Brian Nemhauser·
Power Rankings
··2 min read

NFL Power Rankings Week 14 — Giants Hiding in the Weeds

POWER RANKINGS

There is not much change at the top of the rankings. The Bears rightfully flopped with the Rams. Otherwise, the thing that stands out is there really is no flawless, dominant, team in the NFL this season. The Saints are the class of the league, but they are allowing an opponent passer rating of over 100 so far. Any team that can be efficient passing and slow that offense a little has a shot. Tampa nearly did it this week.

Back are the three-week trends, and that helps us see that the NY Giants are sneaking up the charts. They have gained a ton of team strength over the past three weeks. That said, facing the Redskins this week and walloping them plays a large role in running up their stats.

 

 

 

 

Rankings Visualization

This view shows tiers of strength that develop over the course of the season.

 

 

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 (roughly 70% of the teams ranked in the Top 10 by week 3 make the playoffs), 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.
As of November 22, 2016, I have increased the weighting of the run game and point differential. Yards per carry will be multiplied by 10 to make it more evenly weighted with the passer rating. It is still roughly half as important, but will have a greater impact. Point differential will be multiplied by two as it still should be among the most important aspects of measuring teams.