Week Six NFL Ranks

So begins another year of NFL team analysis.

Looking back I'm on my fifth year of tracking NFL teams.  Certainly the process has been refined and made more interesting; but this year I'm keeping it simple.  No really new changes yet, however I am starting to track how often offenses go three and out with a field goal kick.  A sort of squandered opportunity stat. 

It may make it into the analysis if there seems to be some sort of statistical relevance.  We'll see.  So far, after six weeks, I'm not convinced that this will be a statistic that will reveal much about a teams worth.  San Francisco leads the league of squandered opportunities with four.  Seattle, Kansas City and Miami all have three.  The rest of the league comes in with less.  As we can see below, none of these teams are clustered in any particular area.  In fact they are very evenly spaced with Seattle at #6 offense and Kansas City at #29.

OFFENSE RANK	TEAM	SS OF OPPONENT OVERALL DEFENSE
1	DENVER	9
2	GREEN BAY	25
3	PHILADELPHIA	27
4	NEW ORLEANS	8
5	ATLANTA	2
6	SEATTLE	16
7	BUFFALO	7
8	SAN DIEGO	17
9	INDIANAPOLIS	11
10	DETROIT	23
11	CHICAGO	30
12	HOUSTON	4
13	MINNESOTA	12
14	DALLAS	31
15	TENNESSEE	17
16	NEW ENGLAND	20
17	SAN FRANCISCO	14
18	MIAMI	15
19	CINCINNATI	19
20	WASHINGTON	32
21	BALTIMORE	22
22	CAROLINA	26
23	ST LOUIS	1
24	ARIZONA	10
25	PITTSBURGH	6
26	NY JETS	4
27	OAKLAND	27
28	CLEVELAND	13
29	KANSAS CITY	29
30	NY GIANTS	24
31	TAMPA BAY	20
32	JACKSONVILLE	2

I have been paying attention to overall field goal attempts and successes; and I will say that the perceived rule of thumb where bad teams make more field goals is at best statistically irrelevant or more likely patently false.  Good offenses have, I believe, far more field goal attempts and successes than poor offenses.  The old joke in Cleveland is that if you play fantasy football, take the Browns kicker since we're always settling for field goals.  But the reality seems to be that good offenses end up with far more scoring opportunities.  In many games offenses like the typical Browns team just doesn't end up in the opponents territory very often, thus fewer attempts at field goals.  Good offenses just score more often.  Kind of sounds dumb when you say it out loud, but this assumption must be kept in mind when you talk about field goals.

But on with the rankings this week.

RANK W/OUT WEIGHT OFFENSE RANK DEFENSE RANK RECORD SS 1 SEATTLE 2 6 3 5-1-0 31 2 KANSAS CITY 1 29 1 6-0-0 24 3 NEW ORLEANS 3 4 17 5-1-0 20 4 INDIANAPOLIS 5 9 8 4-2-0 10 5 NEW ENGLAND 7 16 10 5-1-0 26 6 DENVER 4 1 31 6-0-0 15 7 CHICAGO 6 11 9 4-2-0 29 8 GREEN BAY 9 2 23 3-2-0 30 9 SAN FRANCISCO 10 17 5 4-2-0 17 10 CINCINNATI 11 19 6 4-2-0 24 11 CAROLINA 8 22 2 2-3-0 32 12 BALTIMORE 14 21 4 3-3-0 20 13 TENNESSEE 13 15 7 3-3-0 11 14 MIAMI 19 18 20 3-2-0 15 15 HOUSTON 17 12 12 2-4-0 2 16 DETROIT 12 10 22 4-2-0 27 17 DALLAS 21 14 19 3-3-0 18 18 PHILADELPHIA 18 3 29 3-3-0 28 19 SAN DIEGO 16 8 25 3-3-0 8 20 ARIZONA 20 24 16 3-3-0 5 21 CLEVELAND 15 28 15 3-3-0 14 22 BUFFALO 25 7 24 2-4-0 22 23 WASHINGTON 28 20 14 1-4-0 22 24 OAKLAND 26 27 13 2-4-0 19 25 ATLANTA 22 5 30 1-4-0 13 26 PITTSBURGH 23 25 18 1-4-0 11 27 NY JETS 24 26 21 3-3-0 9 28 ST LOUIS 27 23 27 3-3-0 1 29 MINNESOTA 29 13 32 1-4-0 6 30 TAMPA BAY 30 31 11 0-5-0 3 31 NY GIANTS 31 30 26 0-6-0 7 32 JACKSONVILLE 32 32 28 0-6-0 4

SS - Strength of Schedule


As always some notes on where the ranks come from.  The full methodology is here.

Each team has an offense and defense ranking calculated by comparing their teams average against the league in that category; and also against the strength of the opponents each week of play.  Each statistic is adjusted in each game by a weighting calculated from the opponents prowess in each specific category.  Categories tracked include; overall record, offensive specific scoring, defense scoring , offense TDs per game, yards compiled rushing and passing, turnovers and penalties.  Stats are compiled and analyzed for both offensive and defensive units.  Sorry no special teams.  (Perhaps next year).

In order to calculate offensive and defensive ranks and overall power rank each statistic must be subjectively rated for importance.  I have found high correlation between TDs scored and successful offenses, so I have given that stat a little more importance.  For the power ranks offensive and defensive ranks are equal and slightly more important than record.  One may argue that record is the ultimate metric of a team, but I will point out that the whole reason for this exercise from the very beginning was to try to look at a team more holistically and not just total yards and record.  Also I wanted to take into account the specific opponents each team plays and how good these teams are in specific categories.  Finally I have attempted to create a method by which I do not choose or determine the weights for statistical adjustment on each game.  All subjective rulings on my part come in at the power ranking alone in the value of each statistic in measuring a teams strength.

As for analysis of the results, well it looks fairly normal for this time of year.  While valuable in its way, the early ranks can and will be effected dramatically by single games.  There is always a little swinging in the next couple of weeks in the ranks that will not be there in the final five weeks.  But for many teams we've seen enough of a sample to make some specific assertions.

First, Denver's defense is almost as bad as their offensive is good.  Not only is the Denver offense best, but it is 20% better than anyone else at this time.  A large margin indeed in my system when typically we find that there is often a cluster of teams at or near the top.  Usually #1 and #2 are within ten percent of each other (except when New England is in a on year).  Conversely Kansas City is a shocking 25% better than the number two defense (Carolina).  Having KC as the number one defense is surprising enough, the absolute dominance of the league so far is doubly so.

So have fun looking through and as always let me know what you think.

Cheers.