Week 7 NFL Power Rankings

The NFL regular season is intended to expose the haves and have nots. While winning is the ultimate measurement in sport to determine a champion, it does not necessarily mean the best team always wins — be it a regular season game or the championship game. Just ask the 18–0 New England Patriots who lost to the upshot New York Giants in the 2008 Super Bowl. How about the 9–7 Cardinals who came within one play of winning the 2009 Super Bowl despite being called the worst playoff team in history by former player and well-regarded NFL announcer Cris Collinsworth. There’s a reason why even elite teams slip up and lose a game here and there to weaker opponents. Weird things happen.

In that same mode of thought, statistical methods are designed to filter out randomness and expose meaningful relationships in data. The Ball Cruncher Weekly NFL power rankings are built on a formula which values other factors beyond wins and losses, because losing by 3 to an elite opponent offers different insight than winning by 3 over a bottom feeder. The goal is to capture those differences from a statistical perspective. With that said, win value is still a huge part of the calculation in the rankings (50% in fact), as they should be, but we can’t look past how strength of schedule, point differential, turnover differential, etc. play a role in a team’s evaluation. And with that, here are the Week 7 Power Rankings.

RK  TM   W/L  PWR   SOS  SOV  WV    PDV   PSV   PAV   TDV
1.  NE   6-0  5.31  .45  .45  1.35  1.31  1.00  0.66  1.00
2.  GB   6-0  4.57  .35  .35  1.05  0.73  0.88  1.00  0.91
3.  CIN  6-0  4.14  .34  .34  1.02  0.68  0.94  0.69  0.81
4.  ATL  6-1  4.13  .38  .38  1.12  0.47  0.91  0.62  1.00
5.  CAR  6-0  4.11  .37  .37  1.10  0.63  0.84  0.84  0.69
6.  NYJ  4-2  4.00  .50  .41  0.81  0.78  0.81  0.91  0.69
7.  ARI  5-2  3.97  .34  .26  0.66  0.93  0.97  0.78  0.62
8.  DEN  6-0  3.69  .33  .33  0.98  0.40  0.59  0.97  0.75
9.  NYG  4-3  3.15  .45  .37  0.74  0.13  0.69  0.59  1.00
10. PIT  4-3  2.95  .45  .44  0.89  0.34  0.47  0.81  0.44
11. SEA  3-4  2.94  .59  .25  0.38  0.44  0.44  0.88  0.81
12. MIA  3-3  2.79  .38  .30  0.45  0.12  0.75  0.56  0.91
13. PHI  3-4  2.76  .61  .55  0.83  0.40  0.50  0.75  0.28
14. MIN  4-2  2.62  .34  .21  0.43  0.25  0.22  0.97  0.75
15. OAK  3-3  2.21  .49  .24  0.36 -0.15  0.72  0.38  0.91
16. BUF  3-4  1.98  .56  .37  0.55  0.05  0.78  0.44  0.16
17. NO   3-4  1.86  .59  .55  0.83 -0.40  0.56  0.25  0.62
18. WAS  3-4  1.78  .56  .42  0.63 -0.32  0.34  0.50  0.62
19. STL  3-3  1.57  .56  .48  0.71 -0.21  0.06  0.72  0.28
20. KC   2-5  1.22  .68  .43  0.43 -0.43  0.38  0.47  0.38
21. IND  3-4  1.18  .46  .25  0.38 -0.35  0.31  0.41  0.44
22. SD   2-5  1.14  .58  .21  0.21 -0.54  0.66  0.19  0.62
23. TB   2-4  1.12  .42  .36  0.36 -0.55  0.62  0.06  0.62
24. CLE  2-5  0.95  .45  .15  0.15 -0.45  0.31  0.31  0.62
25. BAL  1-6  0.88  .61  .57  0.29 -0.47  0.56  0.22  0.28
26. TEN  1-5  0.54  .47  .33  0.17 -0.32  0.09  0.53  0.06
27. HOU  2-5  0.32  .52  .31  0.31 -0.67  0.44  0.16  0.09
28. JAC  2-5  0.29  .56  .46  0.46 -0.95  0.31  0.09  0.38
29. DAL  2-4  0.25  .63  .50  0.50 -0.78  0.19  0.28  0.06
30. CHI  2-4 -0.07  .50  .38  0.38 -0.98  0.16  0.06  0.31
31. DET  1-6 -0.31  .58  .33  0.17 -1.01  0.12  0.12  0.28
32. SF   2-5 -0.35  .57  .38  0.38 -1.26  0.03  0.34  0.16
Legend:
RK  = Power Ranking
TM  = Team
W/L = Win-Loss Record
PWR = Power Ranking Score
SOS = Strength of Schedule
SOV = Strength of Victory
PDV = Point Differential Value
PSV = Points Scored Ranking Value
PAV = Points Against Ranking Value
TDV = Turnover Differential Ranking Value

Breakdown of the latest data model:

• win_value (50% of ranking) — team wins multiplied by strength of victory.
• point_differential_value (20% of ranking) — points per game plus/minus differential multiplied by strength of schedule.
• points_scored_value (10% of ranking) — points scored NFL ranking scaled to a baseline of 10. *i.e. number 1 / 32 team is equal to 32 / 1 points before scaling and 10 / 0.3125 after scaling.
• points_against_value (10% of ranking) — points scored against NFL ranking scaled down to a baseline of 10. *i.e. number 1 / 32 team is equal to 32 / 1 points before scaling and 10 / 0.3125 after scaling.
• turnover_differential_value (5% of ranking) — a team’s plus/minus turnover differential ranking scaled down to a baseline of 10. *i.e. number 1 / 32 team is equal to 32 / 1 points before scaling and 10 / 0.3125 after scaling.