Giving The Odds On Week 14
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by user Davis21wylie
Taking a break from my papers for a moment, I thought I'd post something cool I've been fooling around with recently. Yesterday I put up my weekly team rankings, which use a variety of stats to try and ascertain each team's true winning %, independent of luck and scheduling factors. In case you forgot, here are the expected Win %'s:
Team NewRtg ------------------------------- Chicago Bears 0.683 San Diego Chargers 0.668 Baltimore Ravens 0.663 Dallas Cowboys 0.662 New England Patriots 0.661 Indianapolis Colts 0.630 Jacksonville Jaguars 0.622 New Orleans Saints 0.581 Cincinnati Bengals 0.571 Philadelphia Eagles 0.569 New York Giants 0.532 Kansas City Chiefs 0.532 Denver Broncos 0.530 Pittsburgh Steelers 0.514 Minnesota Vikings 0.509 Miami Dolphins 0.501 Atlanta Falcons 0.490 Carolina Panthers 0.480 St. Louis Rams 0.480 New York Jets 0.471 Seattle Seahawks 0.453 Washington Redskins 0.409 Buffalo Bills 0.406 Tennessee Titans 0.405 Green Bay Packers 0.393 Arizona Cardinals 0.390 Detroit Lions 0.387 Houston Texans 0.381 Cleveland Browns 0.365 San Francisco 49ers 0.360 Oakland Raiders 0.347 Tampa Bay Buccaneers 0.297 -------------------------------
What's cool is that since I've got an expected winning % for every team, I can also calculate the odds of each team winning their next game, through something Bill James invented called the Log5 method. Basically, the Log5 takes winning percentages of each team in a matchup, and plugs them into this formula:
A - A * B
WPct = -----------------
A + B - 2 * A * B
The resulting percentage is the odds that Team A will beat Team B. Pretty cool, huh? I did this for Week 14's games, plugging in my "True Win %" into the formula for each matchup:
A-B Team A% Team B% OddsA -------------------------------- PIT-CLE 0.514 0.365 64.8% ATL-TB 0.490 0.297 69.5% BAL-KC 0.663 0.532 63.4% IND-JAX 0.630 0.622 50.9% MIN-DET 0.509 0.387 62.2% NE-MIA 0.661 0.501 66.0% NYG-CAR 0.532 0.480 55.2% CIN-OAK 0.571 0.347 71.5% PHI-WAS 0.569 0.409 65.6% TEN-HOU 0.405 0.381 52.5% GB-SF 0.393 0.360 53.5% SEA-ARZ 0.453 0.390 56.4% NYJ-BUF 0.471 0.406 56.6% SD-DEN 0.668 0.530 64.1% DAL-NO 0.662 0.581 58.5% CHI-STL 0.683 0.480 70.0% --------------------------------
But we're not through yet. The NFL's home-field advantage this season has been about 8% -- I say this because the home team wins 58% of the time, while we'd expect them to only win 50% of their games at a neutral site. That means we have to add 7.8% to the home team in every matchup, giving us the final odds:
A-B RawOddsA HomeField OddsA OddsB ----------------------------------------------- PIT-CLE 64.8% +7.8% 72.6% 27.4% ATL-TB 69.5% -7.8% 61.7% 38.3% BAL-KC 63.4% -7.8% 55.6% 44.4% IND-JAX 50.9% -7.8% 43.1% 56.9% MIN-DET 62.2% -7.8% 54.4% 45.6% NE-MIA 66.0% -7.8% 58.2% 41.8% NYG-CAR 55.2% -7.8% 47.4% 52.6% CIN-OAK 71.5% +7.8% 79.3% 20.7% PHI-WAS 65.6% -7.8% 57.8% 42.2% TEN-HOU 52.5% -7.8% 44.7% 55.3% GB-SF 53.5% -7.8% 45.7% 54.3% SEA-ARZ 56.4% -7.8% 48.6% 51.4% NYJ-BUF 56.6% +7.8% 64.4% 35.6% SD-DEN 64.1% +7.8% 71.9% 28.1% DAL-NO 58.5% +7.8% 66.3% 33.7% CHI-STL 70.0% -7.8% 62.2% 37.8% -----------------------------------------------
For some games, the home-field adjustment actually changes who is favored. The most evenly-matched game of the week according to this method is Seattle-Arizona (thanks to Arizona being at home), followed closely by the Giants-Panthers showdown. The lock of the week appears to be Cincinnati over Oakland.
It should be pretty interesting to see how well this method predicts Week 14's games...
