Acme Packing Company
Hey, there’s football! And for your old-timey power rankings, there are plenty of options to choose from. Everyone has a Power Ranking. People LOVE Power Rankings! But over here in analytical nerd land we’re trying something a little different. This is the futuristic cyber version of power rankings, and we’re using our best cyber technology to generate cyberly objective power rankings. Power rankings are all about arguing about why they’re wrong, and it’s one thing to be subjectively wrong like everyone else, but it’s quite another to be objectively wrong. And so, in the spirit of being objectively wrong we have created C.A.L.C.U.L.A.T.O.R., the Comprehensive Analysis of League Competition Using Latest Analytics To Organize Rankings.
What goes into Calculator? Basically, every advanced stat I have available, in addition to data based on net point differential, and the current Super Bowl odds from our friends at FanDuel. I run some formulas to smooth everything out, create a unified scale, and here we go! You can see last year’s rankings week by week here. As the season has not started yet, this initial version of Calculator uses a combination of the final statistics from last year and projections for this year.
To kick off the season, the Baltimore Ravens lead the way, while the Panthers are bringing up the rear — although they’re trending the right way, and if I had to put some money on the worst team in the league, give me the Saints all day.
1. Baltimore Ravens: CALCULATOR Score: 110.84, Change from last season, -15.02 – Up at the top of the rankings you’re going to see almost every team sliding from last year’s final rankings, but don’t read too much into it. The primary reason for this is that if you were a Super Bowl contender last season, your odds of winning increased as the season went on, and lesser teams were eliminated from contention, but it’s also an artifact of projection systems like DVOA not predicting outliers. The Ravens have an outstanding team, great coaching, a great quarterback, Derrick Henry, and they play in a division with the Browns and the Aaron Rodgers Steelers. They also have the Jets, Vikings, Pats, and Dolphins. What’s not to like?
2. Philadelphia Eagles: 103.78, -8.35 – The reigning champs come in as the best NFC team, and deservedly so, as the Eagles are loaded with talent on all sides of the ball. That said, they potentially have some depth issues in the pass rush, and as their passing attack was merely average last season, some of the progression systems see them as coming back to earth a bit. FTN in particular projects them for fourth in the NFC in DVOA, still very good, but hardly prohibitive favorites. All of that, plus a fairly difficult schedule outside of the division (KC/LAR/DEN/GB/DET/LAC/BUF), may make it difficult to repeat their 14-win season from a year ago.
3. Buffalo Bills: 103.25, -9.42 – The Bills are Super Bowl favorites behind only Baltimore, and...
