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.

• 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.

*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.