It’s a cliche: Every game counts in a league that plays just 16 of them. But Benjamin Morris’s findings in his debut Skeptical Football column were nevertheless striking: A Week 1 or Week 2 game can affect an NFL team’s chances of making the playoffs by as much as 20 or 30 percent. We also […]
It’s a cliche: Every game counts in a league that plays just 16 of them. But Benjamin Morris’s findings in his debut Skeptical Football column were nevertheless striking: A Week 1 or Week 2 game can affect an NFL team’s chances of making the playoffs by as much as 20 or 30 percent. We also […]
From a statistical standpoint, we know very little about football. Forty-six players on each team suit up per game, and most of them materially affect outcomes — yet, for most of them, only a handful of stats are recorded. The stats we do have are hopelessly entangled, as each player’s performance affects virtually every other’s. […]
From a statistical standpoint, we know very little about football. Forty-six players on each team suit up per game, and most of them materially affect outcomes — yet, for most of them, only a handful of stats are recorded. The stats we do have are hopelessly entangled, as each player’s performance affects virtually every other’s. […]
We rolled out our NFL Elo ratings last week, giving us a set of computer power ratings for each team, each week, going back to the 1970 AFL-NFL merger. There are a lot of cool things we can do with these numbers; for example, I used them Monday to quantify how upset-heavy Week 1 of […]
