Implied SRS Ratings of Most College Football Teams

June 10, 2013 College

The Simple Rating System is a set of computer rankings focused on only two variables: strength of schedule and margin of victory. I published weekly college football SRS ratings each week last season, and you can read more about the SRS there. Last month, Jason Lisk of the Big Lead took the Las Vegas point [...]

Read the full article →

Implied SRS Ratings of each NFL Team

May 10, 2013 SRS

On Wednesday, Jason Lisk came up with a set of power rankings based on the point spread for nearly every game this season (spreads for the games in the final week of the season have not yet been released). We can use the SRS to come up with the implied ratings for each team (this [...]

Read the full article →

Another Note on the Relative Impact of Offense vs. Defense on Scoring

May 8, 2013 History

Last week, Chase had a great post where he looked at what percentage of the points scored by a team in any given game is a function of the team, and what percentage is a function of the opponent. The answer, according to Chase’s method, was 58 percent for the offense and 42 percent for [...]

Read the full article →

College Football: The Best Passing Quarterbacks since 2005

February 27, 2013 College

Yesterday, I ranked every quarterback in college football last season. Today, I’ll do the same for every quarterback since 2005. If you read yesterday’s article, you can skip the next three paragraphs, which explain the system I used. I start by calculating each quarterback’s Adjusted Net Yards per Attempt, done by starting with passing yards [...]

Read the full article →

College Football: The Best Passing Quarterbacks from 2012

February 26, 2013 College

A few weeks ago, I discovered cfbstats.com, which has made available for download an incredible amount of college football statistics from the last eight seasons. Thanks to them, I plan to apply some of the same techniques I’ve used on NFL numbers over the years to college statistics. If you’re a fan of college football, [...]

Read the full article →

Does pre-season strength of schedule matter?

February 8, 2013 SRS

NFL.com posted an article yesterday looking at the strength of schedule for each team in 2013. We have known each team’s opponents since the end of the regular season, and while the full schedule won’t come out until April, it’s simple to calculate a team’s strength of schedule for 2013. Usually, the media reports this [...]

Read the full article →

Super Bowl History

January 21, 2013 History

Now that the Super Bowl matchup is set, I thought I’d start the two-week period with some Super Bow history. The table below lists some information from each of the first 46 Super Bowls. With Joe Flacco and Colin Kaepernick facing off, that ends five-year streak where at least one of the two quarterbacks in [...]

Read the full article →

Checkdowns: Pre-Conference Championship Sunday Weighted SRS Ratings

January 19, 2013 Checkdowns

Presented without comment, the most current Simple Ratings, weighted for recency: “Upper” and “Lower” are the 95% confidence intervals around each estimate. Roughly speaking, this means we can be 95% confident that, say, the 49ers’ “true” SRS rating is between 3.66 and 16.80. Tweet

Read the full article →

Checkdowns: Every AFC and NFC Championship Game since 1970

January 18, 2013 Checkdowns

Yesterday, I provided my preview of the NFC Championship Game, and I’ll do the same for the AFC tomorrow. But today, here’s a listing of every conference championship game the since the NFL merger. The table below shows each game from the perspective of the winning team and includes a linkable boxscore for each game. [...]

Read the full article →

Checkdowns: Deja vu for the Falcons?

January 9, 2013 SRS

Much has been written this season arguing that the Falcons are not as good as their 13-3 record. Conversely, the Seahawks have emerged as a favorite among some in our advanced statistical community: Brian Burke ranks Seattle as the third most efficient team, Aaron Schatz ranks them number one, and Pro-Football-Reference ranks Seattle second in [...]

Read the full article →

Data Dump: Schedule-Adjusted Pythagorean Ratings (1970-2012)

January 4, 2013 Data Dump

This is mostly a huge end-of-regular-season data dump, but I’ll explain a little before the table… PFR’s Simple Rating System can be broken into offensive and defensive components, which represent the number of points per game the team scored/allowed per game compared to the league average, after adjusting for the strength of opposing offenses and [...]

Read the full article →

Looking back: The most surprising games of the year

December 19, 2012 SRS

Five weeks ago, I looked at the most surprising results of the season. It’s time to update that post now that most of the season is in the books. First, we need to rank the teams. The table below shows each team’s current Simple Rating System rating through week 15. As a reminder, the SRS [...]

Read the full article →

Checkdowns: SRS-Style Quarterback Ratings

December 17, 2012 Checkdowns

Here’s a quick set of quarterback ratings I was messing around with, based on Doug’s Simple Rating System. The basic setup: I took every passer-game (Att > 0) since the 2010 season, weighting for recency according to Wayne Winston’s method. I ran the data through the SRS to adjust for the quality of opponent pass [...]

Read the full article →

Checkdowns: Elo-Ratings for NFL teams

December 14, 2012 Checkdowns

Just a quick Friday night checkdown post. By now, you’re very familiar with the Simple Rating System. I used the SRS to create college football ratings every week this season and used the SRS to grade NFL teams earlier this year. Pro-Football-Reference.com calculates SRS ratings every week and they are always available on their Standings [...]

Read the full article →

Week 12 College Football SRS Ratings

November 18, 2012 College

Your assumptions are no longer valid. Kansas State entered the weekend as the most balanced team in college football. Through 11 weeks, Baylor ranked 120th in yards allowed and 118th in points allowed. But last night in Waco, the Wildcats were unable to do much of anything on offense. Collin Klein had never thrown more [...]

Read the full article →

Checkdowns: The Most Surprising NFL Results of the Season (Through 10 Weeks)

November 14, 2012 Checkdowns

When Miami was blown out by Tennessee this weekend, I was shocked. So I cooked up a quick little way to measure how shocked I should have been. First, here are the SRS standings for the NFL through 10 weeks: Now the SRS weighs each game equally. This means that we can come up with [...]

Read the full article →

Week 11 College Football SRS Ratings

November 11, 2012 College

For the second straight season, the game of the year took place in Tuscaloosa. A week after Alabama eeked out a victory over LSU, and 53 weeks after Alabama loss to LSU in last year’s “Game of the Century”, Johnny Manziel produced one of the performances of the season in leading Texas A&M to an [...]

Read the full article →

A guide to Saturday’s games

November 10, 2012 College

The game of the day is in Tuscaloosa, as the #4 team in the SRS tries to ruin the perfect season of the best team in the country. Here’s a look at the weekly results for Alabama and Texas A&M, sorted from highest to lowest SRS score: Both teams blew out Arkansas in September and [...]

Read the full article →

Checkdowns: Updating Atlanta’s odds of going undefeated

November 6, 2012 Checkdowns

Sunday morning, I noted that the Falcons had a 2.4% chance of going undefeated and that the team most likely give them their first loss was the Dallas Cowboys. After Atlanta’s victory on Sunday night, they halfway to perfection. This is the first time in franchise history the Falcons have started off 8-0, although star [...]

Read the full article →

Checkdowns: Weighted NFL SRS Ratings (through Monday 11/05/12)

November 6, 2012 Checkdowns

Here’s my weekly set of power ratings, according to a weighted version of the Simple Rating System: KEY: Talent – Regressed WPct talent for 2012; Talent = (W + 5.5) / (G + 11) PWAG – Probability of Winning Any Game Off – Offensive SRS (positive = better) Def – Defensive SRS (negative = better) [...]

Read the full article →

College Football Week 10 SRS Ratings: The Big 4 Survive and Advance

November 4, 2012 College

There were close calls in Baton Rouge and in South Bend, but all six undefeated teams escaped week 10 without a blemish. Ohio State is now the first team to win 10 games in 2012, although the Buckeyes are not eligible to participate in postseason play. Louisville ran its record to 9-0 yesterday, with winnable [...]

Read the full article →

Checkdowns: In which week is Atlanta most likely to suffer its first loss?

November 4, 2012 Checkdowns

In this post by Neil, he provided a formula to predict each team’s likelihood of winning a game based on the Vegas point spread. With the help of the SRS, we can come up with a projected point spread for each game, and therefore figure out which team is most likely to give the Falcons [...]

Read the full article →

Oregon, Kansas State, and Notre Dame look undervalued this weekend

November 2, 2012 College

November 3rd has been circled on the calendars of college football fans for nearly a year. Unfortunately, the two biggest games of the day — Alabama/LSU and Oregon/USC — will compete for the eyeballs of the nation. The Ducks and Trojans kick off at 7PM on the East Coast, with the Crimson Tide stealing our [...]

Read the full article →

There is only a 10% chance Oregon, Kansas State, and Notre Dame all go undefeated

October 28, 2012 College

Neil once pointed out, that you can approximate a team’s odds of winning a game by using the point spread and the following formula: p(W) = 1 – (1-NORMDIST(0.5,SPREAD,13.86,TRUE))+0.5*(NORMDIST(0.5,SPREAD,13.86,TRUE)-NORMDIST(-0.5,SPREAD,13.86,TRUE)) For college football games, there is research by Wayne Winston and Jeff Sagarin that the standard deviation in the above formula should be 16 instead of [...]

Read the full article →

Week 9 SRS Ratings: When Will Oregon Stop Scoring?

October 28, 2012 College

Oregon’s offense is ridiculous, and its defense and special teams aren’t far behind. Entering this weekend, Oregon had outscored opponents 234-46 … in the first half. Prior to their game against Colorado, Bill Connelly ranked Oregon as the third best defense in college football. Against the horrible Buffaloes, the Ducks didn’t disappoint. Oregon jumped out [...]

Read the full article →

Checkdowns: Weighted NFL SRS Ratings (through Sunday 10/21/12)

October 22, 2012 Checkdowns

Here are the current SRS Ratings, weighted for the recency of each game, along with each team’s quarter-by-quarter Win Probability Added (WPA) so far this season: Tweet

Read the full article →

Week 8 SRS Ratings: The Crimson Tide death star marches on

October 21, 2012 College

I didn’t think this was possible. In 2009, Alabama had an incredible defense, ranking 1st or 2nd in points allowed, yards allowed, first downs allowed, completion percentage allowed and rushing yards allowed en route to a 14-0 season and a national title. In the 2010 draft, Rolando McClain and Kareem Jackson went in the first [...]

Read the full article →

Checkdowns: Weighted NFL SRS Ratings (through Thursday 10/19/12)

October 19, 2012 Checkdowns

Here are the current SRS Ratings, using the recency-weighted system I described on Monday: Also, just for fun, here’s how SRS sees this weekend’s games going (with the Vegas lines and over/unders for comparison’s sake): Tweet

Read the full article →

Checkdowns: Weighted NFL SRS Ratings (through Sunday 10/14/12)

October 15, 2012 Checkdowns

Here’s a quick Monday data dump… I ran the Simple Rating System (for offense and defense) on this year’s NFL results, but instead of weighing each game equally, I used Wayne Winston’s method of giving more weight to recent outcomes. Winston’s system is simply to give each game a weight of: λ ^ (weeks ago) [...]

Read the full article →

Rating offenses and defenses since 1970

October 15, 2012 History

NFL offenses and defenses are not mirror images of each other. The gap between the best and worst offenses is generally bigger than the spread on the defensive side of the ball. And strength of schedule is more likely to play a key role when it comes to determine the best and worst defenses, too. [...]

Read the full article →