NFL Wrapup: Pythagorian Projection vs. Reality

As usual, the "Projected Wins" value is used as a baseline, so a positive difference means the team exceeded their projected win value, a negative difference means they fell short.

Teams are sorted by the magnitude (absolute value) of the difference; teams that came close to their projected wins are near the top, teams farthest away from their projection are at the bottom.

This is a follow-up to a post from last summer. See this post for background details.

Team	Actual	Proj.	Diff.	Note
Jaguars	3	3.1	-0.1
Falcons	6	5.9	0.1
Chargers	9	9.2	-0.2
Broncos	12	11.7	0.3
Giants	6	5.6	0.4
Dolphins	8	7.5	0.5
Eagles	10	9.4	0.6
Bengals	10	11.1	-0.6
Seahawks	12	12.8	-0.8
Washington	4	4.8	-0.8
Vikings	7	6.1	0.9
Jets	4	5.4	-1.4
Patriots	12	10.5	1.5	Healthy Gronk
Cardinals	11	9.5	1.5	Carson Palmer was actually having a pretty good season before he got hurt.
Browns	7	5.5	1.5	Brian Hoyer
Colts	11	9.4	1.6
Rams	6	7.6	-1.6	Bradford injured
Raiders	3	4.9	-1.9
Chiefs	9	11.1	-2.1
Bears	5	7.3	-2.3	Offense collapsed
Bills	9	6.7	2.3	Defense much better
Lions	11	8.5	2.5	Defense much better
Steelers	11	8.2	2.8	Le'Veon Bell? The Steelers definitely had a rollercoaster season...
Ravens	10	7.1	2.9	Flacco playing better
Buccaneers	2	5.3	-3.3	No offense
49ers	8	11.5	-3.5	Injuries
Saints	7	10.8	-3.8	Drew Brees did not have a good year, weak defense didn't help.
Cowboys	12	8.2	3.8	Defense better, running game
Panthers	7	11.6	-4.1	Defense struggled, offense wasn't able to take up the slack.
Packers	12	7.8	4.2	Rodgers plays whole season
Texans	9	4.2	4.8	Last year's team was probably not as bad as their record.
Titans	2	7.5	-5.5	Injuries. Also Ken Whisenhunt's resume as a HC is mostly pretty ugly when he doesn't have Kurt Warner as his starting QB.

Comments:

• Four teams over the 4.0 threshold, but unlike last year, none over 5.5. Which gives a final scoring of 18 reasonably close, 10 moderately close, 4 wrong, and 0 "yikes".

• Remember last year when I speculated that the Titans and Jets might have a chance to contend for a playoff spot? Yeah, leave us never speak of that again.

• On a related note, it's been since 94-95 that the Lions have had back-to-back winning seasons, so it's probably advisable to hold off declaring the Lions have turned the corner. If they can come out and contend again in 2015, it'll be a solid sign that 2014 wasn't another fluke season for them like 2011 (and the first half of 2007).

• The Texans rebounded pretty nicely from their 2-14 season, especially considering they started three different guys at quarterback. But I think they're gonna have to find a solid quarterback before they're gonna do much better than 9 wins.

• The Saints have another tough season, but this time they can't blame it on the absence of Sean Payton. Maybe most surprising was 5 home losses for a team that had mostly done very well in the Superdome for many years.

NFL Wrapup: Pythagorean projection vs. reality

One final season wrapup post, and I got it in before spring summer! (Oh, well. Given how trivial some of the stuff is that passes for news right now, maybe it makes sense to wait a while to post it. Anyway...)

As usual, the "Projected Wins" value is used as a baseline, so a positive difference means the team exceeded their projected win value, a negative difference means they fell short.

Teams are sorted by the magnitude (absolute value) of the difference; teams that came close to their projected wins are near the top, teams farthest away from their projection are at the bottom.

This is a follow-up to a post from last summer. See this post for background details.

Team	Actual	Proj.	Diff	Note
Bills	6	5.8	0.2
Raiders	4	4.3	-0.3
Patriots	12	12.4	-0.4
Rams	7	6.6	0.4
Lions	7	6.5	0.5
Jaguars	4	3.4	0.6
Seahawks	13	12.4	0.6
Cowboys	8	7.4	0.6
Steelers	8	8.6	-0.6
49ers	12	11.3	0.7
Broncos	13	12.3	0.7
Dolphins	8	7.1	0.9
Chargers	9	8.0	1.0
Bengals	11	9.9	1.1
Ravens	8	9.4	-1.4
Browns	4	6.2	-2.2	Injuries, QB issues
Packers	8	10.3	-2.3	Aaron Rodgers hurt
Titans	7	4.5	2.5
Jets	8	5.4	2.6	Defense shows signs of life
Bears	8	10.8	-2.8	Injuries, big drop off on defense
Saints	11	8.1	2.9	Sean Payton back
Giants	7	10.0	-3.0	Injuries
Colts	10	6.8	3.2	Andrew Luck got better
Vikings	5	8.8	-3.3	Adrian Peterson regresses back to just very good
Buccaneers	4	7.9	-3.9	HC, QB controversy
Panthers	12	7.8	4.2	Defense much better
Cardinals	10	4.8	5.2	Bruce Arians, Carson Palmer
Eagles	10	4.0	6.0	Chip Kelly, Nick Foles
Redskins	3	9.1	-6.1	RG3 not fully recovered
Falcons	4	11.0	-7.0	Injuries
Texans	2	10.1	-8.1	Injuries
Chiefs	11	2.6	8.4	Andy Reid, defense much better

Using my original category metrics, that's 16 teams reasonably close, 9 teams moderately close, 5 teams wrong, and 2 teams in the "yikes" category.

Comments:

• Sean Payton really made a remarkable difference for the Saints. At this point, he's got to have a lot of good will available in New Orleans.

• Which kinda makes me wonder just how bad the situation with Jim Harbaugh really is. The 49ers were pretty much a doormat team from 2003 to 2010. Then Harbaugh is hired, and they are immediately one of the best teams in the league, advancing to the conference championship for 3 years in a row. Based on those kinds of results, he's really gotta be some kind of a pain if they still want to get rid of him.

• I was a little surprised to see that the Titans and Jets beat their respective projections by decent margins, in spite of their struggles. Clearly they both have issues to resolve, but maybe aren't that far away from at least being in contention for a playoff spot.

• Carson Palmer didn't have the most amazing season in the world (he threw a career high 22 interceptions), but he was so much of an upgrade over what the Cardinals had last year, he's gotta have some credit for their improved record.

• Last summer, I predicted that Chip Kelly might struggle getting his offensive schemes to work in the NFL. I'm still not totally sold it's going to work long term, but I have to admit he did better in his first season that I was expecting.

NFL Wrapup: APR's biggest upsets

Finally got around to finishing this. Better late then never, though, right? Right?

Dishonorable Mention: games that just missed the top 10

• Week 7: Andrew Luck and the Colts shred the Broncos suspect defense.

• Week 2: The Titans can't quite get past the Texans, and instead give them their last win of the season.

• Week 15: The Saints go into St. Louis, and look like dopes against the Rams. Again. (To be fair, the 2013 Rams are a lot better than they were in 2011.)

• Week 5: The Colts somehow score 34 points on the Seahawks, and give them their first loss of the season.

• Week 9: The Browns have one of a few really good games this season, and gave the Ravens one of the losses that kept them out of the playoffs this year.

APR's Top 10 Upsets of the 2012 Season

10. Week 15: Chargers 27, Broncos 20 (ρ=1.1438)
    The Broncos had a pretty ordinary defense this season, but for the most part, their record setting offense was more than able to make up the difference. In this game, the Chargers' defense was able to slow down the Broncos enough (holding them to a season low 20 points), and the Chargers' offense was able to control the clock and make sure Peyton Manning and the Broncos' offense spent a lot of time on the sidelines.

9. Week 10: Jaguars 29, Titans 27 (ρ=1.1511)
   For the first half of their season, the Jaguars looked like they were going to have a chance to go 0-16 this season. Then they put together a solid game on both offense and defense, shocking the Titans by getting their first win.

8. Week 7: Bears 41, Redskins 45 (ρ=1.1580)
   This is another case of a middle-of-the-road team losing to a really bad one. Even if you take into account one touchdown came on a pick 6, this was a lot of points for the Bears' defense to give up, especially considering the Redskins scored 27 points or less in all but two games this season.

7. Week 5: Chargers 17, Raiders 27 (ρ=1.1823)
   The Raiders mostly didn't have a very good defense this season; this was one of the few exceptions. They actually held the Chargers to 3 points until the 4th quarter. The Chargers mounted an attempt at a late come back, but the Oakland defense intercepted Philip Rivers on the Chargers last two drives, sealing the deal.

6. Week 1: Texans 31, Chargers 28 (ρ=1.1972)
   The Chargers managed to establish a 21-point lead with a touchdown on their first drive of the 3rd quarter. But after that, the Texans came roaring back, scoring an unanswered 24 points (including a critical pick 6). Another ugly loss for the Chargers.

5. Week 7: Patriots 27, Jets 30 (ρ=1.1994)
   This was a very ugly game for Tom Brady. Under 50% completion rate, under 5 yards an attempt passing, no touchdowns and an interception. Somehow the Patriots did manage to score 27 points, and force overtime. But in their final possession, the offense could only manage one first down, and their defense couldn't keep the Jets out of field goal range.

4. Week 2: Panthers 23, Bills 24 (ρ=1.2023)
   Part of this was a defensive breakdown by the Panthers' defense, only the Saints scored more points on them this season. Another issue in this game was the Panthers' offense twice settling for field goals after having goal-to-go situations.

3. Week 9: Chargers 24, Redskins 30 (ρ=1.2196)
   The Chargers could only score 24 points on the the Redskins very bad defense that mostly gave up a lot more points this season. Meanwhile, the Redskins scored 30 points on the Chargers

2. Week 9: Saints 20, Jets 26 (ρ=1.2332)
   This is maybe not totally fair to the Jets, who did manage to claw their way to an 8-8 record, thanks in part to the Dolphins pissing away their chance to get into the playoffs. But along with those 8 wins, the Jets also had 7 losses by double digits, including 4 by 20+ points. And the Saints, who with one more win, would have the NFC's #2 seed, could not beat them.

1. Week 4: Bengals 6, Browns 17 (ρ=1.2435)
   The Browns actually started out looking pretty good this season, with a decent defense, and (when Brian Hoyer started at quarterback) an offense to match. One of the results was this defeat of their division rival. But continued injuries at quarterback, along with a team that gave up on their season, meant the Browns finished their sixth season in a row with double digit losses.

None of these would qualify for a spot on APR's top 25 regular season upsets.

I always reserve the right to remove a game from the list when it's a case of a playoff bound team resting late in the season. That didn't happen this year.

Biggest Upsets According to the Line

Winning teams in bold. Teams favored by 10 or more points were 28-6-0 this year.

Week	Game	Line
1	Titans 16, Steelers 9	Steelers -7
6	Rams 38, Texans 13	Texans -7
7	Broncos 33, Colts 39	Broncos -7
13	Jaguars 32, Browns 28	Browns -7
15	Packers 37, Cowboys 36	Cowboys -7
16	Colts 23, Chiefs 7	Chiefs -7
2	Chargers 33, Eagles 30	Eagles -7½
7	Bills 23, Dolphins 21	Dolphins -8
16	Giants 23, Lions 20	Lions -8½
5	Jets 30, Falcons 28	Falcons -9½
10	Rams 38, Colts 8	Colts -9½
12	Buccaneers 24, Lions 21	Lions -9½
3	Colts 27, 49ers 7	49ers -10
12	Jaguars 13, Texans 6	Texans -10
15	Chargers 27, Broncos 20	Broncos -10
9	Bears 27, Packers 20	Packers -10½
16	Cardinals 17, Seahawks 10	Seahawks -10½
10	Jaguars 29, Titans 27	Titans -11

NFL Wrapup: APR's biggest upsets of 2012

Dishonorable Mention: games that just missed the top 10

• Week 17: The Texans need one more win to clinch the AFC's top seed, but are denied by the nothing-to-play-for Colts.

• Week 6: The Bengals couldn't run the ball, and Andy Dalton threw 3 interceptions, giving the Browns their first win of the season.

• Week 4: The Seahawks only score 13 points, and 3 interceptions give the Rams enough to give them their second road loss.

• Week 13: The 49ers travel to St. Louis, offensive mistakes spot the Rams 10 points, giving the Rams an opportunity to kick a late field goal in overtime. The Rams finished 4-1-1 in their division.

• Week 5: The Packers build a 21-3 lead over the Colts, but then somehow get outscored 27-6 in the second half. Only the Chargers in week 6 had a bigger second-half collapse this season.

APR's Top 10 Upsets of the 2012 Season

10. Week 3: Steelers 31, Raiders 34 (ρ=1.1726)
    The Steelers had problems on both sides of the ball this season, including allowing the Raiders to score a season-high 34 points on their defense. The Steelers were 2-6 in 2012 when they allowed 20 or more points.

9. Week 12: Seahawks 21, Dolphins 24 (ρ=1.1900)
   A bad day for the Seahawks on both sides of the ball. They allowed the Dolphins' offense to have one of their best games of the season, and their offense only scored 21 points on a defense that gave up 23 or more points 8 times this year.

8. Week 3: Jaguars 22, Colts 17 (ρ= 1.1930)
   The Colts had a pretty tough start to the season, including this loss to the Jaguars. In fairness, the Jaguars are a lot better when Maurice Jones-Drew can play.

7. Week 2: Ravens 23, Eagles 24 (ρ= 1.2047)
   The Ravens' defense has had some bad games this season, perhaps none worse than this one, where they allowed the Eagles 24 points in spite of 4 turnovers.

6. Week 8: Seahawks 24, Lions 28 (ρ= 1.2172)
   More evidence that the Seahawks just aren't as good a team away from their home stadium. In a situation where one more stop might've won the game, their defense allowed the Lions to drive the length of the field, score a go-ahead touchdown, and use virtually all of the remaining game time.

5. Week 4: Giants 17, Eagles 19 (ρ=1.2222)
   The Eagles had probably their best game of the season. Only one touchdown, but no turnovers, 422 yards of offense, and their defense held the Giants to just 17 points. If the rest of the Eagles' season had gone this way, Andy Reid would still be coaching in Philadelphia.

4. Week 2: Cardinals 20, Patriots 18 (ρ=1.2365)
   The Cardinals had a good defense, and occasionally made plays on special teams. In this game, the result was a perfect storm of things going wrong for the Patriots—for drive after drive, their offense stalled short of the endzone, Brady had a pass tipped and intercepted, the Patriots' special teams had a punt blocked, and a last-second field goal try went wide left.

3. Week 1: Seahawks 16, Cardinals 20 (ρ=1.2376)
   To be fair to the Cardinals, Kevin Kolb was a serviceable quarterback, and the Cardinals were a much, much better team than when they played with any of his backups.

2. Week 13: Panthers 21, Chiefs 27 (ρ=1.2896)
   The Panthers lost a lot of games this season because their defense couldn't stop their opponents. In this game, they allowed the Chiefs to score a season-high 27 points, and didn't get a single turnover from an offense that had 37 on the season.

1. Week 3: Chiefs 27, Saints 24 (ρ= 1.2913)
   The Saints claim the top spot on this list for the fourth year in a row. The Saints had a 24-6 lead with less than 6 minutes to play in the 3rd quarter. All they needed to do is control the ball, run out the clock, and maybe get one more insurance score. Instead, the defense gave up a touchdown and 3 field goals, the offense gave up a critical safety, and the Chiefs managed to score 21 unanswered points to win the game in overtime.

The top two upsets qualify for spots on APR's top 25 regular season upsets. They would both go between #14 (1979 Falcons @ Chargers) and #15 (2009 Eagles @ Raiders). It's a measure of just how bad the Chiefs were this season that it introduces to the list the first two upset teams that finished with losing records.

Eliminated Games

• Week 17: Buccaneers 22, Falcons 17 (ρ=1.1753)
  I will give the Falcons the benefit of the doubt here, that they just weren't playing as hard as they would if they had anything to gain by winning this game.

Biggest Upsets According to the Line

Winning teams in bold. Teams favored by 10 or more points were 25-1-1 this year.

Week	Game	Line
5	Packers 27, Colts 30	Packers -7
17	Texans 16, Colts 28	Texans -7
14	Chargers 34, Steelers 24	Steelers -7
13	49ers 13, Rams 16	49ers -7
3	49ers 13, Vikings 24	49ers -7½
14	Eagles 23, Buccaneers 21	Buccaneers -7½
3	Chiefs 27, Saints 24	Saints -8½
16	Vikings 23, Texans 6	Texans -9
13	Steelers 13, Ravens 10	Ravens -9
1	Redskins 40, Saints 32	Saints -9½
2	Cardinals 20, Patriots 18	Patriots -14

NFL Wrapup: Pythagorian Projection vs. Reality

As usual, the "Projected Wins" value is used as a baseline, so a positive difference means the team exceeded their projected win value, a negative difference means they fell short.

Teams are sorted by the magnatude (absolute value) of the difference; teams that came close to their projected wins are near the top, teams farthest away from their projection are at the bottom.

This is a follow-up to a post from last summer. See this post for background details.

Team	Actual	Proj.	Diff	Note
Browns	5	4.9	0.1
Patriots	12	11.6	0.4
Panthers	7	7.5	-0.5
Bills	6	6.6	-0.6
Cowboys	8	8.6	-0.6
49ers	11.5	12.3	-0.8
Packers	11	11.9	-0.9
Giants	9	7.9	1.1
Texans	12	10.9	1.1
Ravens	10	11.2	-1.2
Bengals	10	8.6	1.4
Dolphins	7	8.5	-1.5
Chargers	7	8.7	-1.7
Bears	10	8.3	1.7
Chiefs	2	4.0	-2.0
Cardinals	5	7.0	-2.0	Kevin Kolb can't stay healthy
Titans	6	8.2	-2.2	Jake Locker doesn't seem ready for prime time
Raiders	4	6.3	-2.3
Jets	6	8.4	-2.4	Revis hurt, and nobody to take up the slack
Seahawks	11	8.2	2.8	Russell Wilson, defense
Jaguars	2	5.2	-3.2	MJD hurt for most of season
Steelers	8	11.2	-3.2	Bruce Arians > Todd Haley?
Buccaneers	7	3.5	3.5
Falcons	13	9.3	3.7	Easy schedule?
Redskins	10	5.8	4.2	RG3
Vikings	10	5.5	4.5	Adrian Peterson's MVP season
Saints	7	12.1	-5.1	Sanctions take their toll
Rams	7.5	2.3	5.2	Jeff Fisher
Eagles	4	9.8	-5.8	Collapse of the Dream Team
Lions	4	9.9	-5.9	Lack of discipline
Broncos	13	5.8	7.2	Peyton Manning
Colts	11	3.3	7.7	Bruce Arians, Andrew Luck

Comments:

• Jeff Fisher did an impressive job in his first season with the Rams, managing to post their best record in 6 years, and a 4-1-1 record in the division. Of course, that means they'll be expected to have a winning record next year, something they haven't done since 2003.

• The Bengals' win over the Giants was the start of a 7-1 streak that propelled them to a winning season and the playoffs. They now have back-to-back winning seasons and playoff appearances for the first time in 30 years. The Bengals last won a playoff game 22 years ago, so a win this Saturday will end the league's longest active streak without a playoff win.

• It shouldn't be a huge surprise that a lack of discipline off the field for the Lions was reflected in a lack of performance on the field. The Lions did fire a few assistant coaches; I guess we'll find out next fall how much of a difference that makes.

• I certainly nailed it when I predicted the Saints would fall short of their 12.1-win projection. The good news for that team is (assuming their offense remains strong) even a modest improvement in their defense will get the Saints right back in contention.

• On the other hand, my prediction that the 49ers would fall short of their 12.3-win projection was, well, wrong. Mostly a very impressive season, especially given a pretty tough schedule. But I wonder how confident Jim Harbaugh can be going into the playoffs with a quarterback who doesn't have 8 starts yet, and his choice of two unreliable field goal kickers.

• The Colts have managed a very impressive turn-around, with a lot of the credit going to Andrew Luck. But his stat lines haven't been very impressive, with a 54% completion rate, and nearly as many interceptions as touchdown passes. As mentioned earlier, I think there's a good chance Luck will struggle in the playoffs, and could have a noticable sophomore slump next year if the Colts have a tougher schedule of opponents.

NFL Wrapup: APR Pick Reliability

APR: Home vs. Visitor

Note that APR had the Week 2 Jaguars @ Jets game as a push, and so that game is not included in these totals.

	Visitor Won	Home Won	Total
Picked Visitor	65	48	113
Picked Home	40	86	126
Total	105	134	239

APR's record picking the home team is a respectable 86-40 (68.2%). Picking the visiting team, APR is 65-48 (57.5%).

Matchup Ratio Range

Here's a plot of all the matchup ratios (the ρ value in the game picks), separated by week. You can see that most ρ values are under 1.55 or so, with the few outliers coming in the first few weeks. The two high-ratio picks in the second half of the season are for Colts @ Patriots (week 13), and Colts @ Ravens (week 14).

Here's a plot of just the games where APR picked the visiting team. Each green 'x' correspond to the ρ value of a correctly picked game, and each red '+' corresponds to the ρ value of an incorrectly picked game.

There's no nice correspondence between wrong picks and a low ρ value. Of the incorrectly picked visiting teams, 26 of 48 (54.1%) have a ρ value higher than 1.1.

Wrong picks are a bit more frequent early on—more than half (25 of 48) came in weeks 2 to 8.

Future Changes

During the offseason, I plan to run some simulations to see if I can find a more accurate configuration for APR.

Thanks again for reading. If you're interested, I'll have some posts during the off season using the historical data. If not, I plan to be back as usual next September.

NFL Wrapup: APR Picks by Team

APR's pick results by team, for weeks 2-17 of the regular season. You may remember that the Jets and Jaguars had equal power in the week 1 power rankings, and so APR didn't have a pick for their week 2 matchup. This is recorded as a tie for W-L-T purposes.

Record	Team	Comments
14-1	Packers	APR never picked the Packers to lose
13-2	Colts, Rams	Consistently bad
12-3	Browns, Vikings, Buccaneers
11-4	Falcons, Panthers, Bengals, Texans, Patriots, Saints
10-4-1	Jaguars
10-5	Lions, Dolphins, Steelers	16 teams at or above 10-5
9-6	Ravens, Bears, 49ers, Titans	16 teams at or below 9-6
8-6-1	Jets
8-7	Bills, Cowboys, Broncos, Chiefs, Chargers, Redskins
7-8	Cardinals	Not too surprising, given how many of their games came down to the final play.
6-9	Raiders	A strong start, but too many injuries, along with no depth at quarterback.
5-10	Giants, Eagles, Seahawks	How do you figure a team that got swept by the Redskins, and won the Super Bowl?

NFL Wrapup: APR vs. ESPN, 2011

Starting with week 4, I posted a contrast of APR's power rankings with ESPN's weekly power rankings. This is the 2011 season wrap-up for that series of posts.

For each week, a team is counted if it has a ±8 differential listed.

Teams ESPN liked more than APR:

Giants (5 weeks, 3 weeks on the bubble)

ESPN had them ranked as high as #6 (after their win over the Patriots), while APR had them ranked as low as #27 (after their loss to the Seahawks). It would be easy to make a post-hoc justification of EPSN's ranking based on the Giants' Super Bowl appearance, but the fact is, the Giants had, for the most part, a very unremarkable regular season.

Steelers (3 weeks)

The Steelers had a rocky start to the season, including an embarrassing week 1 loss to the Ravens, and a 3-point win over the hapless Colts that came on a last-second field goal. As a result, they spent 3 weeks right on the edge of this category.

Raiders (2 weeks, 2 weeks on the bubble)

When Jason Campbell and Darren McFadden were both healthy, the Raiders probably were the class of the AFC West. After they went down, their various replacements simply never preformed at that same level.

Chargers (2 weeks, 1 week on the bubble)

The Chargers have had a reputation of slow starts and strong finishes in the regular season. As a result, ESPN has developed a habit of overlooking those slow starts. The trouble is, the other AFC West teams are no longer as weak as they once were, and so those strong finishes are not so easy to come by.

Also-rans

Chiefs (1 week, 3 weeks on the bubble), Lions (1 week, 1 week on the bubble), Buccaneers (1 week)

Teams APR liked more than ESPN:

Cowboys (3 weeks, 2 weeks on the bubble)

The Cowboys played a lot of good (or, at least contending) teams close, which APR likes. The problem was, too many times they came out on the losing end of "close".

Dolphins (3 weeks, 2 weeks on the bubble)

The Dolphins had a late-season surge, which raised them up in APR's rankings. Unfortunately, it was too late to contend for a playoff spot, which got them ignored by ESPN.

Seahawks (2 weeks, 2 weeks on the bubble)

The Seahawks are another team that had a combination of close losses and a late season surge. But they were an also-ran team in what has been one of the weakest divisions, and were never really in contention for a playoff spot.

Bengals (2 weeks, 2 weeks on the bubble)

The Bengals only had one win against a team with a winning record, but they did manage to go 6-2 the first half of the season, which impressed APR more than ESPN.

Eagles (2 weeks)

Another team with a too-little, to-late late season surge. They could be a real contender for the NFC East next year.

Broncos (2 weeks)

APR liked the Broncos early, when they had some close losses to teams that were doing well.

Also-rans

Jaguars (1 week, 2 weeks on the bubble)

NFL Wrapup: Pythagorean Projection vs. Reality

As usual, the "Projected Wins" value is used as a baseline, so a positive difference means the team exceeded their projected win value, a negative difference means they fell short.

Teams are sorted by the magnatude (absolute value) of the difference; teams that came close to their projected wins are near the top, teams farthest away from their projection are at the bottom.

This is a follow-up to a post from last summer. See this post for background details.

Team	Actual	Proj.	Diff.	Note
Steelers	12	12.1	-0.1
Dolphins	6	6.2	-0.2
Giants	9	9.2	-0.2
Titans	9	8.5	0.5
Patriots	13	12.3	0.7
Redskins	5	5.9	-0.9
Raiders	8	8.9	-0.9
Cowboys	8	7.0	1.0	Romo healthy all season
Falcons	10	11.2	-1.2
Jaguars	5	6.4	-1.4	David Garrard cut at the end of preseason
Eagles	8	9.4	-1.4
Ravens	12	10.6	1.4
Seahawks	7	5.5	1.5
Bears	8	9.5	-1.5	Injuries
Bills	6	4.4	1.6	Better defense, at least for a few games
Jets	8	9.8	-1.8	Sanchez had 18 interceptions
Browns	4	6.1	-2.1
Chiefs	7	9.1	-2.1	Injuries, coaching
Lions	10	7.8	2.2	Matt Stafford healthy the whole season
Broncos	8	5.2	2.8	Tim Tebow
Chargers	8	10.9	-2.9
Bengals	9	6.1	2.9	Andy Dalton and A.J. Green
Texans	10	7.1	2.9	Much better defense
Saints	13	10.1	2.9	Drew Brees' record-breaking season
Packers	15	12.1	2.9	Aaron Rodgers' MVP season
Vikings	3	6.0	-3.0	No more Favre
Panthers	6	2.4	3.6	Cam Newton
Cardinals	8	4.4	3.6	Better defense and Patrick Peterson
Buccaneers	4	8.7	-4.7	Much tougher schedule
Rams	2	6.8	-4.8	Was 2010 a fluke year for the Rams?
49ers	13	6.8	6.2	Jim Harbaugh, coach of the year?
Colts	2	9.1	-7.1	No Peyton Manning

Comments:

• With the exception of a few extreme cases, most teams came fairly close to their projected win mark this year.

• In hindsight, the Colts' 9.1 projected wins, along with the fact that they barely made it to 10 wins last year were some warning signs of serious problems in Indianapolis.

• I'm not really sure what happened with the 49ers this year. There defense has been pretty solid for a few years now. Maybe they just needed someone who could make the best use of the offensive players they had? Frank Gore and Alex Smith both did very well this season.

• Last year, the Rams' defense had a stand-out season, holding their opponents to 20 points or less in 10 games. This year, they only held their opponents to 20 points or less in 4 games. That's the difference between 2010 and 2011 right there.

• Last summer, I speculated that the truncated off-season would hurt teams with new coaches and in need of free agent help. But with the exception of the Eagles and their many free agents, I'm not sure there are any teams that can blame their troubles on the short off-season.

NFL Wrapup: Significance of the first two games

This is a breakdown of how teams did, grouped by their standings after the week 2 games. Click here to see all the posts on this topic.

	Team	Standing	Note
WW	Packers	15- 1
Teams	Patriots+	13- 3
(7)	Texans+	10- 6
	Lions	10- 6
	Jets	8- 8
	Bills	6-10
	Redskins	5-11	Avg wins: 9.6
WL	Ravens+	12- 4
Teams	49ers+	11- 3
(9)	Bengals	9- 7
	Cardinals	8- 8
	Chargers	8- 8
	Raiders	8- 8
	Bears	8- 8
	Eagles	8- 8
	Jaguars	5-11	Avg wins: 8.6
LW	Steelers	12- 4
Teams	Saints+	11- 3
(9)	Falcons	10- 6
	Giants+	9- 7
	Titans	9- 7
	Broncos+	8- 8
	Cowboys	8- 8
	Browns	4-12
	Buccaneers	4-12	Avg wins: 8.3
LL	Seahawks	7- 9
Teams	Chiefs	7- 9
(7)	Dolphins	6-10
	Panthers	6-10
	Vikings	3-13
	Rams	2-14
	Colts	2-14	Avg wins: 4.7

Comments

• Playoff teams are listed in bold. Teams with a + are teams that won at least one playoff game.

• This year's WL and LW grouping looks a little more like the results for the historical data set. In both cases, the data is centered around 8 wins or so, but with the LW set noticably more spread out. (Note that only 3 of the WL teams more than a game away from 8 wins.)

NFL Wrapup: APR's Biggest Upsets of 2011

How Upsets Were Determined

Using all game scores through week 16, the power index values for all teams were computed, using a non-weighted version of the APR ranking algorithm. (The final week of games is left out to avoid skewing the rankings with the results of games where teams are resting their starters, or otherwise not trying).

For the weekly power rankings, APR uses method that gives less weight to older games, emphasising each teams more recent perormances. This means that the matchup ratios (ρ) listed below will not correspond to the matchup ratios listed in the weekly game pick posts.

Once the power indexes are computed for each team, every game of the season (including week 17) is picked using the unweighted rankings. The wrong picks are sorted by matchup ratio, with the games having the largest ratios featured below.

Any game that I regard as not a "real" upset (because a team is resting its starters, or is indirectly affected by such) is not included in this list.

Dishonorable Mention: games that just missed the top 10

• Week 15: The Ravens have one of the top-ranked defenses this season, but when they traveled to San Diego, the Chargers moved the ball up and down the field all game long and made the Ravens look like they were a long ways from deserving the AFC's #2 seed.

• Week 7: The Seahawks traveled to Cleveland, but couldn't leave with a win because they couldn't score 7 points on the Browns.

• Week 2: The Cowboys come back from a 10-point 4th-quarter deficit and steal an overtime win from the 49ers.

• Week 15: The Texans defense didn't show up, T.J. Yates looked like an inexperienced rookie, and the Panthers left Houston with a convincing win over the AFC South division champions.

• Week 2: Early signs of the Ravens road troubles when they travel to Nashville and give up two touchdowns and 4 field goals to the Titans (who only scored 26+ points four times all season).

APR's Top 10 Upsets of the 2011 Season

10. Week 9: Giants 24, Patriots 20 (ρ=1.1663)
    Two sacks and 21 incompletions (including a couple interceptions) add up to probably Tom Brady's worst game of the season. Factor in 2 lost fumbles, and the Patriots just gave the Giants too many chances to win this game.

9. Week 15: Titans 13, Colts 27 (ρ=1.1742)
   An injured Matt Hasselbeck, an ineffective Jake Locker, and a Colts defense that finally put a whole game together finally got the Colts a win, and cost the Titans a playoff spot.

8. Week 14: 49ers 19, Cardinals 21 (ρ=1.1930)
   The 49ers have had trouble scoring points, especially on the road. Which means that (as with this game) it may only take a handful of big plays to beat them. Losing this game meant the 49ers had to win out to clinch the #2 seed over the Saints.

7. Week 3: Falcons 13, Buccaneers 16 (ρ=1.2068)
   The Buccaneers were actually a unanimous pick to win this game, but in hindsight, it has to be counted as a pretty embarrassing loss for the Falcons. This is the only game of the season the Buccaneers' opponent didn't score at least 17 points.

6. Week 7: Ravens 7, Jaguars 12 (ρ=1.2167)
   Unlike the Ravens' other road losses this season, their defense did a fine job in this game. But their offense didn't even generate 150 yards and couldn't put up enough points to out-score the Jaguars four field goals.

5. Week 2: Patriots 31, Bills 34 (ρ=1.2179)
   The Patriots established an early 21-0 lead in this game, but Tom Brady threw 4 interceptions, and that let the Bills back in the game, and gave them a chance to win on a last-second field goal.

4. Week 16: Texans 16, Colts 19 (ρ=1.2831)
   The Texans had too many sacks, too many penalties, and not enough touchdowns in this game. That left the door open for the Colts to take the lead on a late touchdown, and clinch their second win of the season.

3. Week 6: Saints 20, Buccaneers 26 (ρ=1.3163)
   Sean Payton got his knee busted up, Drew Brees threw 3 interceptions, and the Saints gave the Buccaneers their last win of the season.

2. Week 15: Packers 14, Chiefs 19 (ρ=1.3215)
   It's tempting to blame the Packers' defense for this loss, but their play here is comparable to the way they've played all season—they gave up a lot of yards, but not many points. The real problem was on the other side of the ball. The Packers' patchwork offensive line gave up 4 sacks, and their receivers dropped too many passes. The result was Aaron Rodgers posting a comletion ratio under 50% for just the 3rd start of his career, and the only game this season the Packers didn't score at least 24 points.

1. Week 8: Saints 21, Rams 31 (ρ=1.3721)
   Drew Brees got sacked a season-record 6 times in this game, threw 2 interceptions, and generally made the Rams' defense look like world-beaters. This makes 3 seasons in a row (2010, 2009) that the Saints are on the losing end of the season's biggest upset.

Eliminated Games

Most teams had something to play for right down to the end of the season, so no games were eliminated from the rankings this year.

Biggest Upsets According to the Line

Winning teams in bold. Teams favored by 10 or more points were 34-3-0 this year.

Week	Game	Line
8	Saints 21, Rams 31	Saints -15½
10	Cardinals 21, Eagles 17	Eagles -14
15	Packers 14, Chiefs 19	Packers -14
5	Seahawks 36, Giants 25	Giants -9½
3	Patriots 31, Bills 34	Patriots -9
9	Giants 24, Patriots 20	Patriots -8½
13	Chiefs 10, Bears 3	Bears -8
7	Ravens 7, Jaguars 12	Ravens -8
9	Bears 30, Eagles 24	Eagles -8
4	49ers 24, Eagles 23	Eagles -7½
9	Broncos 38, Raiders 24	Raiders -7½

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	67	63	130
Picked Home	42	68	110
Total	109	131	240

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	9	47.1%
1.02<=	ρ	<1.04	9	12	42.9%
1.04<=	ρ	<1.06	14	8	63.6%
1.06<=	ρ	<1.08	9	14	39.1%
1.08<=	ρ	<1.11	14	13	51.9%
1.11<=	ρ	<1.15	27	16	61.8%
1.15<=	ρ	<1.20	16	9	64.0%
1.20<=	ρ	<1.30	19	13	59.3%
1.30<=	ρ		19	11	63.3%

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...

NFL Wrapup: APR Picks by Team

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

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

NFL Wrapup: Significance of the first two games

This is a breakdown of how teams did, grouped by their standings after the week 2 games. I originally did this for the 1993-2008 seasons, which showed some interestign results.

	Team	Standing	Note
WW	Steelers+	12- 4
Teams	Bears+	11- 5
(8)	Saints	11- 5
	Chiefs	10- 6
	Packers+	10- 6
	Buccaneers	10- 6
	Dolphins	7- 9
	Texans	6-10	Average wins: 9.6
WL	Patriots	14- 2
Teams	Ravens+	12- 4
(8)	Giants	10- 6
	Jaguars	8- 8
	Seahawks+	7- 9
	Titans	6-10
	Redskins	6-10
	Cardinals	5-11	Average wins: 8.5
LW	Falcons	13- 3
Teams	Jets+	11- 5
(8)	Colts	10- 6
	Eagles	10- 6
	Chargers	9- 7
	Raiders	8- 8
	Broncos	4-12
	Bengals	4-12	Average wins: 8.6
LL	Rams	7- 9
Teams	Cowboys	6-10
(8)	Vikings	6-10
	Lions	6-10
	49ers	6-10
	Browns	5-11
	Bills	4-12
	Panthers	2-14	Average wins: 5.3

Comments

• Playoff teams are listed in bold. Teams with a + are teams that won at least one playoff game.

• Starting off 2-0 or 0-2 continues to be an excellent indicator of how a team will finish. Only two of the 2-0 teams didn't finish with a winning record, while all eight of the 0-2 teams finished with a losing record.

• Unlike the historical data, but like last year, the winning percentage of the WL teams look at least a little better than the LW teams. The 1993-2008 historical data is not the biggest data set in the world, so perhaps that was just a fluke. It could also be that whatever was causing the LW bias has disappeared, perhaps because of the 2002 division realignments.

• On the other hand, the LW group is fielded four playoff teams, compared with the three for the WL group (including the Seahawks). Also note that the WL group has four teams below 0.500, while the LW group only has only two.

NFL Wrapup: APR vs. ESPN

Starting with week 4, I posted a constrast of APR's power rankings with ESPN's weekly power rankings. This is the 2010 season wrapup for that series of posts.

For each week, a team is counted if it has a ±8 differential listed.

Teams that ESPN liked more than APR, 2010:

Buccaneers (6 weeks)

Their 10-win record looks good, until you realize the Buccaneers did not beat a team with a winning record until week 17. And that was a Saints team that likely wasn't trying very hard after the Falcons opened up a 21-0 halftime lead over the Panthers.

Seahawks (5 weeks)

Yeah, they won a playoff game, but they were just awful in the regular season. All 9 of their losses were by 15 points or more, including a 38-15 pasting by the Buccaneers.

Rams (4 weeks)

The Rams were pretty awful too, though (arguably) better than the Seahawks. The Rams defense held their opponent to 20 points or less in 10 games this season. The trouble was, the offense only scored more than 20 points in three games.

Also-rans:

Texans (2 weeks), Dolphins (2 weeks), Vikings (1 week)

Teams that APR liked more than ESPN, 2010:

Browns (12 weeks)

The Browns were a very frustrating team to evaluate. They had 10 games decided by a touchdown or less, and lost 7 of them (and nearly 8, only beating the Panthers because a last-second field goal try doinked the upright).

Lions (8 weeks)

The Lions had similar season to the Browns (4-6 in games decided by 7 or less). That four game winning streak at the end of the season makes APR look at least a little better (and possibly saved HC Jim Schwartz's job).

Bills (4 weeks)

The Bills were 3-5 in games decided by 7 or less. APR probably gives too much weight to close losses. On the other hand, I suspect it could be a very close balance between giving too much and too little weight in these situations.

Also-rans:

Bengals (3 weeks), Titans, Broncos (2 weeks), Packers, Chargers, Cowboys, Vikings, Buccaneers (1 week)

NFL Wrapup: Pythagorean Projection vs. Reality

This is the follow-up to last summer's Pythagorean Projection 2009>2010 post.

Team	Acutal	Proj.	Diff	Comment
Redskins	6	5.8	0.2	New HC, QB
Dolphins	7	7.2	-0.2
Eagles	10	10.2	-0.2	New QB
Jets	11	11.4	-0.4
Ravens	12	11.6	0.4
Saints	11	11.6	-0.6
Browns	5	4.3	0.7	QB issues
Titans	6	6.8	-0.8	QB issues, Britt injured
Colts	10	10.8	-0.8	Injuries
Bills	4	5.8	-1.8
Packers	10	11.8	-1.8	Injuries
Seahawks	7	5.0	2.0	Weak division
Chargers	9	11.1	-2.1	Special teams, Gates injured
Patriots	14	11.6	2.4
Jaguars	8	5.5	2.5
Giants	10	7.4	2.6	Eli Manning healthy
Steelers	12	9.2	2.8	Troy Polamalu healthy
Lions	6	2.9	3.1	Ndamukong Suh
Texans	6	9.4	-3.4	Bad defense
49ers	6	9.5	-3.5	Bad offense
Falcons	13	9.0	4.0	Michael Turner healthy
Broncos	4	8.1	-4.1	Injuries
Cardinals	5	9.3	-4.3	No more Kurt Warner
Bears	11	6.7	4.3	Cutler doing much better
Bengals	4	8.4	-4.4	Too much WR drama?
Raiders	8	2.8	5.2	No more JaMarcus Russell
Cowboys	6	11.3	-5.3	Romo hurt, bad defense
Chiefs	10	4.7	5.3
Rams	7	1.6	5.4	Weak division, new QB
Vikings	6	11.6	-5.6	QB, HC issues
Panthers	2	8.2	-6.2	QB issues
Buccaneers	10	3.8	6.2

Comments:

• The "Projected Wins" value is used as a baseline, so a positive difference means the team exceeded their projected win value, a negative difference means they fell short.

• Teams are sorted by the magnatude (absolute value) of the difference; teams that came close to their projected wins are near the top, teams farthest away from their projection are at the bottom.

• Unlike last year, but like 2008, there are a lot of teams past the ±4 game difference level, which is over the average level for the 1994-2008 seasons.

• In spite of all the quarterback drama surrounding the Redskins, Eagles, Browns, and Titans, they all finished remarkably close to their projected win totals.

• And in spite of all the issues with turnovers and lost games with the Giants, they actually did significantly better than their projected win total. You may remember last year Eli Manning had a foot injury; I suspect that was a big reason the Giants struggled last year.

• The good news for the Bears is Jay Cutler 23 touchdowns and 16 interceptions this year (compared with 27 touchdowns and 26 interceptions last year). The bad news is that hew was sacked 52 times (35 times last year), so the Bears' window of opportunity before Cutler is too hurt to play a full season is likely to be pretty short.

• The Chiefs and Buccaneers both benefited from relatively weak schedules (although the Buccaneers played in a much tougher division). Both are in the second year of tenure for their respective head coaches and quarterbacks.

• Matt Ryan (and head coach Mike Smith) get a lot of credit for the Falcons resurgence for the last three seasons. But running back Michael Turner (who was also signed three seasons ago) has also been a big factor, especially when he's healty.

NFL Wrapup: Top 10 Upsets of the Regular Season

How Upsets Were Determined

First, the power rankings for each team was determined, using the first 16 weeks of play (the final week of games is left out to avoid skewing the data with the results of games where teams are resting their starters, or otherwise not trying).

However, unlike the weekly power rankings, which give more weight to recent games than ones earlier in the season, the power rankings for the season upsets are unweighted—all game results count equally. This means that the matchup ratio values (ρ) below will not correspond to the matchup ratios given in the respective game pick posts.

Once the power rankings are computed, every game of the season is picked using those rankings. The wrong picks are then sorted by matchup ratio, with the games featuring the largest ratios featured below.

Any game that is not a "real" upset (because a team is resting its starters, or is indirectly affected by such) is removed from the list.

Dishonorable Mention: some games that missed the top-10 cut

• Week 14: The Jets defense held the Dolphins to just 10 points, but that wasn't enough for their offense that only managed 6.

• Week 3: Janikowski misses 3 field goals, and the resurgent Raiders can't get past the struggling Cardinals.

• Week 16: The Cowboys spot the Cardinals 21 points, and can't recover.

• Week 4: Chris Johnson has a bad day, and Titans' turnovers give the Broncos enough for a win.

• Week 4: The Redskins knock Michael Vick out of the game, and Kevin Kolb can't produce enough offense for the Eagles to pull out a win.

The Top 10 Upsets of the 2010 Season

10. Week 7: Redskins 17, Bears 14 (ρ=1.1471)
    The Bears' offense had probably their worst game of the season, generating 7 punts, 6 turnovers, and 4 sacks. This game was only close because McNabb threw a couple interceptions.

9. Week 6: Dolphins 23, Packers 20 (OT) (ρ=1.1475)
   The The Packers have had one of the best defenses in the league this year, giving up the fewest points of any team except the Steelers. But in this game, the Packers' run defense struggled, which let the Dolphins control the ball and keep it away from the Packers' struggling offense.

8. Week 14: Packers 3, Lions 7 (ρ=1.1595)
   Easily the most egregious example of the Packers' struggling offense. This game cost them a chance to win their division, and isn't ranked higher on this list only because the Lions finished the season on a 4-game winning streak.

7. Week 3: Chargers 20, Seahawks 27 (ρ=1.1717)
   How do you generate more than 500 yards of offense and yet only have 20 points on the scoreboard? Three lost fumbles, two interceptions, and a failed 4th-down conversion are a good start. The Chargers' special teams took a big chunk of the blame for this loss, but that's a whole lot of offensive futility for a team that was supposed to win their division.

6. Week 10: Chiefs 29, Broncos 49 (ρ=1.1973)
   Part of the Chiefs resurgence this year has been a good, or at least adequate defense. They are 9-1 when they hold their opponent to 20 or fewer points. But the Chiefs also had a couple of defensive breakdowns this season, and this was the biggest, giving up 7 touchdowns to the Broncos offense that only made it past 28 points three times all season.

5. Week 2: Ravens 10, Bengals 15 (ρ=1.2160)
   Back in week 2, this didn't seem like that much of an upset—the Bengals were the defending AFC North champions, they were supposed to win games like this. But in hindsight, it should've been a red flag that the Bengals could only score 15 points in spite of intercepting Joe Flacco 4 times.

4. Week 5: Packers 13, Redskins 16 (OT) (ρ=1.2170)
   More offensive struggles for the Packers, and again the Redskins manage to catch their opponent having one of their worst games of the season.

3. Week 9: Patriots 14, Browns 34 (ρ=1.2349)
   Perhaps the Patriots were looking ahead to the game at the Steelers that followed this one. But somehow the Browns (and particularly Peyton Hillis) were the only team this season that was really able to expose the Patriots unimpressive defense this season.

2. Week 6: Seahawks 23, Bears 20 (ρ=1.2566)
   Unlike Week 7's Redskins @ Bears game, the Bears didn't have any turnovers in this game. But Cutler was sacked 6 times (including once for a safety), and the offense could only sustain four drives, and going 3-4 on field goal tries. The Seahawks only had three sustained drives, but they all finished with a touchdown, and that was enough to put them by the struggling Bears.

1. Week 5: Saints 20, Cardinals 30 (ρ=1.2708)
   The Saints had three turnovers in this game, and the Cardinals turned them all into touchdowns. As the Cowboys found out on Christmas, even the Cardinals can get a win when you spot them 21 easy points.

Eliminated Games

This season, the only eliminated game was the Cowboys week 17 defeat of the Eagles, which would have otherwise appeared in the "Dishonorable Mention" section.

Biggest Upsets According to the Line

Week	Game	Line
10	Cowboys 33, Giants 20	Giants -14
16	Vikings 24, Eagles 14	Eagles -14
7	Browns 30, Saints 17	Saints -13½
13	Raiders 28, Chargers 13	Chargers -13
17	Buccaneers 23, Saints 13	Saints -9
2	Bears 27, Cowboys 20	Cowboys -8½
4	Colts 28, Jaguars 31	Colts -8½
6	Chargers 17, Rams 20	Chargers -8½
16	Chargers 20, Bengals 34	Chargers -7½

NFL: How points were scored in the 2009 regular season

I went through PFR's list of box score data for every regular season game played in the 2009 season, and compiled the following tallies:

Unit	Type	#	Points	Total
Offense	Passing TD	711	4266
	Rushing TD	428	2568
	2-point conversion	24	48	6882
Defense	Pick-6	48	288
	Fumble-6	26	156
	Safety	14	28	472
Special	Field goals	756	2268
Teams	Extra points	1163	1163
	Kickoff return	18	108
	Punt return	10	60
	Blocked punt return	4	24
	Blocked FG return	2	12	3635
Total				10989

Comments:

• PFR's data seems to be mostly OK, although there are some obvious errors. This game, for example, has a touchdown being scored on a "-21 yard fumble return".

• All passing and rushing touchdowns are credited to the offense, even though there was at least one scored by special teams. There's no reliable way to tell when a touchdown is scored on special teams using PFR's score format.

• Another deficiency of PFR's score format: when a conversion attempt fails after a touchdown, it doesn't indicate whether it was an extra point try (and whether it was a bad snap, a bad kick, or a block), or whether it was a 2-point try.

  There were 60 failed conversions. According to this article [nytimes.com], there were 53 2-point conversion tries this season, which means that 29 failed 2-point conversions and 31 failed extra points.

  That gives a 97.6% success rate for extra points, and a 45.3% success rate for 2-point conversions. That may not seem like much, but getting 2 points on success doubles the effectiveness (for an extra point, expected value is .976, for a 2-point conversion, expected value is .906). Of course, that's over the course of a season for 32 teams. Which doesn't always help in one game, one team, one play, for a single good-or-bad outcome.

• I've said before I'm generally not a big fan of 2-point conversions; I was actually rather surprised by how infrequently they were attempted (53 tries/1163 TDs = 4.6% of the time).

• I was also surprised by how low the defensive scoring was compared to offense and special teams. As important as a defensive score can be to the course of a game, in terms of total points scored, it's pretty minor.

• More scoring data coming as soon as I get the box score information parsed out to a more convenient format.

NFL Wrapup: APR Pick Reliability

2009 Navigation Links

Read this for a description of APR

Introduction

The following is an analysis of APR pick reliability for regular season games.

APR new margin power vs. classic margin power

You may remember at the beginning of the season I announced that I would be using a new margin power function for the APR power rankings this year. APR's picks for this year finished at 152-88. This turns out to be 6 picks weaker than the original 'classic' margin function for the same 2009 games.

The new and classic versions of APR were actually mostly in agreement on game picks; they only picked 8 games differently (correct picks are shown in bold):

Week	Game				Pick (current)	Pick (classic)
3	Falcons	10,	Patriots	26	Falcons	Patriots
4	Jets	10,	Saints	24	Jets	Saints
5	Patriots	17,	Broncos	20	Patriots	Broncos
10	Bills	17,	Titans	41	Bills	Titans
11	Chargers	32,	Broncos	3	Broncos	Chargers
12	Giants	6,	Broncos	26	Broncos	Giants
12	Steelers	17,	Ravens	20	Steelers	Ravens
14	Redskins	14,	Raiders	13	Raiders	Redskins

Over the course of the season, I've become increasingly dissatisfied with the new margin power function; this tends to confirm my suspicion that it's not really an improvement.

APR: Home vs Visitor

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

	Visitor Won	Home Won	Total
Picked Right	66	86	152
Picked Wrong	37	51	88
Total	103	137	240

APR picked the home team to win 123 times (86+37), again noticably less than the 137 home teams that did win.

As with last year, this indicates that something needs to be changed so that the home team is picked more often. This year, I think I know what that change needs to be: each team needs to have separate home and away power rankings, and the games picked according to the appropriate power.

If you look at the regular season standings, there are some teams that have a noticable difference between home and road records:

Team	Home Record	Road Record	Difference
Patriots	8-0	2-6	6
Vikings	8-0	4-4	4
49ers	6-2	2-6	4
Ravens	6-2	3-5	3
Steelers	6-2	3-5	3
Falcons	6-2	3-5	3
Bears	5-3	2-6	3
Seahawks	4-4	1-7	3

I will be very surprised if separating power rankings into home and away categories doesn't yeild at least some improvement in pick reliability.

APR vs. Pythagorean Projection

For week 1 of the season, I posted game picks based on the Pythagorean projections from last year. The Pythagorean picks for this year were 164-92-0 (64.1%), which beats APR (and even APR classic) this year. A 64.1% successful pick rate is best Pythagorean Projection has done at least since 1993 (see results for previous years here, along with an important update).

Conclusions

APR continues to be a work in progress. For next year, I will implement the home/away power rankings for game picks (the weekly power ranking posts will still show a combined power ranking, though).

I'm going to abandon the current margin weight function, either in favor of the classic function, or something better (if I can find something better).

I'm also going to adopt the Pythagorean Projection pick method for week 1 games, so that APR can pick the full season of games.

NFL Wrapup: APR Picks by team

Record	Teams	Comments
14-1	Rams	The Rams were not picked to beat the Lions in week 8.
13-2	Chargers
12-3	Lions, Colts, Buccaneers, Bears	The Bears were a pretty bad team this year, especially for making it to 7 wins. APR had them ranked in the bottom 10 from week 9 to the end of the season.
11-4	Vikings	APR never picked against the Vikings.
10-5	Seahawks, Saints, Redskins, Patriots, Packers, Giants, Eagles, Chiefs, Bengals	I'm surprised APR did this well on the Patriots considering the gap between their home record (8-0) and road record (2-6).
9-6	Titans, Ravens, Falcons, Cowboys, Cardinals, Browns, Bills	16 teams picked 9-6 or worse; same as last year.
8-7	Raiders, Panthers, Jets, Broncos, 49ers	The 49ers were another team with a big difference between their home record (6-2) and road record (2-6)
7-8	Texans, Jaguars, Dolphins	How much does a crowd matter to home field advantage? In spite of their often empty stands, the Jaguars were another team did a lot better at home (5-3) than on the road (2-6).
4-11	Steelers	How do you pick a team like this? Four of their wins came against playoff teams (Chargers, Vikings, Packers, and Ravens), while three of their losses came against some of the worst teams in the league (Chiefs, Browns, and Raiders).

Update: I should make clear that this is for regular season games only (weeks 2-17).