The Running Game: Week Fourteen Calculation Suckage

Something is up with my calculation - the official one. Something needs to be changed. The problem I have is deciding what to change. The Power Calculation started strong, with an average of 67% for the first 7 weeks of the season, and, at best, an average of 57% for the next 7. Actually, nearly everything did really well for the first 7 weeks, except for the benchmarks, then the tables turned for the last 7 weeks. You can see the results for that on the right for nearly everything that is tracked in my spreadsheet. The colors in the columns are meant to show the highest results for that particular time period. Dark green is the best, then light green, yellow, and orange for the worst. Each column is different, depending on how my numbers stacked up against the benchmarks. For instance, in Weeks 1-7, the benchmarks performed poorly, so 61% for Point Differential got light green, but in Weeks 8-14, 62% for that same calculation was only yellow. The surprise for me is the way that Weighted Wins is performing right now. That calculation uses the value assigned to the losing team based on the Official Calculation to add to the new value of the winning team. Actually, that's roughly how all my calculations work, just with different variables. Anyway, there are just far too many numbers over there, and running through all those calculations are maxing out my poor Chromebook.

Football Locks Picks 56% 69% 63% Picks based on NFL Power Rankings 57% 65% 61% Weeks Calculation 1-7 8-14 All Official Calculation 59% 62% 61% Adding overall '16 Home Field Advantage 58% 64% 61% Experimental Ranking Calculation 65% 59% 62% Gut Picks 65% 64% 64% Early Calculation (Official for Weeks 1-10) 59% 62% 61% Mid-Season Calculation (Official after Week 10) 59% 57% 58% Weighted Wins (part of Mid-Season) 60% 69% 65% Point Differential (part of Mid-Season) 61% 62% 62% Winners based on record 56% 69% 62% Home Team 58% 57% 57% Home & Away Advantage for last 2 years 66% 56% 61% Home & Away Advantage for last 2 years 65% 58% 62% Historical Comparison for last 2 years 68% 61% 65% Historical Comparison for last 3 years 62% 62% 62% Power Calculation 67% 57% 62%

* All of these numbers assume that Dallas and New England win their games this week.

The Running Game: Week Thirteen No Suprises

I guess that's what happens when hedging all picks based on the benchmarks. But I am also making careful picks based on the work I did over Week Eleven. I'm not sure if the Upset Rates line up as well this week as they did last week, but the data does not seem to be completely unreliable.

	Calc	Bench	Thoughts & Gut pick (2015-16 Calc pick success rate vs. Underdog upset rate)	Winner
DAL at MIN	MIN	DAL	GODDAMNIT, COWBOYS. They're on fire, DAL (64% vs. 27%)	DAL
DEN at JAX	DEN	DEN	The Home team just isn't good enough to beat DEN (72% vs. 14%)	DEN
KC at ATL	KC	Split	Going with Matty Ice & their upset rate at home, ATL (81% vs. 51%)	KC
HOU at GB	GB	GB	I really, really don't see Houston beating PACKERS! (60% vs. 15%)	GB
PHI at CIN	PHI	Split	Wentz is the rookie that isn't ready for primetime, CIN (42% vs. 14%)	CIN
DET at NO	NO	Split	The Saints' success rate has nothing on upsets by DET (67% vs. 48%)	DET
SF at CHI	CHI	Split	In the battle of the worst, the line is SF (41% vs. 21%)	CHI
LA at NE	NE	NE	The Rams' upset rate isn't enough to beat NE (80% vs. 37%)	NE
MIA at BAL	BAL	Split	Miami is definitely turning my head, MIA (53% vs. 36%)	BAL
BUF at OAK	BUF	OAK	LET'S GO OAK-LAND! OAK (53% vs. 16%)	OAK
TB at SD	TB	SD	Hedge time, SD (60% vs. 31%)	TB
WAS at ARI	ARI	Split	I think the Cards can hold onto this one ARI (65% vs. 34%)	ARI
NYG at PIT	PIT	Split	Looking at that Upset Rate, I'm sticking with PIT (68% vs. 10%)	PIT
CAR at SEA	SEA	SEA	I'm sorry, Carolina, it's not happening this year SEA (54% vs. 49%)	...
IND at NYJ	NYJ	IND	Both rates are leading me to hedge with IND (45% vs. 26%)	...

With all the attention on my Gut picks, I only just now noticed how well my Official calculation did this week. The tie-breaker game is tomorrow night. That's about the only interesting thing about Colts at Jets.

The Running Game: Week Twelve Back Again

I try to post every week, but what can I say about last weekend? Oops? It was a two-day weekend, with a Persian lesson and preparation (even if only mental) for Thanksgiving. Oh yeah, and I was busy updating my "All Years All Teams" workbook, which drives my historical calculations, which included adding the current Games sheet to all workbooks back to 2012, then copying that to... oh, it was a lot of work, but I'm finally done. This means that I can see the year-to-date accuracy of my calculation for each team and see each team's "upset" rate. Here, Upset means "going against my calculation", not the Vegas line.

So far this week, there seems to be a trend...

It's not 100% perfect, but all of the teams with an Upset ratio of 20% or more ended up winning. Well, except Washington, but they did beat the spread.

The interesting thing is that, according to the teevee, Atlanta beating Arizona and Baltimore's win were notable. They also mentioned the wins by the Giants and the Dolphins. However, looking at my picks and the upset ratios for their opponents, those outcomes weren't really in doubt.

It really spells bad news for the Packers tomorrow night. Really bad news, because their upset ratio is 0%, but even if my calculation had picked them, Philly's upset ratio is 25%. I fear that the Green & Gold are DOA tomorrow night, but I can always hope, right? right?