Blind Power Rankings: Week 8 and Average Margin of Victory

Another week of Vikings football evidently means another week of becoming vaguely interested in other teams. The more we learn about other teams, the more we can get an accurate read on what could be happening and what might be winning games. We also get to shed some light on questions (although not really answer) like: "Are the Kansas City Chiefs for real?" "Could we have seen Denver's collapse against Indianapolis?" "Is Carolina actually better than their record?" and more.

The Week 8 rankings are below. You can find the explanation of the rankings here.

First, the rankings without a factored recency bias:

Again, I prefer the efficiency ranks. So that means to me, the Carolina Panthers are closer to second than they are tenth and the Baltimore Ravens are loser to 29 than 21. There doesn't seem to be a lot of shakeup; the Chiefs moved down four with a middling performance against a bad Texans team but the Broncos largely stayed put because the Colts were a high-ranking team as well.

The Vikings took a slide, but the most interesting teams at the moment are the teams with the largest splits between wins and efficiency: the Carolina Panthers (ranked second in efficiency, 24th in wins), the San Diego Chargers (23/11), the Miami Dolphins (27/13), the Philadelphia Eagles (11/23), the Washington Redskins (15/26), the Baltimore Ravens (29/19) and the New York Jets (25/15).

I suspect that the Panthers, Ravens and Jets can explain their discrepancy largely due to coaching while the Eagles can probably point to an unsustainably high turnover rate. The other explanations might have to do with coaching, special teams or "luck".

Now for the recency-weighted ("What Have You Done For Me Lately?") Rankings:

One more thing that would be fun to add, which I've stolen from Football Perspective's Game Scripts concept is the average margin of victory throughout the game. More specifically, we know that if a team is winning by 30 points for three quarters of a game and then gives up garbage time touchdowns to bring the score within 9 points, that the "true" quality of the game is not measured by point differential.

Instead, using the point differential for each individual second in the game and averaging it out might allow us to use a popular piece of data (points) while providing for significantly more points of data with which to draw conclusions. If a team has a last-second come-from-behind victory, they may have a negative average margin of victory, which would best encapsulate the strength of that team's play over the course of the game and do a better job predicting future quality.

We can also adjust these for strength of schedule, which is what I've done below. If you like this measure, let me know!

So yea, I guess the Jaguars are really bad.

Picks against the spread

Efficiency:

Carolina over TAMPA BAY (+7)
Dallas over DETROIT (-3)
KANSAS CITY (-7.5) over Cleveland
NEW ENGLAND (-7) over Miami
Buffalo over NEW ORLEANS (-12)
PHILADELPHIA (-7) over New York Giants
San Francisco over JACKSONVILLE (+17)
CINCINNATI (-7) over New York Jets
OAKLAND (+3) over Pittsburgh
Washington over DENVER (-14)
ARIZONA (-2.5) over Atlanta
Green Bay over MINNESOTA (-9.5)
Seattle over ST. LOUIS (-2)

Efficiency (WHYD4ML):

Carolina over TAMPA BAY (+7)
Dallas over DETROIT (-3)
KANSAS CITY (-7.5) over Cleveland
Miami over NEW ENGLAND (-7)
Buffalo over NEW ORLEANS (-12)
PHILADELPHIA (-7) over New York Giants
San Francisco over JACKSONVILLE (+17)
CINCINNATI (-7) over New York Jets
OAKLAND (+3) over Pittsburgh
Washington over DENVER (-14)
ARIZONA (-2.5) over Atlanta
Green Bay over MINNESOTA (-9.5)
Seattle over ST. LOUIS (-2)

Point Differential:

Carolina over TAMPA BAY (+7)
Dallas over DETROIT (-3)
KANSAS CITY (-7.5) over Cleveland
NEW ENGLAND (-7) over Miami
NEW ORLEANS (-12) over Buffalo
PHILADELPHIA (-7) over New York Giants
San Francisco over JACKSONVILLE (+17)
CINCINNATI (-7) over New York Jets
OAKLAND (+3) over Pittsburgh
DENVER (-14) over Washington
ARIZONA (-2.5) over Atlanta
Green Bay over MINNESOTA (-9.5)
Seattle over ST. LOUIS (-2)

Point Differential (WHYD4ML):

Carolina over TAMPA BAY (+7)
Dallas over DETROIT (-3)
KANSAS CITY (-7.5) over Cleveland
NEW ENGLAND (-7) over Miami
NEW ORLEANS (-12) over Buffalo
PHILADELPHIA (-7) over New York Giants
San Francisco over JACKSONVILLE (+17)
CINCINNATI (-7) over New York Jets
OAKLAND (+3) over Pittsburgh
DENVER (-14) over Washington
ARIZONA (-2.5) over Atlanta
Green Bay over MINNESOTA (-9.5)
Seattle over ST. LOUIS (-2)

Records:

Efficiency: 9-20
Efficiency (WHYD4ML): 13-16
Point Diff: 11-18
Point Diff (WHYD4ML): 14-15

Oof. That'll be hard to bounce back from. Still, it's good to look at and see what went wrong.