Back in May, I produced implied Vegas team ratings from the points spreads released by CG Technology. Before the Thursday Night Kickoff game between the Packers and Bears (the less said about that game, the better), Vegas released the final over/under wins totals for each of the 32 teams.

Which made me curious: who are the biggest risers and fallers since May?

The graph below shows the 32 teams. On the horizontal X-Axis is the the expected margin of victory for each team over their 16 games, based on the points spreads released in May (the units are points per game differential).  This incorporates both strength of schedule and home field advantage — it is the actual expected score at the end of the game.  The Y-Axis shows the wins total for each team as of September 5th, which also of course incorporates SOS and HFA.

A couple of notes.

1) The over/under in wins total adds up to 261, which is 5 more wins than is actually possible.

2) That said, there’s a very clear relationship between the over/under wins total and the expected MOV from May. Essentially, for every one point of expected MOV from May, we should expect to see an additional half-win in the over/under wins total.

So who are the outliers? The Colts were expected to win their games by an average of 2.4 points back in May; that should have translated to an over/under wins total of about 9.3 wins (because a team with an expected MOV of 0.0 would be projected at 8.16 wins). But instead, Indianapolis is projected to win just 7.5 games, which represents a decrease of 1.8 wins. Of course, in between May and September, Andrew Luck retired.

The Miami Dolphins are the second biggest decliner, and the Dolphins were already the 31st-ranked team by Vegas! There seems to be a largely-held belief that the Dolphins are tanking, and Miami trading away Laremy Tunsil and Kenny Stills gives more fuel for that fire. The Bengals and Giants are also on the decline: presumably the A.J. Green injury drove Cincinnati’s decline, while the Giants decline may be because of uncertainty as to who will be quarterback.

On the upswing are the Eagles, who have become a bit of a favorite among NFL analysts. The Bills, Chargers, Jaguars, and Titans all have increased by about half a win of expectation.

The most competitive division appears to be the AFC South, as all four teams are projected between 7.5 and 8.5 wins. The best division? Despite what we saw on Thursday, that appears to be the NFC North: all three favorites are expected to win 9+ games, with the Lions at 6.5 wins.

Meanwhile, the AFC East is expected to have yet another top-heavy season; the Patriots wins total is 11.0, the Jets and Bills are at 7.5 wins, and the Dolphins are at 4.5 wins.

The table below shows the final Vegas wins totals for 2019, along with the May average margin of victory numbers.

As always, please leave your thoughts in the comments.