This week, to come to my current Sagarin-style ratings, I took the initial ratings I got from Solver and I “squished” them. That is to say, I divided them by 3 and added back in 40/3. The higher ratings come down, the lower ones move up, and I end up with ratings that are on roughly the same scale as Jeff Sagarin’s own current ratings.
Unbalanced scheduling can make for some odd outcomes in early editions of computer rating systems. Take a look at this week’s projections and see if you can see what I mean.
Let’s list off some of what’s going on here.
Three divisions see three teams each with losing records for the season. If the AFC East were among them, that would be excusable. Instead, with the Buffalo Bills at 8-8, it’s the AFC North, AFC West and NFC South.
On the other hand, all the AFC South teams are listed as finishing with winning records, the NFC North comes incredibly close to the same, and the NFC East has two 8-8 teams on top.
I took Sagarin’s ratings and plugged them into my system to see what I’d get. I ended up with two 16-0 teams, the Patriots and the Rams. Somehow, out of two unlikely scenarios, I
prefer mine.
But that’s not the point, because that’s not how science is done. I think the most important takeaway here is that it’s incredibly early in the season. Last year, the Houston Texans hadn’t won a game by this point in the year. They went on to win their next 9 and finished 11-5.
That being said, I firmly expect that these predictions will change over the coming weeks and shape into something more realistic.
I really wanted to get into some teams’ current strength of schedule, but I felt more urgently that I had to explain what’s going on with the projections. If it still stands out next week, I’ll definitely focus on it then.
Unbalanced scheduling can make for some odd outcomes in early editions of computer rating systems. Take a look at this week’s projections and see if you can see what I mean.
Let’s list off some of what’s going on here.
Three divisions see three teams each with losing records for the season. If the AFC East were among them, that would be excusable. Instead, with the Buffalo Bills at 8-8, it’s the AFC North, AFC West and NFC South.
On the other hand, all the AFC South teams are listed as finishing with winning records, the NFC North comes incredibly close to the same, and the NFC East has two 8-8 teams on top.
I took Sagarin’s ratings and plugged them into my system to see what I’d get. I ended up with two 16-0 teams, the Patriots and the Rams. Somehow, out of two unlikely scenarios, I
prefer mine.
But that’s not the point, because that’s not how science is done. I think the most important takeaway here is that it’s incredibly early in the season. Last year, the Houston Texans hadn’t won a game by this point in the year. They went on to win their next 9 and finished 11-5.
That being said, I firmly expect that these predictions will change over the coming weeks and shape into something more realistic.
I really wanted to get into some teams’ current strength of schedule, but I felt more urgently that I had to explain what’s going on with the projections. If it still stands out next week, I’ll definitely focus on it then.
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