Going Head to Head vs Vegas, Baby!!
The preseason begins TODAY and here is my totally numbers driven stab at providing baseline 2019 over/under wins projections for each NFL team.
Here is a brief step by step overview of how the numbers were crunched:
- Take last year's Points For ("PF") and Points Against ("PA") totals for each team.
- Use an actual 2018 Strength of Schedule ("SoS") list of your choice to find the correlation between it and each of the above.
- Based on this correlation, break out the portion of 2018 totals for each team into "Team Portion" which represents the amount of PF and PA generated by the team through their talent, coaching and scheme and the "SoS Portion" which represents the impact of the opposition's resistance.
- Apply a Rating Scale based on the distribution to give simple grades like in school (Top Team earns "100%" grade, teams below the mean by more than 1 standard deviation earn "67%" or less).
- Conduct the same exercises for 1-4 above using the 2019 "SoS" projections of your choice.
- Find the difference between the Actual PF and PA Ratings and their corresponding projected values; this is your adjustment to the "SoS Portion" in #3 above.
- Add up your projected 2019 "SoS Portion" with the 2018 "Team Portion" (this is unadjusted for personnel or scheme philosophy changes that may have occurred over the off-season).
- Find the difference between the PF and PA and divide by 16 games to give you the 2019 per game Margin of Victory.
- Divide the 2019 MoV by the 2018 MoV to get the change in 2019 games.
The table below shows the results
2018 Actual - Duh.
2019 Projected - Shows the win total using the method outlined above. "+/-" represents the increase or decrease in wins projected for 2019 over 2018.
Vegas W - Shows the number for wins posted on www.oddsshark.com.
Notes:
- Obviously, there are no half wins but this projection is in line with the Vegas win over/under numbers below; the recap at the end of the season will round the numbers for comparison.
- Denver moves up the most whole games from 6 to 9.5 (10).
- Tennessee looks to fall off a cliff going from 9 wins to 2 in our analysis...dang. Looks like going from the 13th easiest schedule to the 4th most challenging could take its toll.
- Bullish compared to Vegas:
- New Orleans +4 (14 vs 10 Vegas over/under)
- LA Rams +4 (14 vs 10)
- Miami +4 (8.5 vs 4.5)
- Chicago +3.5 (12.5 vs. 9)
- Houston +3.5 (11.5 vs 8)
- LA Chargers +3 (13 vs 10)
- Bearish compared to Vegas:
- Tennessee -5.5 (2.0 vs 7.5 Vegas over/under)
- San Francisco -3 (5 vs 8)
- NY Jets -3 (4.5 vs 7.5)
- Cleveland -2.5 (6.5 vs 9)
- Green Bay -2 (7 vs. 9)
- Based on the above, here are the Division placings:
- AFC East: NE, MIA, BUF, NYJ
- AFC North: BAL, PIT, CIN, CLE
- AFC South: Tie HOU and IND, JAX, TEN
- AFC West: Tie KC and LAC, DEN, OAK
- NFC East: PHI, DAL, WAS, NYG
- NFC North: CHI, DET AND MIN (Tie), GB
- NFC South: NO, CAR, ATL, TB
- NFC West: LAR, SEA, SF, ATL
The above exercise was fun but the outcome is not at all sensitized with all the factors that the oddsmakers layer into their projections. But does that even matter? We'll find out at the end of the 2019 NFL season when we recap our results.
Don't forget to leave a comment.
Happy NFL Day and have a great season (unless you are a Patriots fan)!
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Check out my analysis of the Wide Receivers from 2019 NFL draft based on Dominator Rating (DR) compared to my Efficiency finding ratio, ROI HERE.
Check out my analysis of the Wide Receivers from 2019 NFL draft based on Dominator Rating (DR) compared to my Efficiency finding ratio, ROI HERE.
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