| Half of all of the teams had no change this week and ten teams ended up with one more or one less projected win. Six teams had more significant changes, distributed across a gain or loss of 2, 3, or 4 wins. The records for those teams are highlighted, with teams that lost wins in yellow, and those that gained in green. Dallas's loss cost them four games in this projection, and if Houston had not won they would be down four wins, Tampa Bay up seven, and Dallas down six. Chicago would have gained two wins from the Texans loss, and Washington and the Giants would have lost two wins. But none of that happened, because the Texans defeated Tampa Bay, as predicted. The changes this week weren't nearly as drastic as last week. There were no 14 game drops, like Miami saw, or 9 game gains, like the Jets had. I suppose it is related to how well my calculation predicted wins this week too. Last week, it was right 11 times, and this week, 13. |
|
|
Tuesday, September 29, 2015
Going for Two: Week Three Projections
Monday, September 28, 2015
Going for Two: Week Three in the Groove
The Giants got their first win, as predicted, on Thursday, and my early Sunday game accuracy was pretty damn good, with only 3 of 10 wrong. Then Arizona blew out San Francisco, Buffalo blew out Miami, and Seattle shut out Chicago. Maybe Detroit should have won last night, but they didn't, and that brought my accuracy up to 80%. With 2 minutes left to go in the Green Bay, Kansas City game, the Packers are up by 24 points.
Now, I was happy to see my old boyfriend execute a couple successful drives, complete with a touchdown pass, but this game is going to end much like the first Super Bowl. 13 out of 16 correct picks, baby.
Now, I was happy to see my old boyfriend execute a couple successful drives, complete with a touchdown pass, but this game is going to end much like the first Super Bowl. 13 out of 16 correct picks, baby.
Monday, September 21, 2015
Going for Two: Week Two Update
Stick a fork in the Colts, they're done. I've never seen so many turnovers outside of a bakery.
I mean really, what the hell. I feel bad for the poor people that got Andrew Luck on their fantasy team. On the other hand, anyone with the Jets defense probably did well.
Indianapolis's loss drags my Gut picks down to 50%, which was the same accuracy as the predictions from Football Locks. My calculation, on the other hand, managed 69%, or 11 correct predictions, and still couldn't see the Jacksonville, Oakland, or Tampa Bay wins coming.
I've started a new spreadsheet this week that tracks what the season will look like after Week 17 based on the results this week and my calculation. These numbers bounce around a lot, and it's cool to see how they change based on each win or loss. For instance, if the Colts had won this game, they would be projected to go 11&5 and the Jets 9&7. As it is, however, the Jets are projected to go 14&2 and the Colts 8&8, and with what I saw tonight, that doesn't seem too unrealistic.
Below are the projected total wins based on my calculation at the beginning of the season, after Week 1, and after Week 2. At this point, Denver will defeat the Jets to go to the Super Bowl where they will defeat either Atlanta or Green Bay.
I mean really, what the hell. I feel bad for the poor people that got Andrew Luck on their fantasy team. On the other hand, anyone with the Jets defense probably did well.
Indianapolis's loss drags my Gut picks down to 50%, which was the same accuracy as the predictions from Football Locks. My calculation, on the other hand, managed 69%, or 11 correct predictions, and still couldn't see the Jacksonville, Oakland, or Tampa Bay wins coming.
I've started a new spreadsheet this week that tracks what the season will look like after Week 17 based on the results this week and my calculation. These numbers bounce around a lot, and it's cool to see how they change based on each win or loss. For instance, if the Colts had won this game, they would be projected to go 11&5 and the Jets 9&7. As it is, however, the Jets are projected to go 14&2 and the Colts 8&8, and with what I saw tonight, that doesn't seem too unrealistic.
Below are the projected total wins based on my calculation at the beginning of the season, after Week 1, and after Week 2. At this point, Denver will defeat the Jets to go to the Super Bowl where they will defeat either Atlanta or Green Bay.
|
|
Sunday, September 20, 2015
Going for Two: Week Two Bizarro World
Welcome to the end of Week Two, the first week where I picked against my calculation, which wasn't a very good idea. My pick for Thursday went against my calculation, so when I got that one wrong, it was a point in favor of the calculation. The early games were mediocre for my picks, but the calculation correctly predicted 8 of those 10 winners. I was sitting pretty because my remaining picks aligned with the calculation.
Well, Bizarro World started with the early games when Tampa Bay defeated New Orleans. I didn't think much of it, because New Orleans isn't ranked very high. But then my phone was showing that Jacksonville (#28) and Oakland (#31) were doing pretty well against Miami (#16, but projected to go 15&1) and Baltimore (#6). I wasn't very worried though. Well, maybe Jacksonville would win, but clearly, Baltimore wouldn't lose to the Raiders, but they did. At the very least, Dallas (#5) defeated Philadelphia (#10), as predicted. That took my picks to 50% and my calculation to 71%.
For the past couple hours, I've been sitting and watching the Seahawks (#1) at the Packers (#2). Now, since Seattle lost last week and the Packers didn't, the calculation predicted Packers, which is good because I'm not going to pick against my team. Now, I've made my peace with Seattle, mainly because of the sensation around Richard Sherman and then Marshawn Lynch in 2014, but I know that many have not, including the players. There was one Seattle player ejected for grabbing and grabbing facemask, and now they're desperately trying to get 10 points until... FUMBLE! Green Bay is 2&0. Happy birthday to me!
Well, Bizarro World started with the early games when Tampa Bay defeated New Orleans. I didn't think much of it, because New Orleans isn't ranked very high. But then my phone was showing that Jacksonville (#28) and Oakland (#31) were doing pretty well against Miami (#16, but projected to go 15&1) and Baltimore (#6). I wasn't very worried though. Well, maybe Jacksonville would win, but clearly, Baltimore wouldn't lose to the Raiders, but they did. At the very least, Dallas (#5) defeated Philadelphia (#10), as predicted. That took my picks to 50% and my calculation to 71%.
For the past couple hours, I've been sitting and watching the Seahawks (#1) at the Packers (#2). Now, since Seattle lost last week and the Packers didn't, the calculation predicted Packers, which is good because I'm not going to pick against my team. Now, I've made my peace with Seattle, mainly because of the sensation around Richard Sherman and then Marshawn Lynch in 2014, but I know that many have not, including the players. There was one Seattle player ejected for grabbing and grabbing facemask, and now they're desperately trying to get 10 points until... FUMBLE! Green Bay is 2&0. Happy birthday to me!
Monday, September 14, 2015
Going for Two: Week One Wrap Up
I scared my poor cat by yelling at the TV during the Philly loss to Atlanta. My friend's boyfriend, DeMarco Murray, got two touchdowns, but a penalty and a missed field goal made it that much harder for the Eagles to overcome their 2-point deficit. They held Atlanta to 3 and out, and hope was in the air, but an interception sealed the deal. I'm 10 for 15 right now.
I won't be awake for the end of the Minnesota San Francisco game, but from the first possession, I predict that I'll wake up without another correct pick. The 49ers took a page out of the Ravens playbook and donned black uniforms for tonight. The uniforms are so black that they're blue, and Kaopectate's arm tattoos look even stranger. They not only marched down the field, but Kaepernick is looking like a real quarterback. Sure, that blocked field goal was exciting, but Minnesota couldn't put any points on the board.
Detroit lost to San Diego, and maybe Minnesota will lose to San Francisco. In the other game on the West Coast, Cincinnati defeated Oakland, but my cat could defeat Oakland.
----- an hour passes -----
There is no score yet, despite all of the cray back and forth. The Santa Clara 49ers made some really good plays. I just want someone to score. Please.
I won't be awake for the end of the Minnesota San Francisco game, but from the first possession, I predict that I'll wake up without another correct pick. The 49ers took a page out of the Ravens playbook and donned black uniforms for tonight. The uniforms are so black that they're blue, and Kaopectate's arm tattoos look even stranger. They not only marched down the field, but Kaepernick is looking like a real quarterback. Sure, that blocked field goal was exciting, but Minnesota couldn't put any points on the board.
Detroit lost to San Diego, and maybe Minnesota will lose to San Francisco. In the other game on the West Coast, Cincinnati defeated Oakland, but my cat could defeat Oakland.
----- an hour passes -----
There is no score yet, despite all of the cray back and forth. The Santa Clara 49ers made some really good plays. I just want someone to score. Please.
Sunday, September 13, 2015
Going for Two: Week One Not-So-Surprising Upsets
I spent most of today with spreadsheets, one of which you can read about in the previous post. Around 2 or something, I finally turned on the games to see an extreme amount of disappointment in Houston fans as they trailed KC by... lots of points. From the Talking Heads, a KC interception early in the game was a major blow to the Texans, proving how important a good, or even mediocre QB is for a team. KC showed why it deserved to go up 5 places, while Houston demonstrated why it fell 3 places in my new calculation. Not to mention that all love was being poured on my old Boyfriend, one Alex Smith.
The Rams, who went up 4 places, managed to defeat the Seahawks, which was also surprising, but also not surprising. The Rams, in my life, have never been great, but they make an impact as spoilers, creating the 1 for the 15&1 2011 Packers and contributing a third to the 1996 13&3 Packers, if I recall correctly. Then there was Indianapolis and Buffalo, where I predicted Colts, but the Bills win instead. I don't know how that one happened, but it means that I am 5 for 8 for the first half of Week One.
Right now, at 5pm Central, I'm watching Denver and Baltimore. I really can't describe my observations of Manning - I can't put words to the general concepts there - but they're not good. He has managed to lead his team into field goal range three times, but they're trailing by one point after the Vashda Nerada intercepted a pass and ran it in for an easy touchdown. It will mean being wrong, but I won't mind a Baltimore win here.
The Rams, who went up 4 places, managed to defeat the Seahawks, which was also surprising, but also not surprising. The Rams, in my life, have never been great, but they make an impact as spoilers, creating the 1 for the 15&1 2011 Packers and contributing a third to the 1996 13&3 Packers, if I recall correctly. Then there was Indianapolis and Buffalo, where I predicted Colts, but the Bills win instead. I don't know how that one happened, but it means that I am 5 for 8 for the first half of Week One.
Right now, at 5pm Central, I'm watching Denver and Baltimore. I really can't describe my observations of Manning - I can't put words to the general concepts there - but they're not good. He has managed to lead his team into field goal range three times, but they're trailing by one point after the Vashda Nerada intercepted a pass and ran it in for an easy touchdown. It will mean being wrong, but I won't mind a Baltimore win here.
Going for Two: Optimized Calculation
After my first post, I began working with my calculation more, then put the numbers into the charts for each week to see how the season might shake out. The results made for a very even distribution of records, with a couple teams having perfect seasons and just as many not getting a win at all. The top two teams, my prospective Super Bowl teams, were the Arizona Cardinals for the NFC and the Miami Dolphins in the AFC.
I mentioned this to two of the people that did my Peer Reviews, and one said, "I will give you $100 if Miami gets to the Super Bowl," but had more optimism about the Cardinals. This prompted me to make more changes. I changed up the numbers that went into the charts for each week by rounding the value to the nearest whole number and added the points from my ranking to the weekly chart through Week 8, but reducing the point value by 10% each week. This rounding and prolonging the effect of those initial points helped by making the final records of each team fall into a more normal distribution.I also hard coded a win for New England to get them from 8&8 to 11&5, because yeah. I may hate the Patriots, but I'm not stupid.
The other major change was to add more data, including Depth Chart Rankings and the ranks for Offenses, Defenses, and Special Teams. This change took considerably more time, both from data entry, figuring out how to weight the different values, and then combining the information into a single number that still fit my 16-point scale. Oh, and I pulled all of that into its own spreadsheet, the apparently simplicity of which masking all of the hours that were poured into it.
This moved the team ranks around, but did not change the Bottom 5 teams. WAS, and JAX made the last of the 20's, and TEN, OAK, and TB received 30, 31, and 32, respectively. New England, Green Bay, and Seattle bounced around a little, but ended up in the top 3. Most of the other top ranked teams from my simpler calculation remained up at the top, but Arizona was the biggest loser, going from number 8 to 16.
Given all the work that I did on my spreadsheet, I'm not about to work on describing it any more, or copy the results into this post. I will say that, after all of that work, Miami still makes it to the Super Bowl.
I mentioned this to two of the people that did my Peer Reviews, and one said, "I will give you $100 if Miami gets to the Super Bowl," but had more optimism about the Cardinals. This prompted me to make more changes. I changed up the numbers that went into the charts for each week by rounding the value to the nearest whole number and added the points from my ranking to the weekly chart through Week 8, but reducing the point value by 10% each week. This rounding and prolonging the effect of those initial points helped by making the final records of each team fall into a more normal distribution.
The other major change was to add more data, including Depth Chart Rankings and the ranks for Offenses, Defenses, and Special Teams. This change took considerably more time, both from data entry, figuring out how to weight the different values, and then combining the information into a single number that still fit my 16-point scale. Oh, and I pulled all of that into its own spreadsheet, the apparently simplicity of which masking all of the hours that were poured into it.
This moved the team ranks around, but did not change the Bottom 5 teams. WAS, and JAX made the last of the 20's, and TEN, OAK, and TB received 30, 31, and 32, respectively. New England, Green Bay, and Seattle bounced around a little, but ended up in the top 3. Most of the other top ranked teams from my simpler calculation remained up at the top, but Arizona was the biggest loser, going from number 8 to 16.
Given all the work that I did on my spreadsheet, I'm not about to work on describing it any more, or copy the results into this post. I will say that, after all of that work, Miami still makes it to the Super Bowl.
Monday, September 7, 2015
Going for Two: Just Before Regular Season Start
The 2015 regular season of the NFL starts next week and I'm starting with my first post for it today. I selected the name for these posts, "Running the Football" "Going for Two", based on the fact that this is the second consecutive season that I have committed to blogging [nearly] every week and created a spreadsheet to pick winners during* the season. In other words, this is possibly the start of a "streak", synonyms for which are period, spell, stretch, run, and patch. Of those, run relates most to football, hence "Running the Football".
I've been enjoying pre-season games for the last month and opened up my spreadsheet this weekend for the first time since March, when I entered in the Free Agency "Grades" as identified by CBS Sports. I made edits to the spreadsheet, including splitting the Master sheet into two and changing my "Ideal" ranks. Then I started making a calculation to determine the expectations this year based on performance last year and activity in the post and off seasons.
I've had a couple peer reviews of these rankings and while those peers put some teams higher or lower, there is general approval of the overall picture. I can only offer my apologies to Oakland and Tampa Bay.
These numbers will be used for the first five week of the season, in diminishing importance each week (e.g. 100% for Week 1, 80% for Week 2, and down), before total wins and losses are the only ranking factor.
*I didn't pay much attention to the 2013 season due to other factors, but I did create a spreadsheet and fill in the information, including my likely 'gut' picks. Because I didn't know the outcome of most of the games, those picks were somewhat accurate, but it is likely that they skewed more accurate based on what I did know. I tried to focus only on the number of wins for the team and who Football Locks identified as the favorite.
I've been enjoying pre-season games for the last month and opened up my spreadsheet this weekend for the first time since March, when I entered in the Free Agency "Grades" as identified by CBS Sports. I made edits to the spreadsheet, including splitting the Master sheet into two and changing my "Ideal" ranks. Then I started making a calculation to determine the expectations this year based on performance last year and activity in the post and off seasons.
- 2014 Wins: All 2014 Regular & Post Season wins (Ties count for .5) and 1 point for getting into the playoffs.
- Free Agency Performance: Number out of 8 points based on a percentage identified by the Free Agency Grade, assuming that the grades are given based on an American college scale, with 1-2 percentage points gained or lost based on whether experts at the NFL identified the team as a "Winner" or "Loser" during the free agency period.
- Draft Performance: Number out of 4 points based on a percentage identified by dividing the number of points awarded in the NFL's Draft Class Power Rankings by 290, the points given to the highest ranked team.
It took a few passes to get to those decisions, with first giving a total possible 8 points for Free Agency and Draft, and giving whole number points from 1-8 for each grade (e.g. 8 for an A, 7 for a B+). After a conversation with a friend about the perils of the draft, I reduced the weight of the draft numbers to half of those for Free Agency. While Free Agents have played with NFL rules, college players have not. A well-rated college player's performance is less known.
Next, I looked for additional rankings of Free Agency performance, but only found those "Winners" and "Losers" sites. Without a better ranking, I decided to apply a percentage to the grades so I could award points to the winners and losers without "bumping up their grade".
After entering these numbers, I sorted the points to determine how the teams will do this year.
| Team Rank | Points | Team Rank | Points | |||
| 1 | New England Patriots | 14.81 | 17 | Minnesota Vikings | 10.01 | |
| 2 | Green Bay Packers | 14.56 | 18 | Buffalo Bills | 9.97 | |
| 3 | Dallas Cowboys | 14.39 | 19 | Cleveland Browns | 9.95 | |
| 4 | Seattle Seahawks | 13.89 | 20 | Carolina Panthers | 9.60 | |
| 5 | Denver Broncos | 13.09 | 21 | San Francisco 49ers | 9.59 | |
| 6 | Indianapolis Colts | 12.99 | 22 | Atlanta Falcons | 8.94 | |
| 7 | Baltimore Ravens | 12.67 | 23 | New Orleans Saints | 8.91 | |
| 8 | Arizona Cardinals | 11.94 | 24 | New York Giants | 8.77 | |
| 9 | Cincinnati Bengals | 11.91 | 25 | Chicago Bears | 8.68 | |
| 10 | Pittsburgh Steelers | 11.51 | 26 | New York Jets | 8.38 | |
| 11 | Detroit Lions | 11.39 | 27 | St. Louis Rams | 7.85 | |
| 12 | Houston Texans | 11.26 | 28 | Washington Racists | 7.67 | |
| 13 | Philadelphia Eagles | 10.62 | 29 | Jacksonville Jaguars | 7.59 | |
| 14 | Miami Dolphins | 10.59 | 30 | Tennessee Titans | 6.61 | |
| 15 | San Diego Chargers | 10.45 | 31 | Oakland Raiders | 6.58 | |
| 16 | Kansas City Chiefs | 10.21 | 32 | Tampa Bay Buccaneers | 5.66 | |
I've had a couple peer reviews of these rankings and while those peers put some teams higher or lower, there is general approval of the overall picture. I can only offer my apologies to Oakland and Tampa Bay.
These numbers will be used for the first five week of the season, in diminishing importance each week (e.g. 100% for Week 1, 80% for Week 2, and down), before total wins and losses are the only ranking factor.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)