If you've been following along at home, you may recall that I pointed out in the week 11 power rankings that APR seems to really like the Eagles, in spite of a pretty ordinary record, while the Broncos get no respect, in spite of (mostly) maintaining a winning record. The following is a closer look at why APR ranks the Eagles and Broncos the way it does.
As you know if you've read my description of how APR works, each team's power index is computed from power values computed for each game that team has played. Here is a table detailing the game powers for each game played by the Eagles and Broncos, for the week 12 power rankings:
| Philadelphia Eagles | Denver Broncos | ||
| won vs Rams by 35 | 1.339 | won @ Raiders by 27 | 1.695 |
| lost @ Cowboys by 4 | 1.232 | won vs Chargers by 1 | 1.359 |
| won vs Steelers by 9 | 1.637 | won vs Saints by 2 | 1.399 |
| lost @ Bears by 4 | 1.231 | lost @ Chiefs by 14 | 0.807 |
| lost vs Redskins by 6 | 1.045 | won vs Buccaneers by 3 | 1.476 |
| won @ 49ers by 14 | 1.559 | lost vs Jaguars by 7 | 0.894 |
| won vs Falcons by 13 | 1.621 | lost @ Patriots by 34 | 0.996 |
| won @ Seahawks by 19 | 1.585 | lost vs Dolphins by 9 | 0.943 |
| lost vs Giants by 5 | 1.295 | won @ Browns by 4 | 1.421 |
| tied @ Bengals | 1.122 | won @ Falcons by 4 | 1.602 |
| lost @ Ravens by 29 | 1.077 | lost vs Raiders by 21 | 0.783 |
Looking at this table, one thing stands out: the Eagles win big and (except for the game at the Ravens) lose close; the Broncos lose big and win close.
The Broncos' losses have really hurt them. They've got 5 games with power values under 1.0, all relatively recent. On the other hand, the Eagles have 4 very strong game powers, 3 of them within the last 6 games (and, of course, the big win over the Cardinals is not included in this table, since week 13 is not complete at this writing).
This is exactly the kind of thing that APR was designed to emphasise. The Broncos close wins and blow-out losses are a pretty good indicator that with just a few more bad breaks, they could have a much worse record (the week 2 game against the Chargers comes immediately to mind).
The Eagles are on the other side of this argument. A successful goal-to-go push against the Bears, a 3rd-and-1 conversion against the Giants, One more made field goal against the Bengals... it's not hard to imagine an alternate series of events where the Eagles are 8-3 going into week 13, and right in the thick of the playoff hunt.
But—part of the problem with the Eagles is that this "almost made it" syndrome seems to be an on-going problem. Last year, in a game decided by 3 points, they muffed a couple punts, which the Packers turned into 10 points. In a game against the Bears, they lost a crucial fumble recovery on a play that (on a rule no one ever heard of before) got called a false start. A game against the Giants was lost because a last-second field goal hit the upright.
A few close games lost can be blamed on bad breaks. When the streak starts to stretch over two seasons, it's not hard to use this as the basis to make the case that the Eagles have some serious coaching issues...
