1)  Ranting

            Hey, did you guys catch Ron Jaworski on Monday Night Football, whining at length about how terrible it is that Romeo Crennel has to put up with speculation (no!  UN-informed speculation!  The Horror!) about who might replace him as coach of the Browns?   What in the hell is he thinking of?

            Ron, there are people in this country who have real problems.   There are people who have cancer and no health insurance.  There are people whose jobs have been swept away by the economic collapse—hundreds of thousands of them--people who have sick children and no way to take care of them, people who work 80 hours a week and are losing their houses anyway, and people who have just burned their brownies.   All of these are real problems.   Having to put up with newspaper speculation about who will replace you when you get fired from a job that pays several million dollars a year is NOT a real problem. 

            All of us who have the privilege of being involved with the management of a sports team are paid more than we are worth, and why is that?   It is because the public cares.   The public takes an interest in what we do.   There is no reason they should, but. ..they do.   That’s the only reason we have jobs.

            As a part of that, the public talks about us.  Sometimes they say nasty things about us.   I’m not claiming that we enjoy it, but it’s a very small price for the opportunity to participate.  Any sports official who would whine about having to put up with media speculation about his job status—not that Crennel did—but anybody who would is a weak, cowering, sniveling, slimy, blubbering loser.   And anybody who would encourage him to do that is enabling behavior of which he should be profoundly ashamed.  

2)  Predictions from last week

            Our predictions for Week Fifteen were 10-6, making us 115-62-1 on the season.   There was only one game on which we were really close to the actual score.   We had it Chicago 26, New Orleans, 22; it was actually 27-24.    Our worst prediction of the week was Arizona over Minnesota, 25-23; Minnesota actually won it, 35-14.    The other games on which we were wrong were games that we saw as being close, and they were close. . .well, fairly close.    Dallas beat the Giants 20-8, which isn’t that close.

            The Kansas City paper has a lineup of six sportswriters who predict the games each week.   Early in the season all of the sportswriters were more accurate at predicting the games than we were, and I hadn’t looked at it for about six weeks, but I saw it on Sunday and was surprised to discover that we had passed them all.   Before this week we were 105-56-1 on the year, a .651 percentage.     Their best is their NFL writer, Randy Covitz, who was 135-73 before the week (.649.   Not sure how they counted the tie.   If they counted it as a loss for Covitz, then he would actually be ahead of us, at 135-72-1, putting him ahead .6514 to .6512).    Anyway, we both went 10-6 this week.  

            I’ve always tried to be clear about this:  I don’t know squat about the NFL.   I’m just looking at the numbers and trying to figure out what they mean.    It is interesting to note that this approach appears to be as sound a predictive mechanism as actually knowing what you’re talking about.  

3)  Predictions for this week

             We expanded our home field advantage last week to 4 points.  The home teams won by an average of 2.5 points, but the home field edge was a little bigger than that because the better teams were on the road, although that’s more true this week than it was last. We’re keeping the home field advantage at 4 points.

            I believe we’re picking with the betting favorites in every game this week, except maybe Baltimore at Dallas.

4)  Updated Rankings

            Pittsburgh, in our system, has taken over as the best team in the NFL.    The Steelers have ranked for the last three weeks as the fourth-best team, behind Tennessee, the Giants and Baltimore, but they beat Baltimore while the other two teams shifted into post-season preparation mode, and the Steelers jumped into the gap:

5)  Team Scoring and Allowing Tendencies

            These are the current Scoring and Allowing Tendencies for the 32 NFL teams.   Since Arizona and New Orleans have Scoring and Allowing Tendencies of (essentially) eight each, our prediction is that if these two teams played there would be 64 points scored in the game.  

             Our point predictions for last week were actually very good, for the first time.   Most of the games came in about where we said they would, with the New England/Oakland game being a dramatic outlier (predicted 33, actual 75).    But, in the chart that I’ve been running, our predicted ranges were about right:

            To emphasize the point, we can break the big group down into high 40s and low 40s: 

             So for the first time, it appears that we’re kind of on target with that.  Our point predictions had been running a little high, so, in predicting points scored for last week, I arbitrarily reduced them, with this explanation:

The point averages in the last two weeks have run markedly lower than predicted, which is what one would intuitively expect when the weather gets colder, so I modified the prediction system this week to reduce expected points scored in each game by 10%.    When I get some time I can research historic patterns of how point totals vary within the season.

             Trailblazer posted a comment showing that in fact point totals do NOT decline late in the season; point totals tend to be low in weeks one and two, and after that they’re flat the rest of the schedule.    I accept his research, but on the other hand point totals continued to be low last week.   We had predicted 636 points scored on the week; the actual total was 641.   So I’m going to stick with the adjustment. 

6)  NFL Team Temperatures

            Pittsburgh also replaces Baltimore as the hottest team in the league:

             St. Louis remains anchored at 14-15 degrees while the rest of these standings churn.   When I first presented the team temperatures four weeks ago, Green Bay was the second-hottest team in the league, coming off a 37-3 destruction of the Bears.  They haven’t won since.  I don’t know how I’ve got them at 80 degrees.   It suggests something may need review with this formula. Oh, well. . ..

            Most of the teams that were hot have stayed hot; most of the teams that were cold have stayed cold, but there’s been a lot of shuffling within those groups.  

7)  Good Week, Bad Week

            The only NFL team to have their worst week of the season in Week Fifteen was Arizona, which gave up 35 points to Minnesota.   The only NFL team to have their best week was Minnesota.

8)  Quality of Competition

            What team in the NFL has played the most difficult schedule this year? 

            Cincinnati, followed by Detroit.   Cincy is 2-11-1 and, as you know doubt know, Detroit is a Jay Leno punch line. 

            These are bad teams, true, but the strength of schedule actually has a lot to do with their records.   Cincinnati is 8.8 points below average, but their schedule has also been 4.3 points per game tougher than average.   Detroit is 11.3 points per game below average, but they’re losing another 3.2 points by playing a brutal schedule.   These are the Quality of Competition averages for the 32 NFL teams:

9)  Consistency

            Pittsburgh has been the league’s best team, is the hottest team, and has also been the most consistent team, with a Standard Deviation of Game Scores of just 4.47 points.  The Steelers have played well every game this year.   Their three losses are to three good teams—the Eagles, Giants, and Colts—and by a total of 20 points.  

10)  Home Field Advantages

            Finally, who has the biggest home field advantage in the league this year—measured by the difference between how well they play at home, and how well they play on the road?

            Carolina.   The Panthers are 8-0 at home this year, outscoring their opponents 234-112 (average 29-14).    On the road they are 3-3 but have been outscored 119-153 (average 20-26).  

            Some of that is quality of competition; their competition in the home games has been much weaker than in the road games.   Adjusting for the quality of competition, 23 teams have played better at home than on the road:

            While the other nine have played better on the road: 

             It’s possible that we could improve the accuracy of our predictions by making the Home Field Advantage team-specific, rather than generic; I don’t know.   Something to research some other time. . ..Thanks.