Ok, I’m going to punch through this kind of quickly today.   These are the updated rankings for this week:

            Predictions for last week. . .we were 13-3, easily our best week of the year.   We were within one point of getting the score right for Oakland at Dallas, had reasonably good score predictions for most of the other games.  Missed a few of them.   We had Philadelphia beating Washington by two touchdowns (which they should have), and we had New England hanging tight with New Orleans.    The only games we actually missed were the Giants at Denver, Miami at Buffalo and Arizona at Tennessee.  We’re now 68-44 on the year, back up to 61%.

            Strongest offenses:

            Strongest defenses:

            Worst offenses:

            The negative number for Oakland means essentially that they can be expected to score less than half what an average team would score.   Worst defenses:

            Strength of schedule, strongest:

            Weakest:

            After eleven games Miami’s schedule is 76 points stronger than Minnesota’s, but the gap has been narrowing (although it won’t this week.) 

            Most consistent teams:

            Least consistent teams:

            And finally, temperatures:

            OK, I changed the way I figure temperatures.   I had been talking about doing this for several weeks, finally made the time to do it.

            There were two problems with the way I was figuring temperatures.  One was that it was not responsive enough to recent games.   The whole idea of a “temperature”—and I agree, there is no actual evidence that this has any predictive value—but the whole idea of a temperature is that it is based on how the team has played recently.   My system was too sluggish.

            Also, the system was based on how well teams played, ignoring the issue of whether they won or lost.   Baltimore, for example, had a series of games early in the season in which they played very good teams and lost by just a few points.   The system before figured that they were playing pretty well, so their temperature kept going up.   This isn’t right; when we say that a team is “hot”, we don’t mean that they’ve been losing close games to good teams.   We mean they’ve been winning.

            So I threw that system away and started over, and this is the new system:

            1)  Each team’s score before they have played a game is 72 degrees.

            2)  After each game, move them halfway back toward 72 degrees.

            3)  Plus 10 points if they win.

            4)  Minus 10 points if they lose.

            5)  Plus one-half of their game output score.

            6)  Minus 50.

            That’s if they play a game; if they don’t play, their game output score is 9 times their last week’s score, plus 72, divided by 10.    Let’s run the temperature for the season for the Titans.   This is their schedule:

            And these have been the results of those games.

            Our system translates each result into a “Game Output Score”, based on the quality of the opposing team, the score of the game, and the location.   These are the Game Output Scores for each of these eleven games:

            Generally, when you win you have a Game Output Score over 100, and when you lose you have a Game Output Score under 100, but not always; if you go into New Orleans and lose by two points, that would be a Game Output Score well over 100.   

            After Week One, Tennessee’s temperature was 72, plus 72, divided by two, minus ten (because they lost), plus 49.97, minus 50.   That’s 61.97, so their post-game temperature was 61.97, or 62 degrees.

            After the second week, we

            Add the 61.97 to 72     (making 133.97)

            Divide by two               (making 66.985)

            Subtract ten again         (making 56.985)

            Add one-half the Game Ouput Score of 96.55  (making 105.26)

            And subtract 50            (making 55.26).

            So their second-week temperature was (or would have been, had we been using this system at that time), 55 degrees.   Tracing this for the season, this becomes:

            Or, if you prefer:

            Anyway, they’re playing a lot better now than they were in October.

            Predictions for this week:

See you next week.

Bill