Wednesday, February 4, 2009

NFL Wrapup: APR vs. the Line

Back in week 6, I noticed that it seemed like often on the split picks, it was the APR taking the road team, and the Line taking the home team. On further review, I was right. Here's how the APR vs. Line split picks break down for the 2008 season.

APR Takes the Home Team

There were 5 games where APR picked the home team and the Line picked the road team. APR was 4-1 in these picks (missing only Colts @ Vikings in week 2).

In this and following tables, the winning team is shown in bold.

WeekVisitorHome
2Colts (line)@ Vikings (APR, SRS)
2Chargers (Line) @ Broncos (APR, SRS)
3Panthers (Line)@ Vikings (APR, SRS)
4Eagles (SRS, Line)@ Bears (APR)
6Cowboys (SRS, Line)@ Cardinals (APR)

Beware of drawing conclusions from such a small sample. Note that four of these were very close games—only Panthers @ Vikings was decided by more than 6 points. And Chargers @ Broncos was the infamous "Ed Hochuli 'no fumble' game".

APR Takes the Road Team

There were 48 of these games, and APR was 22-26 in these picks. I'm not going to go through all 48 games, but there are a few worth mentioning.

  • The NFC South was 27-5 at home, and 13-19 on the road:

    WeekVisitorHome
    2Falcons (APR, SRS)@ Buccaneers (Line)
    6Panthers (APR, SRS)@ Buccaneers (Line)
    14Falcons (APR, SRS)@ Saints (Line)
    14Buccaneers (APR, SRS)@ Panthers (Line)
    2Saints (APR, SRS)@ Redskins (Line)
    2Bears (APR, SRS)@ Panthers (Line)
    5Buccaneers (APR, SRS)@ Broncos (Line)
    8Buccaneers (APR, SRS)@ Cowboys (Line)
    12Packers (APR, SRS)@ Saints
    15Saints (APR, SRS)@ Bears (Line)
  • Jet lag is a bummer:

    WeekVisitorHome
    3Cardinals (APR, SRS)@ Redskins (Line)
    4Cardinals (APR, SRS)@ Jets (Line)
    5Bills (APR, SRS)@ Cardinals (Line)
    7Broncos (APR, SRS)@ Patriots (Line)
    17Redskins (APR, SRS)@ 49ers (Line)
  • The Ravens had some issues on the road agains good teams:

    WeekVisitorHome
    4Ravens (APR, SRS)@ Steelers (Line)
    6Ravens (APR, SRS)@ Colts (Line)
    11Ravens (APR)@ Giants (SRS, Line)

Conclusions:

This is more evidence that APR doesn't pick the home team often enough. I think the answer might be to separate the power indexes into "home" and "visitor" power. Clearly there are some teams that just do much better at home than on the road.

And I see browsing the current standings, there are a handful of teams (Dolphins, Patriots, Bills, Browns, Jaguars, and Raiders) that actually had better road records than home records.

That's a touchdown

Two feet down, controlling the ball, in the endzone.

From this article, with more pictures that show Holmes maintaining possession as he goes down.

Too bad Francisco didn't try to strip the ball out—it looks like he had a decent chance to knock it out of Holmes' hands, if he had tried.

Monday, February 2, 2009

NFL Super Bowl Power Rankings

2008 Navigation Links
Read this for a description of APR

RankTeamW-LPower
Index
This week
1 (-)Pittsburgh
Steelers
15-41.5362
(LW × 1.002)
won by 4
at Cardinals
2 (-)Baltimore
Ravens
13-61.5309
(LW × 0.999)
Bye
3 (-)Philadelphia
Eagles
11-7-11.4612
(LW × 0.997)
Bye
4 (-)Indianapolis
Colts
12-51.4342
(LW × 1.000)
Bye
5 (-)New England
Patriots
11-51.4269
(LW × 0.997)
Bye
6 (-)New York
Giants
12-51.4198
(LW × 0.997)
Bye
7 (-)Tennessee
Titans
13-41.4131
(LW × 1.000)
Bye
8 (-)San Diego
Chargers
9-91.3751
(LW × 0.999)
Bye
9 (-)Arizona
Cardinals
12-81.3571
(LW × 0.991)
lost by 4
vs Steelers
10 (-)Atlanta
Falcons
11-61.3556
(LW × 0.997)
Bye
11 (-)Minnesota
Vikings
10-71.3392
(LW × 0.997)
Bye
12 (-)Carolina
Panthers
12-51.3301
(LW × 0.997)
Bye
13 (-)Miami
Dolphins
11-61.3008
(LW × 0.998)
Bye
14 (-)Dallas
Cowboys
9-71.2975
(LW × 0.998)
Bye
15 (-)Houston
Texans
8-81.2948
(LW × 0.999)
Bye
16 (-)New Orleans
Saints
8-81.2843
(LW × 0.998)
Bye
17 (-)Chicago
Bears
9-71.2516
(LW × 0.999)
Bye
18 (-)New York
Jets
9-71.2379
(LW × 0.998)
Bye
19 (-)Washington
Redskins
8-81.2322
(LW × 0.998)
Bye
20 (-)San Francisco
49ers
7-91.2273
(LW × 0.997)
Bye
21 (-)Green Bay
Packers
6-101.2271
(LW × 0.999)
Bye
22 (-)Tampa Bay
Buccaneers
9-71.2219
(LW × 0.998)
Bye
23 (-)Cincinnati
Bengals
4-11-11.2063
(LW × 0.999)
Bye
24 (-)Buffalo
Bills
7-91.1896
(LW × 0.998)
Bye
25 (-)Oakland
Raiders
5-111.1895
(LW × 0.999)
Bye
26 (-)Seattle
Seahawks
4-121.1685
(LW × 0.996)
Bye
27 (-)Jacksonville
Jaguars
5-111.1580
(LW × 0.999)
Bye
28 (-)Denver
Broncos
8-81.1494
(LW × 0.999)
Bye
29 (-)Cleveland
Browns
4-121.1292
(LW × 0.999)
Bye
30 (-)Kansas City
Chiefs
2-141.0752
(LW × 0.999)
Bye
31 (-)St. Louis
Rams
2-141.0543
(LW × 0.997)
Bye
32 (-)Detroit
Lions
0-160.9981
(LW × 0.999)
Bye

Comments:

  • Nobody moves. Which is at least moderately surprising, as it seems like there's almost always a couple teams close enough that even a tiny change in power index values is enough to shuffle them around.

  • In spite of all the hand-wringing about weak teams getting into the playoffs, and regular season standings not meaning that much—that was a pretty good game, with the game undecided right until the last play.

    That's a lot more than you can say for some of those Super Bowls that were over by half time. For the one game of the year that's watched by more casual fans than any other, that's what you really want, isn't it—a game that holds your viewers until the end?


Epilogue

That's the end of the 2008 season, which means this is the last power ranking, too. I'll probably have at least one more Season Wrapup post in the next week or so, and there may be a few Historical Data posts over the off-season. But mostly, FSPI is going to be pretty quiet for the next seven months.

So... thanks for reading, and thanks to those who have encouraged me. See you in September!

Sunday, February 1, 2009

NFL Super Bowl Pick Results

2008 Navigation Links

Read this for a description of APR.
Read this for a description of SRS.
Line picks counted correct when the favored team wins; they do not have to beat the spread to count as a win.

Pick results for the Super Bowl.

Steelers (APR, SRS, Line) @ Cardinals
The Cardinals really came close to winning that. Closer than they deserved, given how many penalty yards they had. That pick-6 at the end of the first half comes up huge... that's likely at least a 10-point swing to their favor if that pass had fallen incomplete.

On the Steelers side, Roethlisberger seemed to be an escape artist out there. There were a number of plays he seemed to be on the verge of going down, and then got the ball away.

Standings:

This weekOverall
APR:1-05-6
SRS:1-05-6
Line:1-05-6
Unanimous:1-04-5

Final power rankings coming up.