Saturday, February 26, 2011

NFL Wrapup: APR Pick Reliability

APR: Home vs. Visitor

Here's the breakdown of pick accuracy for picking the visiting or home teams:

Visitor
Won
Home
Won
Total
Picked Visitor 6763130
Picked Home 4268110
Total 109131240

So, the good news is, when APR picked the home team, it was right a reasonably good 61.8% of the time (though still short of the Line's 65.0% record). The bad news is, when APR picked the road team, it was little better than a coin-flip.

APR also picked the home team less than half the time

Picks by Matchup Ratio

The matchup ratio (ρ) for each game is the quotient of the corresponding power indexes for each team (larger divided by the smaller). It is intended to be an indication of "pick confidence": ρ values near 1.0 involve teams judged to be very close in power, while large values indicate more of a mismatch.

Confidence
Range
Picked
Right
Picked
Wrong
%
ρ<1.02 8 947.1%
1.02<=ρ<1.04 91242.9%
1.04<=ρ<1.0614 863.6%
1.06<=ρ<1.08 91439.1%
1.08<=ρ<1.11141351.9%
1.11<=ρ<1.15271661.8%
1.15<=ρ<1.2016 964.0%
1.20<=ρ<1.30191359.3%
1.30<=ρ 191163.3%

There's a pretty clear cut-off right around ρ ≥ 1.11 where the confidence value really seems to work well; pick results are at or above a 60% success rate.

The bad news is, particularly for ρ < 1.08, the confidence value was actually a negative indicator of which team would win, at least this year.

I need to run the pick results for more seasons to find out how much of this is how APR works, and how much it was a quirk of this season. But that's going to have to wait for another time if I want to get this posted while it's still February...

Monday, February 14, 2011

NFL Wrapup: APR Picks by Team

APR's pick results by team, for weeks 2-17 of the regular season.

RecordTeamsComments
13-2PanthersAPR never picked the Panthers to win
11-4Patriots, Giants
10-5Falcons, Bills, Vikings, Jets, Steelers, 49ers, Buccaneers
9-6Ravens, Bengals, Packers, Chiefs, Saints, Seahawks 16 teams at 9-6 or above. A noticable drop off from last year
8-7Cardinals, Bears, Cowboys, Broncos, Colts Of course, many of the teams picked 8-7 or worse had inconsistent seasons.
7-8Eagles, Rams, Titans, Redskins, Browns, Dolphins All these teams had quarterback issues to one degree or another.
6-9Lions, Texans, Raiders, Chargers Texans: terrible defense. Raiders: couldn't win outside the division. Chargers: couldn't win on the road. Lions: couldn't keep any of their quarterbacks healty.
5-10Jaguars The Jaguars were consistently awful on defense. Occasionally, David Garrard and Maruice Jones-Drew were good enough for that not to matter.

Monday, February 7, 2011

NFL: Super Bowl Pick Result

Winning team in bold.

Steelers vs. Packers (APR, SRS, Line)
Today I was listening to the local ESPN radio affiliate, and they were trying to puzzle out why an elite quarterback like Ben Roethlisberger had such a bad game in the Super Bowl. I'm pretty sure I know the answer: Ben Roethlisberger is not an elite quarterback.
Oh, to be sure, he's a descent quarterback, and one mostly adequate to the way the Steelers like to play football (solid defense, and run the ball a lot on offense). But I just don't think he's at the same level as Tom Brady, Peyton Manning, or even Aaron Rodgers.
If you look at Roethlisberger's numbers in the playoffs, he had 2½ good quarters against the Ravens, and maybe one good quarter against the Jets. In the Super Bowl, except for a few drives, he had perhaps his best game of the playoffs.
The problem, of course, is that the mistakes on those bad drives (the two interceptions and the final four-and-out) cost the Steelers the game. And that was the difference in the game—Aaron Rodgers was able to play better against the Steelers defense than Ben Roethlisberger was able to play against the Packers defense.

Totals

This
Week
This
Season
%
APR 1-09-281.8%
SRS 1-09-281.8%
Line 1-06-554.5%

Epilogue

That's (almost) it for the 2010 season. I've got a couple more wrap-up posts to do, and then, as usual, fspi will be pretty quiet until football starts up again (hopefully next fall).

Until then, thanks for reading. See you in September.

Sunday, February 6, 2011

NFL: Super Bowl Power Rankings

RankTeamPower
Index
W-LThis Week
1 (↑1)Packers1.1701
(LW × 1.0107)
14-6Won by 6
vs Steelers
2 (↓1)Patriots1.1658
(LW × 1.0045)
14-3Bye
3 (-)Steelers1.0919
(LW × 1.0127)
14-5Lost by 6
@ Packers
4 (-)Jets1.0609
(LW × 1.0049)
13-6Bye
5 (-)Ravens1.0243
(LW × 1.0043)
13-5Bye
6 (-)Bears1.0133
(LW × 1.0044)
12-6Bye
7 (-)Falcons1.0038
(LW × 1.0038)
13-4Bye
8 (-)Saints0.9611
(LW × 1.0027)
11-6Bye
9 (-)Eagles0.9571
(LW × 1.0029)
10-7Bye
10 (-)Buccaneers0.9564
(LW × 1.0023)
10-6Bye
11 (-)Lions0.9511
(LW × 1.0036)
6-10Bye
12 (-)Giants0.9364
(LW × 1.0027)
10-6Bye
13 (-)Cowboys0.9090
(LW × 1.0024)
6-10Bye
14 (-)Chargers0.8984
(LW × 1.0015)
9-7Bye
15 (-)Colts0.8956
(LW × 1.0019)
10-7Bye
16 (-)Bills0.8919
(LW × 1.0041)
4-12Bye
17 (-)Dolphins0.8862
(LW × 1.0034)
7-9Bye
18 (-)Raiders0.8850
(LW × 1.0022)
8-8Bye
19 (-)Browns0.8707
(LW × 1.0042)
5-11Bye
20 (-)Vikings0.8649
(LW × 1.0035)
6-10Bye
21 (-)Bengals0.8592
(LW × 1.0043)
4-12Bye
22 (-)Jaguars0.8553
(LW × 1.0016)
8-8Bye
23 (-)Texans0.8312
(LW × 1.0016)
6-10Bye
24 (-)Redskins0.8279
(LW × 1.0020)
6-10Bye
25 (-)49ers0.8158
(LW × 1.0022)
6-10Bye
26 (-)Chiefs0.8145
(LW × 1.0014)
10-7Bye
27 (-)Titans0.7836
(LW × 1.0013)
6-10Bye
28 (-)Seahawks0.7774
(LW × 1.0020)
8-10Bye
29 (-)Rams0.7738
(LW × 1.0016)
7-9Bye
30 (-)Broncos0.7265
(LW × 1.0012)
4-12Bye
31 (-)Panthers0.7244
(LW × 1.0034)
2-14Bye
32 (-)Cardinals0.6896
(LW × 1.0016)
5-11Bye

Comments:

  • The Packers finally overtake the Patriots for first place.

  • Every team increases by power, at least a little. I suspect that's a symptom of the margin power values not being balanced quite right...

  • APR has had the Packers and Steelers highly ranked all year long. The Packers have been in the top 5 since week 11, except for week 14 (after the loss to the Lions). The Steelers have been ranked 6 or higher every week except week 1.

  • In spite of all the talk of Pouncey being out for the Steelers, it didn't seem like the Packers got a lot of pressure on Roethlisberger. He was only sacked once, and mostly seemed to have time when he dropped back to pass.

  • The Packers 13 rush attempts tie for the fewest of any team to win in the playoffs (*1999 Rams in Super Bowl XXXIV also had 13).