Beatpaths

Crazy week this week! Here’s how the beatpath graph looks after Week 8’s games:

Here’s some explanation on all the beatloops.

BUF=>MIN is considered a beatfluke, which restores MIN=>DET=>BUF.

WAS=>JAC is considered a beatfluke, which restores JAC=>DAL=>WAS.

HOU=>JAC is considered a beatfluke, which restores JAC=>PHI=>HOU and JAC=>DAL=>HOU.

KC=>SEA is considered a beatfluke, which restores SEA=>STL=>DEN=>KC.

STL=>DEN is considered [...]

The picks were 7-6 this week, but believe it or not, that was a spectacular week, tied with Mike Golic for the best record of the week in King Kaufman’s Panel O’ Experts. Beatpaths is 58-42 overall, or tied for 12th, making up some ground from last week, when we were tied for last.
MIN=>SEA [...]

Here’s the pre-MNF graph. Some interesting outcomes! Oakland sheds its SF beatloss. CAR=>TB=>CIN=>CAR gets created. San Diego loses credit for its Pittsburgh win, and KC sheds its Pittsburgh loss. Houston sheds another beatloss. Minnesota rises dramatically in the power rankings, too.

Time for Week 6’s Power Rankings. We have some interesting shifts this week – teams behaved differently than they had so far this season, which led to some contradictions, some movement in the rankings, a poor record for last week’s predictions (6-7), and some cool changes in the graph. Elo was one better [...]

Here’s the beatpaths graph for Week 6. Tonight’s game between Chicago and Arizona is essentially meaningless for now, as Chicago has multiple beatpaths to Arizona. Either a Chicago win will reinforce existing beatpaths, or an Arizona win will be declared a beatfluke. The picks stunk this week at 5-7 so far, missing [...]

Here in Week 5, Denver is the only team with a winning record whose opponents also collectively have a winning record…

Below are the power rankings for after Week 5’s games.
First, to review, here is the beatpath graph:

And now, the power rankings. These power rankings are 71-3 at retrodicting all the games in the season so far. This essentially disproves what I said last week, that 56-4 was the best possible power rankings record [...]

The power rankings went 10-4 this week, although I suppose I could argue that I dropped hints in the commentary that would have made it 12-2. But 10-4 it is.
Some nifty changes – Jacksonville was in a JAC=>DAL=>WAS=>JAC beatloop, but Jacksonville has developed an alternate beatpath to Washington, so JAC=>DAL=>WAS reappears back in the [...]

We’re ready for this week’s power rankings – these are the rankings that are based off of the 2006 games only.
To review – a team is ranked ahead of all teams it has a beatpath to. A team has a beatwin (a direct beatpath) over another team if it has beaten them and isn’t [...]

The official picks were a horrid 7-7 this week. These were the picks from 2005-2006 combined, and they were actually outperformed by the picks that came from 2006 only. Since we’re through the first four weeks of the season now, we will be continuing with 2006 only for the rest of the season [...]