Skip to main content

Week 11 NFL Power Rankings 2012

I made some improvements to the power rankings this week. Let me explain some of my reasoning and method.

First, I decided that power rankings look at what teams have done and not what they will do so there is no projecting values. Second, these are totally unaltered rankings after I created a formula to judge a team's "power" compared to other teams.

The rankings have four components. The first two are Pro-Football-Reference.com's offensive and defensive simple rankings. When combined they for PFR's simple rating system. I chose to treat offense and defense separately for one reason: I think offense is far more important in today's NFL.



How much more important? After playing with the numbers and seeing how teams landed using different numbers I decided on 25 percent. That is, offense is 25 percent more important than defense. This is arbitrary, but it gave me results that I looked fair to me. These are my power rankings after all.

I ordered each team by their simple rating system and gave them a point from 32 to 1. This effectively stripped the simple rating system out of the equation and gave me a rating, which is what I wanted. I didn't want some measure of how good a team was based on margin of victory and strength of schedule because a 50-point win and one-point win are equal and a win against the best team and the worst team are also counted equally.

I also decided it wasn't fair to punish an over-performing team that was winning. Unlike quarterbacks, I think you can judge a team on wins and losses so I included win percentage in the equation. This is weighted heavily, since record is what gets teams into the playoffs and ultimately what we care most about.

The resulting formula was Overall Power = (Offensive Ranking+ Defensive Ranking*0.75)*Winning Percentage

56.0 is a perfect score, 25.0 is a typical division winner (although there will be some that fall below this line and some wildcard teams that are above it) and a typical playoff team would be 18.0 plus. Realistically a team below 8.0 has a very slim chance of making the playoffs. For the teams below 18.0, the closer they can get the less luck they will need to get in. You will notice teams between 8.0 and 18.0 are are flawed in some serious way. They might be just starting a rebuild or something like that.

If you look at the teams below 8.0, almost all of them have a coach and/or GM on the hot seat. The Raiders are unique here because they just started a rebuild and had to do a lot of roster purging in the offseason. You would expect each year of a rebuild a team would jump up one tier. The Seahawks, Redskins, Vikings and Bengals are all good examples. In the case of the Bucs, they jumped faster because they already had a quarterback. The Colts jumped up quickly thanks to Andrew Luck.

If I stick with this, these rankings might be a good measuring stick of the progress of Oakland's rebuild. By my estimation, by 2014 the Raiders should be in the upper white or lower light green area. For comparison sake, the Raiders were a 8.9 at the end last season so the Raiders really haven't taken as much of a step back as it may seem.

Comments

  1. [...] to Original Content From Raiders Blog (blog): read more Related Articles Share About Author [...]

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Oakland Raiders Swing for the Fences in 2016 NFL Draft

[embed align="center"]http://gty.im/153039819[/embed] These aren't your daddy's Oakland Raiders or even your younger self's Raiders. If anything, these are your newborn's Raiders or your puppy's Raiders. These are the Raiders we've never seen before. Indicative of the freshness of the franchise was their 2016 NFL Draft. No longer slave to a high draft pick and desperate needs, the theme of the draft for the Raiders was upside. It's as if general manager Reggie McKenzie got so used to hitting his draft picks out of the park that he started swinging for the fences. We'll have to wait a couple of years before we know if he struck out or if he'll continue his Ruthian ways. First, McKenzie boldly went with a safety at No. 14 overall. Kyle Joseph is coming off a torn ACL and fills a major need, but safety isn't a premium position. Only a handful of safeties have been drafted in the first 14 picks in the last 15 years and include names like Ea

The Raiders aren't who we thought they were....they're better

The Oakland Raiders are tired of being the team that will be good in a year or two. The team expects to win now and it is winning now. We thought the Raiders needed more talent. We thought that being in the playoff hunt was a year away for this team, but we were wrong. This isn't the team we thought they were, they're better. On Sunday, they moved to 3-3 on Sunday with a 37-29 win over the San Diego Chargers that wasn't close until the final minute. It was also the Raiders second road win of the season. The last time the Raiders had two road wins by their sixth game was 2011. Before that, a five-year streak from 1998-2002. The Raiders went 8-8 in 1998, 1999 and 2011 and narrowly missed the playoffs each year.  They made the playoffs in 2000, 2001 and 2002. They didn't have a losing record in any of those seasons because teams that can win on the road are usually pretty good. As the season matures, there is more and more evidence that some of the "best-case scenario

Oakland Raiders' Studs and Duds From Preseason Week 1

[embed]http://gty.im/484069738[/embed] The Oakland Raiders finally look like a competitive football team again. That should be the biggest takeaway from their preseason rout of the St. Louis Rams. Quarterback Derek Carr and the offense looked significantly improved from a year ago, thanks in large part to some of the studs listed below. The starting defense was still a little shaky, but there were still a few bright spots. Overall, the Raiders can feel good about their first live action of the year, especially since there appeared to be no significant injuries to come out of it. Studs Rodney Hudson Of all general manager Reggie McKenzie's offseason acquisitions, he committed the most money to center Rodney Hudson. Offensive linemen rarely get the praise they deserve, but a great offensive line as anchored in the middle can be huge for an offense. Hudson was very solid in his debut against a very good defensive front. If Hudson and the offensive line can consistently protect Carr an