NFL Rankings Update and Analysis: Week 5

October 7, 2015 - by Seth Trachtman

For the second week, we’re reviewing our recent NFL predictive rankings and how they compare to human voters from the ESPN.com NFL Power Rankings.

Here’s how things look going into Week 5.

Quick Rankings Primer

When we refer to the TR rankings, we mean our NFL predictive rankings, which are our core measure of team strength. These rankings are designed, as the name implies, to predict future outcomes of games.

Our rankings are driven by margins of victory. Unlike human voters and opinions, they don’t care only about wins and losses, which can be highly influenced by luck (e.g. a poorly timed fumble). More specifically, this means:

A team that loses a game can still move up in our rankings (e.g. if they lose by less than expected)
A team that wins a game can still move down our rankings (e.g. if they win by less than expected)
A team with several losses can still be ranked highly (e.g. if they have faced a tough schedule, or potentially just had a few fluke losses)

In addition, our rankings factor in a blend of season performance to date plus each team’s preseason rating, since the results of a small number of early season games can often be misleading. However, the impact of preseason ratings (which you can reference on our NFL rankings page as well as in our 2015 NFL preseason rankings post) decays as the season goes on.

General Highlights Entering NFL Week 5

Same top four, slightly different order. The Patriots remain in the top spot following a bye week, while the next two spots flip-flopped. No. 2 Green Bay increased its rating a bit by beating San Francisco by two touchdowns on the road; No. 3 Denver slipped after only beating Minnesota by 3, in a game where our rankings favored the Broncos by 9. Seattle remains No. 4 after a closer-than-expected win against Detroit.
Dropoff after the top four. Those four teams make up a well-defined elite cluster at the top of our rankings, with New England over a point better than the other three. Next, No. 5 Cincinnati and No. 6 Arizona make up the second tier, with No. 7 Pittsburgh not too far behind. A huge cluster of slightly better-than-average teams follows, from No. 8 Baltimore to No. 17 Carolina, and it includes two 4-0 teams, Atlanta and Carolina. Both of those teams likely have profited from early season luck; they rank 1-2 in turnover margin per game. In addition, the Panthers have faced the easiest schedule in the NFL so far.
Atlanta’s interesting case. In addition to their high positive turnover margin signaling potential good luck so far, No. 16 Atlanta’s preseason rating (which was below average) is still weighing on it. In short, our system is still not quite ready to buy that the Falcons are a top team, despite their early season 4-0 record. Given that the Falcons have the easiest schedule in the NFL this year, there’s a possibility they will finish the 2015 regular season with a very strong win-loss record, but still not rank that highly. It will largely depend on their margins of victory.
A few early losses aren’t the end of the world. There are three 3-loss teams (Baltimore, Philadelphia, Kansas City) that remain in the top 12 of our rankings. Each of these teams has faced a difficult schedule to this point, especially the Ravens and Chiefs. Baltimore’s rating jumped up by about half a point after beating Pittsburgh by three points on the road; the Ravens have lost their three games by a combined 14 points, and two of them came against our current No. 3 and No. 5 teams. The whipping boys of the media, Philadelphia has lost its three games by a combined 15 points, and beat a top-10 Jets team on the road. All three of KC’s losses have come vs. current top five teams.
Not many elite matchups this weekend, but Seattle expected to lose. The best matchup of Week 5 is clearly Seattle at Cincinnati, with the Seahawks trying to prove they can win on the road after dropping their first two games away from the friendly confines of CenturyLink Field. Both the Vegas spread and our ratings currently favor a Bengals victory, although the game looks very close; our ratings favor the Bengals by 1 right now, while Vegas likes them by 2.5. The rest of the top five teams all face off against teams well outside our top 10.

Biggest Gainers Last Week

Team	Rating	Change	New Rank	Old Rank	Result
Atlanta	0.9	+1.5	16	19	W 48-21 vs. #23 Houston
NY Giants	0.3	+1.4	18	21	W 24-10 @ #8 Buffalo
St Louis	-0.4	+0.7	20	20	W 24-22 @ #5 Arizona
NY Jets	1.7	+0.7	10	14	W 27-14 vs. #18 Miami
Cincinnati	4.1	+0.7	5	6	W 36-21 vs. #9 Kansas City
Jacksonville	-7.4	+0.7	31	32	L 16-13 @ #11 Indianapolis
Carolina	0.8	+0.6	17	17	W 37-23 @ #31 Tampa Bay
Baltimore	1.9	+0.6	8	12	W 23-20 @ #7 Pittsburgh
Washington	-4.5	+0.6	27	29	W 23-20 vs. #10 Philadelphia
Detroit	-0.9	+0.5	21	22	L 13-10 @ #4 Seattle

Atlanta continues to be the talk of early 2015 and our biggest gainer after clobbering Houston 48-21 on Sunday. They’ve apparently found their running back in second-year player Devonta Freeman, as he’s scored three touchdowns in consecutive starts. Our ratings only had the Falcons as 4-point favorites entering the game vs. Houston, but they scored early and often.
The Giants sit just behind Atlanta among our biggest gainers after beating the Bills 24-10, though Buffalo’s offense was banged up at the skill positions, and injuries aren’t proactively accounted for in our ratings.
St. Louis, which we featured in our Week 4 upset watch column, registered its second win against a good team with a surprising 24-22 win at Arizona. They generated offense from healthy first-round pick Todd Gurley, seeing his first significant work following last year’s knee injury. The ratings favored Arizona by 8.5 points, but St. Louis now has impressive NFC West wins vs. the Cardinals and Seattle.
Jacksonville gets out of the cellar, barely, after losing in overtime to an Andrew Luck-less Colts team on the road. The Colts escaped after the Jags missed game-winning field goals at the end of regulation and in overtime. The Jags resume is still far from impressive to date, with their lone victory vs. struggling No. 22 Miami at home.

Biggest Losers Last Week

Team	Rating	Change	New Rank	Old Rank	Result
Buffalo	1.2	-1.5	13	8	L 24-10 vs. #21 NY Giants
Houston	-3.1	-1.5	24	23	L 48-21 @ #19 Atlanta
Miami	-1.2	-0.8	22	18	L 27-14 vs. #14 NY Jets
Arizona	3.8	-0.8	6	5	L 24-22 vs. #20 St. Louis
Kansas City	1.5	-0.8	11	9	L 36-21 @ #6 Cincinnati
Tampa Bay	-7.6	-0.7	32	31	L 37-23 vs. #17 Carolina
Indianapolis	1.2	-0.6	14	11	W 16-13 vs. #32 Jacksonville
Pittsburgh	2.7	-0.6	7	7	L 23-20 vs. #12 Baltimore
Seattle	6.1	-0.5	4	4	W 13-10 vs. #22 Detroit
Denver	6.6	-0.4	3	2	W 23-20 vs. #15 Minnesota

Just one week after being our biggest gainer, Buffalo regressed. They had a rough defeat at home vs. the Giants, failing to generate many points without LeSean McCoy and Sammy Watkins. They were favored by about seven points heading into the game, according to last week’s ratings, and by 6.5 in Vegas.
Tied with Buffalo for this week’s biggest loser was Houston, after their 27-point loss at Atlanta. The Texans’ troubles at quarterback continue, but up until Sunday Houston had been more competitive with one touchdown losses to Kansas City and Carolina, along with a 10-point win vs. Tampa Bay in Week 3. There’s little time for the team to rest with a Thursday night game vs. Indianapolis.
Miami was thumped by the Jets in London, 27-14, and now head into their Week 4 bye with a new head coach. The team lost by 13 points in a matchup that our ratings had viewed as essentially even, though Vegas favored the Jets by a few points. The Fins had big preseason expectations, but are now 0-2 in the AFC East before even facing New England. The Dolphins do get some short-term schedule strength relief after their bye, though, facing Tennessee and Houston.
Tampa Bay falls to the bottom of the rankings after losing by two touchdowns to Carolina at home, although they have a chance to fight out of the bottom with a game vs. interstate rival Jacksonville this week. Not only does Tampa Bay have a 1-3 record, but they’ve managed that with the fourth easiest schedule in the NFL to this point. It could be another very long year for Bucs fans.

The TR NFL Rankings: Week 5 Edition

We compared our Predictive Rankings to the ESPN.com power rankings, which were updated on Tuesday, October 6.

Teams We Like Better Than ESPN: Seattle, Pittsburgh, Baltimore, Philadelphia, Kansas City, Minnesota, Indianapolis, Detroit, Miami, Houston
Teams ESPN Likes More Than We Do: Arizona, NY Jets, Buffalo, Dallas, Atlanta, Carolina, NY Giants, San Diego, St. Louis, New Orleans, Tennessee, Washington, Oakland, San Francisco, Chicago

The human voters seem to be more in line with the TR rankings at the top this week, with four of the top five being the exact same. In fact, it’s not until Baltimore, our No. 8 ranked team, that we see a huge discrepancy between the TR rankings and ESPN.com Power Rankings.

As expected, ESPN’s rankings continue to correlate more with current record while also rewarding or penalizing very recent performance more than our ratings do, with more substantial moves in their rankings for the Jets, Kansas City, St. Louis, Miami, New Orleans, and Houston. All of these teams moved at least six spots in the ESPN rankings, while none of them moved more than four spots in our rankings.

The Complete TR NFL Rankings (as of Tue 10/6)

“Rating” refers to the team’s predictive rating, which indicates points better than an average team on a neutral field
“SOS” refers to the team’s strength of schedule rating for games played so far this season

Team	TR Rank	ESPN Rank	TR Change	ESPN Change	Rating	Result	SOS
New England (3-0)	1	1			8.3	Bye	-1.1
Green Bay (4-0)	2	2	1	2	7.1	W 17-3 @ #26 San Francisco	-0.8
Denver (4-0)	3	3	-1	1	6.6	W 23-20 vs. #15 Minnesota	1.1
Seattle (2-2)	4	7			6.1	W 13-10 vs. #22 Detroit	0.7
Cincinnati (4-0)	5	5	1		4.1	W 36-21 vs. #9 Kansas City	-0.2
Arizona (3-1)	6	4	-1	-2	3.8	L 24-22 vs. #20 St. Louis	-4.9
Pittsburgh (2-2)	7	10		-2	2.7	L 23-20 vs. #12 Baltimore	1.3
Baltimore (1-3)	8	19	4	3	1.9	W 23-20 @ #7 Pittsburgh	3.6
Philadelphia (1-3)	9	22	1	-5	1.7	L 23-20 @ #29 Washington	1.3
NY Jets (3-1)	10	9	4	6	1.7	W 27-14 vs. #18 Miami	-1.3
Kansas City (1-3)	11	18	-2	-6	1.5	L 36-21 @ #6 Cincinnati	5.0
Minnesota (2-2)	12	14	3	-1	1.3	L 23-20 @ #2 Denver	0.1
Buffalo (2-2)	13	12	-5	-2	1.2	L 24-10 vs. #21 NY Giants	0.7
Indianapolis (2-2)	14	16	-3	-2	1.2	W 16-13 vs. #32 Jacksonville	-1.9
Dallas (2-2)	15	13	-2	-2	0.9	L 26-20 @ #24 New Orleans	0.2
Atlanta (4-0)	16	6	3		0.9	W 48-21 vs. #23 Houston	0.0
Carolina (4-0)	17	8		1	0.8	W 37-23 @ #31 Tampa Bay	-5.1
NY Giants (2-2)	18	15	3	1	0.3	W 24-10 @ #8 Buffalo	-0.3
San Diego (2-2)	19	17	-3	1	0.2	W 30-27 vs. #16 San Diego	0.1
St Louis (2-2)	20	11		8	-0.4	W 24-22 @ #5 Arizona	2.0
Detroit (0-4)	21	26	1	-1	-0.9	L 13-10 @ #4 Seattle	5.0
Miami (1-3)	22	30	-4	-7	-1.2	L 27-14 vs. #14 NY Jets	-1.5
New Orleans (1-3)	23	21	1	10	-2.4	L 26-20 vs. #13 Dallas	-0.6
Houston (1-3)	24	28	-1	-7	-3.1	L 48-21 @ #19 Atlanta	-1.2
Cleveland (1-3)	25	25	2	1	-4.3	L 30-27 @ #16 San Diego	-2.1
Tennessee (1-2)	26	23	-1	1	-4.3	Bye	-2.6
Washington (2-2)	27	24	2	3	-4.5	W 23-20 vs. #10 Philadelphia	-1.5
Oakland (2-2)	28	20			-4.8	L 22-20 @ #30 Chicago	-1.2
San Francisco (1-3)	29	27	-3	1	-5.1	L 17-3 vs. #3 Green Bay	3.5
Chicago (1-3)	30	29		3	-6.2	W 22-20 vs. #28 Oakland	0.8
Jacksonville (1-3)	31	31	1	-2	-7.4	L 16-13 @ #11 Indianapolis	1.3
Tampa Bay (1-3)	32	32	-1	-2	-7.6	L 37-23 vs. #17 Carolina	-2.4