Final 2015 Power Rankings: Seahawks Finish On Top

Seahawks dominate rankings

Seattle faced the top-ranked team in the power rankings this week and throttled them, making their ascension to the top spot in the rankings complete. This is the third time in the past four years that they have led the NFL in these rankings.

Minnesota and Washington enter the playoffs as the hottest teams, with +9.4 and +10.0 three-week gains of team strength

Seattle was third in the rankings last year at season’s end, behind Green Bay and Denver. Their nearly 10 point lead in team strength is unprecedented as far as a gap between #1 and #2 teams in the final rankings. Arizona falls all the way to third, while the Panthers continue to be hampered by beating up on what was one of the easiests opponent lists in the NFL this year.

New England not only enters the playoffs as the coldest team, losing 9.8 points of team strength the past three weeks, but also the second-coldest team in all the NFL.

RANKINGS (WITH SOS)

Scatter

This view helps to give you a view of how teams are grouped together. You will generally see tiers of strength develop as the season wears on.

RANKINGS EXPLAINED

Power rankings are always debatable. I don’t buy into the gut feel methods most places use to determine their rankings, so I developed a formula a few years back that attempts to take at least some of the subjectivity out of the discussion. My approach was simple, I measured offensive and defensive efficiency based on the Yards Per Carry (YPC) and Yards Per Attempt (YPA), as well as points scored and points allowed. The formula to calculate “Team Strength” was as follows:

(YPC (offense) + YPA (offense) + Avg Pts/Game Scored) – (YPC (defense) + YPA (defense)+ Avg Pts/Game Allowed)

The formula has proven to be a pretty accurate predictor of success, but I am always looking for ways to improve it. I read a great article on ColdHardFootballFacts.com. There was one gem in there about predicting championship teams. The article mentioned passer rating differential as the “mother of all stats.” A full 69 of 72 champions have ranked in the Top 10 in this statistic. It is a stat after my own heart, as I believe offensive and defensive efficiency is the key measurable outside of point differential. Turnovers would factor in there as well, but I am not convinced a team has as much control over that. My power rankings use YPA and YPC differentials. I went ahead and replaced the YPA with offensive and defensive passer rating, to give me this:

(YPC (offense) + Passer Rating (offense) + Avg Pts/Game Scored) – (OPP YPC (defense) + OPP Passer Rating (defense)+ OPP Avg Pts/Game)

As of September 23, 2014, I have added a strength of schedule component to the rankings as well.