NFL Week 1: Results & Power Rankings

Author: Nicolas Geisbacher, CEO at CNG Analytics Inc.

Hey everyone, hope you enjoyed week 1 of the NFL half as much as we did. For people that know me, football has never really been a sport that I paid too much attention to. Of course, I’d watch the Super Bowl every year like everyone else but for some reason I was never interested enough to watch the season play out week by week. I have to admit, ever since we at CNG Analytics have started making projections and analyzing the games, I finally understand why so many people love the game of football. It’s really exciting! Real NFL fans are probably laughing at me right now but it’s true. It just took me until this year to truly appreciate.

So let’s get right into it. There were a lot of wild games this week; for instance the Packers ended up losing by 35 points to the Saints without even scoring a single TD. I’ll start with the season opener though, Cowboys vs. Buccaneers. We predicted the Bucs to win 71% of the time with our Monte Carlo simulations and the Bucs did win but it was by no means a lopsided game. Tom Brady was phenomenal in the first half throwing for 3 TD’s yet the Cowboys didn’t back down. After two fumbles and an interception by the Cowboys, the Bucs early lead disappeared and they were now on the fence as the Cowboys scored a late field goal, putting them up by 1. With about 1 and a 1/2 minutes left, Brady proved why he’s known as the GOAT and secured enough yards to put the Bucs in range of a field goal, ultimately winning the game 31–29. Extremely exciting! Yes, the Bucs seemed to be dominating most of the game and it looked like they would get an easy win but it was the fumbles and the interception that ended up completely flipping things. That, and Dak Prescott having an amazing game as well. This is why you have to love sports, anything can happen at any time.

Tom Brady and Rob Gronkowski

As for the rest of week 1, I could probably write an essay talking about all the games and the plays that happened but I’ll save you the trouble of reading all that (since I know you probably watched it yourself) and summarize the games we projected and their outcomes. Up next we have the Seahawks vs. Colts. We predicted the Seahawks winning 61% of the time and that’s exactly what happened. Not much to say here, just that the Seahawks started off strong in the first half and the Colts couldn’t catch up. Steelers vs. Bills was the first upset based on the projections we made. We had the Bills winning 55.3% of the time but the Steelers said “I don’t think so.” The Bills were up 10–0 in the first half but were blown out of the water in the second half losing 23–16 in the end. The Cardinals vs. Texans was another upset by our standards. The Texans won 53.5% of the time yet it was the Cardinals that actually won big, 38–13, with the help of Chandler Jones and his 5 sacks. Thankfully the Browns vs. Chiefs worked out in the favour of our predictions (as I am secretly a Patrick Mahomes fan) with the Chiefs predicted to win 52.9% of the time. The game was really close but the Chiefs came out on top after an interception with a minute left, winning 33–29. Next we have the Broncos vs. Giants, where we predicted the Broncos winning 57.7% of the time. The game played out the way we expected and the Broncos won 27–13. Finally, the last game we projected was the Raiders vs. Ravens. This was a great game to close out the first week of the NFL as the game went down to the wire in OT. We predicted the Ravens to win 54.4% of the time but as fate would have it, the coin toss favoured the Raiders. After a dramatic turn of events, with the Raiders already thinking they had won the game at one point, Lamar Jackson was sacked and fumbled the football. This lead to the Raiders securing a TD and therefore the game with them winning 33–27.

There were a lot of other great games as well this weekend but we chose to focus on the games we did because their team structure was the most similar to last year. Right now we mostly rely on historical data to calculate our predictions which means teams that have stayed more or less the same have the highest projection accuracy. As we develop our analytics though, this will no longer be a constraint and we’ll be able project every single game, every single week, no matter how much a team changes during the off-season.

This brings us to our final segment; Power Rankings. With the NFL only just starting it’s difficult to properly rank the teams without bias from their last year’s performance. Remember to take our rankings with a grain of salt as they will only get more accurate as the season goes on:

1. Tampa Bay Buccaneers
2. Kansas City Chiefs
3. Seattle Seahawks
4. Los Angeles Rams
5. Pittsburgh Steelers
6. Buffalo Bills
7. Baltimore Ravens
8. Cleveland Browns
9. San Francisco 49ers
10. New Orleans Saints
11. Los Angeles Chargers
12. Miami Dolphins
13. Arizona Cardinals
14. Las Vegas Raiders
15. Denver Broncos
16. New England Patriots
17. Philadelphia Eagles
18. Dallas Cowboys
19. Green Bay Packers
20. Indianapolis Colts
21. Tennessee Titans
22. Washington Football Team
23. Cincinatti Bengals
24. Minnesota Vikings
25. Carolina Panthers
26. Chicago Bears
27. New York Giants
28. Atlanta Falcons
29. Houston Texans
30. New York Jets
31. Detroit Lions
32. Jacksonville Jaguars

Well that concludes things for Week 1; let us know in the comments if you agree with our rankings or if you have any questions about how we do our analysis. If you’d like to learn more about CNG Analytics and read other articles, check out the links below:

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