saying KC has fallen off.
2. Buffalo Bills: Top 5 offense and top 10 defensive ranking, and they were already a top 5 team coming into the season.
3. Minnesota Vikings: Despite GEQBUS's nearing iconic status, the Vikings aren't actually rated that highly as an offense, their defense jumped into the top 10 after Week 1 and are sitting top 5 right now.
4. Los Angeles Chargers: I hate Harbaugh, so this pains me but--this isn't a subjective list so I have to do it. Right now, these guys have the #2 ranked defense.
5. Dallas Cowboys: Despite the thrashing they got from New Orleans, Dallas is still sitting near the top 5 in both offensive and defensive efficiency at this stage. They're probably going to be fine... until they get to playoffs and Dak disappears again.
6. San Francisco 49ers: Niners still have a highly ranked offense, but their defense is showing cracks. Add on their injury woes, and I wouldn't be shocked to see them drop going forward.
7. Kansas City Chiefs: The champs might be in some trouble. Despite being undefeated, the Chiefs fell out of the top 5 mostly due to their defense, which slipped out of the top 5 after week 1 and out of the top 10 in week 2. Neither of the teams they beat are highly rated as offenses, either now or last year. KC's offense is still sitting at roughly the same spot as last year, which probably won't be good enough without that defense.
8. Seattle Seahawks: Yes, the Seahawks should be considered a top 10 team right now! Our defense has had the single biggest jump of any unit (and remember, this is STILL considering 2023's dismal performance, that's how much we've improved). Now, we do need to keep in mind who we have played... Denver is terrible. New England, however, isn't.
9. Pittsburgh Steelers: Pittsburgh's offensive rank has gone from absolutely putrid to just bad behind the very whelming performance of Justin Fields. However, that combined with Pittsburgh's already good defense from last year (plus currently being 2-0) was able to put them into the top 10.
10. Tampa Bay Buccaneers: Tampa Bay was very average in both offense and defense last year and rode that to a playoff berth. So far, they've jumped up in offense (slipped a little defensively) which was enough to move them into the top 10.
11. Arizona Cardinals: Arizona has the number 2 ranked offense behind the Saints... and are currently the #30 ranked defense.
12. Miami Dolphins: Our next opponent... so even before Tua went out, their offense was showing slippage. Even with the majority of the numbers being based on last year in week 1, their offense dropped out of the top 10 immediately and has slipped into 'average' territory. I expect it to falter even further with their backup QB taking over. Their defense is still thoroughly average, but the Seahawks already took on a top 10 defense in New England and still came away with a win on the road. Nothing is guaranteed in the NFL, but...
13. Detroit Lions
14. Philadelphia Eagles
15. New England Patriots:
The team we just beat. Yeah, they are ranked in the top half. Still a very lowly ranked offense but no longer worst in the league... and also a top 10 defense. That was a quality win.
16. Houston Texans
17. Chicago Bears
18. Cleveland Browns
19. Cincinnati Bengals
20. Washington Commanders
21. Baltimore Ravens:
Yes, the Ravens are ranked 21st. Because they are 0-2. Seriously pundits, they've gone 0-2 and not looked good doing it. Now, if I remove consideration of the record from the formula (which makes it less of a Power Ranking and more of a 'who's good' ranking), Baltimore would be ranked 16th, but considering they were #1 coming into the season, it's still a crazy drop. Their defense is the biggest drop of any unit in the league, going from the #2 ranked defense coming into the season to the 21st ranked now and this is WITH 2023 results still factored in. Mike Macdonald's departure (as well as some of the talent on that side of the ball) may very well have doomed their season early. (Their offense has fallen out of the top 10 as well).
22. Green Bay Packers
23. Atlanta Falcons
24. Tennessee Titans
25. Las Vegas Raiders
26. Jacksonville Jaguars
27. New York Jets
28. Los Angeles Rams:
Rams are in a bad spot right now and probably going to get worse. Despite the loss of Aaron Donald, their biggest drop has been on the offensive side of the ball and losing Kupp isn't going to help.
29. New York Giants
30. Indianapolis Colts
31. Denver Broncos:
Our first victory and, yeah, no, this is probably not going to look better when the season goes on. Denver came in as one of the worst projected teams and, no, paying a billion dollars to the Steelers backup QB apparently wasn't enough to fix them. I don't expect Denver to get better until their highest paid player is actually on their team.
32. Carolina Panthers: Is there really any question here? Commanders were the worst ranked team coming into the season, but Carolina was right there. They have the worst offense and the second to worst defense in the league. Will starting Andy Dalton be enough to fix their problems? We'll see.


Methodology: Each ranking is based on standing (in particular, the teams position in a 'if the playoffs started today' situation), offensive efficiency (average points scored per drive as well as rate of drives which end in a score), and defensive efficiency (average points surrendered per drive as well as rate of opposing teams scoring). Each metric counts for one third of the score.
Offensive and Defensive efficiency are pro-rated against 2023 Offensive and Defensive efficiency metrics. In week 2, 2023 performance counts for about half for these metrics. When I say the Seahawks have the #9 ranked defense, for example, that is not a 2024 only number. If we only considered 2024, they'd be about #7 or so. This means these numbers aren't being as influenced by the small number of games we have to this point, so when a team drops from, say, #1 to #21 *cough*Baltimore*cough*, it's actually a CONSERVATIVE drop.
 

Ad Hawk

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That is an interesting ranking system. It will be fun to follow the season and compare, checking for improvement or fall-off for some of the notable teams at the top of yours vs. others' lists.
 

Lagartixa

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NFL.com's current ratings are weird af. They have the 1-1 49ers at #2, the 1-1 Lions at #5 and the 0-2 Ravens at #9
The 2-0 Buccaneers at #12 and us at 2-0 way down at 19. Almost no sense to it, just popularity.

I don't see anything wrong with those rankings, and I don't think it's "just popularity." Power rankings are an attempt to organize how good people think different teams are, taking into account the fact that we know more about the teams than just their records in the first two games of the season. If you want perfect consistency with season-to-date W-L records, then just rank by that.

In the 2022 season, the 49ers lost their season opener to the Bears. In that situation, it seems like it would have been more than reasonable to put the 0-1 49ers ahead of the 1-0 Bears. By the way, when the season ended, the 49ers were 13-4 and the Bears 3-14.

"Power rankings" are just about all made-up nonsense, but a few people have tried to make some more-objective rankings of teams based on things other than raw W-L record, and the 49ers-Bears example shows that it makes sense to talk about how good we think teams are without going 100% Big Tuna ("you are what your record says you are").

Back in the aughts, Baseball Prospectus (or somebody) had a thing that might not have been called a "power ranking," but it based them on how the teams were performing on the field and not their season-to-date W-L records.

One thing they used was expected wins based on runs scored and runs allowed ("first-order wins") via formulas like Bill James's "Pythagorean" estimate of expected wins given runs scored and runs allowed and the modifications of it by Clay Davenport (the "Pythagenport" formula) and another one developed by some Patriots fan (and hence known as "Pythagenpat") that Davenport ended up agreeing was better.

The thing is that just like there's luck involved in W-L records, there's also some luck involved in run scoring and run prevention. To reduce the effects of that luck on BP's rankings (which I think they called something like "adjusted standings"), they took some of the formulas to predict run scoring based on stats measuring what players were doing individually (hits, walks, outs, extra bases, stolen bases, fielding balls in one's area of responsibility and getting them where they needed to go, pitcher strikeouts, etc.) and plugged those into Pythagenport or Pythagenpat to get "second-order wins."

But wait... at any point in the season, some teams will have had schedule luck in facing weaker opponents (think of a strong team in a weak division) and some have had bad schedule luck in facing stronger opponents. So the folks at BP adjusted the components of second-order wins for the quality of the offenses and run-prevention units (defenses and pitching) each team had faced, yielding "third-order wins."

Does that seem like a lot of nonsense to you? Does it seem less so when you learn that "second-order and third-order wins" are better predictors of future team winning percentages than "first-order wins" and especially actual season-to-date winning percentages?

EDITED to add: @DarkVictory23's methodology described above is based on the same kind of thinking as BP's "adjusted standings."
 
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keasley45

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I don't see anything wrong with those rankings, and I don't think it's "just popularity." Power rankings are an attempt to organize how good people think different teams are, taking into account the fact that we know more about the teams than just their records in the first two games of the season. If you want perfect consistency with season-to-date W-L records, then just rank by that.

In the 2022 season, the 49ers lost their season opener to the Bears. In that situation, it seems like it would have been more than reasonable to put the 0-1 49ers ahead of the 1-0 Bears. By the way, when the season ended, the 49ers were 13-4 and the Bears 3-14.

"Power rankings" are just about all made-up nonsense, but a few people have tried to make some more-objective rankings of teams based on things other than raw W-L record, and the 49ers-Bears example shows that it makes sense to talk about how good we think teams are without going 100% Big Tuna ("you are what your record says you are").

Back in the aughts, Baseball Prospectus (or somebody) had a thing that might not have been called a "power ranking," but it based them on how the teams were performing on the field and not their season-to-date W-L records.

One thing they used was expected wins based on runs scored and runs allowed ("first-order wins") via formulas like Bill James's "Pythagorean" estimate of expected wins given runs scored and runs allowed and the modifications of it by Clay Davenport (the "Pythagenport" formula) and another one developed by some Patriots fan (and hence known as "Pythagenpat") that Davenport ended up agreeing was better.

The thing is that just like there's luck involved in W-L records, there's also some luck involved in run scoring and run prevention. To reduce the effects of that luck on BP's rankings (which I think they called something like "adjusted standings"), they took some of the formulas to predict run scoring based on stats measuring what players were doing individually (hits, walks, outs, extra bases, stolen bases, fielding balls in one's area of responsibility and getting them where they needed to go, pitcher strikeouts, etc.) and plugged those into Pythagenport or Pythagenpat to get "second-order wins."

But wait... at any point in the season, some teams will have had schedule luck in facing weaker opponents (think of a strong team in a weak division) and some have had bad schedule luck in facing stronger opponents. So the folks at BP adjusted the components of second-order wins for the quality of the offenses and run-prevention units (defenses and pitching) each team had faced, yielding "third-order wins."

Does that seem like a lot of nonsense to you? Does it seem less so when you learn that "second-order and third-order wins" are better predictors of future team winning percentages than "first-order wins" and especially actual season-to-date winning percentages?

EDITED to add: @DarkVictory23's methodology described above is based on the same kind of thinking as BP's "adjusted standings."

If its mostly based on how good rankers THINK a team MIGHT be based on past performance or acquisition of new talent, it should be called a power projection. A power ranking sounds like simething that shoukd be based on the merit of what youve done. Sure, strength of schedule and opponents played should factor in. And a logical assessment of overall proven team talent is also important. But im sorry, much of this smacks of pure popularity and forcasting success of certain teams based on popular opinion and how much 'splash' they made in the offseason.
The jets on yahoo for example. They've done little to impress. Sure, they have AR, but its obvious its going to take more than him to turn things around and their coach is on the hot seat. Theyre 100% being granted their spot based on 3 players. But they are still in the top 10, gaining position while we lose a spot after a cross country, 10am start with a backup RB, going against a top tier defense, with a qb who is leading the league or near tops in a few statistical cstegories.
( i actually agree with yahoos rankings fir the most part). NFL.COM is pure power popularity and projection.
 

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