Pythagorean Standings, Not Adjusted for Strength of Schedule | Page 2

nickbradley · 2012-10-08T14:28:05-07:00

Here's a look at NFL Pythagorean Win Expectation Standings. This is probably the closest you can get to an objective power ranking. All you would have to do is normalize the Pythagorean scores for opponents' Pythagorean (i.e. strength of schedule). If you wanted to do that: Football outsiders (will be updated tomorrow) has the 49ers with the 9th toughest schedule through the first 4 weeks. ATL was 26th, Chicago 19th, Baltimore 14th, Minnesota 20th. We're basically in a three-way tie for the best team in the NFL with the Texans and Bears. Contrary to media fawning over the Atlanta Falcons, they are * not as good as their record...they should have two losses. Chicago no-showed to a rivalry game with the Packers...oops. This matches with my preseason expectations going into the season: NFC championship game against the Bears, Super Bowl vs. the Texans. Team /Pythagorean/ W Pct% Houston Texans 0.872350672 1 San Francisco 49ers 0.865194284 0.8 Chicago Bears 0.85280861 0.8 Atlanta Falcons 0.750472203 1 Minnesota Vikings 0.729238804 0.8 Baltimore Ravens 0.710535953 0.8 New England Patriots 0.710369985 0.6 New York Giants 0.678090489 0.6 Seattle Seahawks 0.619604382 0.6 San Diego Chargers 0.613697583 0.6 Arizona Cardinals 0.608785197 0.8 Denver Broncos 0.59885845 0.4 Pittsburgh Steelers 0.526024611 0.5 St. Louis Rams 0.512471558 0.6 Green Bay Packers 0.505313737 0.4 Miami Dolphins 0.5 0.4 Cincinnati Bengals 0.481345702 0.6 Washington Redskins 0.471123995 0.4 New Orleans Saints 0.447935231 0.2 Tampa Bay Buccaneers 0.438608227 0.25 Detroit Lions 0.422983673 0.25 Indianapolis Colts 0.389503089 0.5 Philadelphia Eagles 0.376359114 0.6 New York Jets 0.331003477 0.5 Dallas Cowboys 0.327835659 0.5 Carolina Panthers 0.325971019 0.2 Cleveland Browns 0.314222935 0 Buffalo Bills 0.279382936 0.4 Kansas City Chiefs 0.263617531 0.2 Oakland Raiders 0.185732412 0.25 Tennessee Titans 0.153274034 0.2 Jacksonville Jaguars 0.143773795 0.2

Oct 8, 2012 at 4:02 PM

#16

nickbradley
Member
Posts: 3,755

Pythagorean trends are very powerful. If you overperform your Pythagorean, you underperform it the next year, and vice Versa.

The biggest overperformer past year was the packers.

underperformers? Vikings and Dolphins. MIN should have went 6-10 last year. Theyve improved, and will now (on average) win 2 or 3 more games than they should in 2012. So they'll go 10-6 or something like that

Oct 8, 2012 at 4:28 PM

#17

nickbradley
Member
Posts: 3,755

Forgot to say that the chiefs were the biggest overperformer if you look at the ratio of wins to Pythagorean.

They should have went 3-13 last year. They will this year.

Oct 8, 2012 at 10:00 PM

#18

izrath
Veteran
Posts: 67

Neat stat, you going to do this each week or is there a column somewhere that does this weekly?

Oct 9, 2012 at 6:55 AM

#19

nickbradley
Member
Posts: 3,755

Originally posted by izrath:
Neat stat, you going to do this each week or is there a column somewhere that does this weekly?

I could, sure.

Oct 9, 2012 at 10:42 PM

#20

izrath
Veteran
Posts: 67

Originally posted by nickbradley:
I could, sure.

Thread, watched.

Oct 9, 2012 at 11:08 PM

#21

kray28
Veteran
Posts: 12,974

Originally posted by nickbradley:
Pythagorean is used in Baseball. Here's the formula for the NFL - its simple:

[points scored]^2.37 / ([points scored]^2.37 + [points allowed]^2.37])

If it's that simple, I don't think it's telling me much at all.

Oct 9, 2012 at 11:12 PM

#22

kray28
Veteran
Posts: 12,974

How, for instance, does this statistic account for running up the score?

Oct 9, 2012 at 11:17 PM

#23

kray28
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Posts: 12,974

Or let's say we played a team with a really good field goal kicker....and eventhough the defense forced a fourth down, the kicker was able to nail some longshot FGs. Or what if our DBs got hit with some bad PI penalties that put the defense into a goalline situation and they gave up some points...

Oct 10, 2012 at 12:28 AM

#24

WhoGotItBetterThenUs
Member
Posts: 127

Originally posted by nickbradley:

Originally posted by izrath:
Neat stat, you going to do this each week or is there a column somewhere that does this weekly?

I could, sure.

I love it. What I do is I take the median between Pythagorean and Jeff Sagarin computer ratings to get a true gauge of power rankings.

http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/sports/sagarin.htm