Tom here with the “confidence” rankings of this week’s picks, based on comparing the BeatPower scores of each match-up. The picks took a beating last week, but nevertheless, the high confidence picks still did twice as well as the low confidence picks, even on a bad week overall. Here are this week’s:
| Matchup (Winner-Loser) |
“Confidence” (out of 100) |
BeatPower comparison (predicted winner – predicted loser) |
Result |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pittsburgh-Cleveland | 76.5 | 86.5-10.0 | CORRECT |
| Baltimore-Jacksonville | 63.1 | 80.4-17.3 | CORRECT |
| Cincinnati-Kansas City | 57.0 | 59.1-2.1 | CORRECT |
| NY Jets-Miami | 55.0 | 98.2-43.2 | WRONG |
| Atlanta-St. Louis | 52.5 | 52.5-0.0 | CORRECT |
| Arizona-Seattle | 48.7 | 52.5-3.8 | CORRECT |
| New England-Buffalo | 43.8 | 70.6-26.8 | CORRECT |
| Tampa Bay-Oakland | 39.7 | 47.2-7.5 | WRONG |
| Denver-San Diego | 35.7 | 76.3-40.6 | WRONG |
| Carolina-New Orleans | 35.2 | 77.5-42.3 | CORRECT |
| Dallas-Philadelphia | 27.0 | 72.7-45.7 | WRONG |
| Washington-San Francisco | 24.3 | 54.3-30.0 | WRONG |
| NY Giants-Minnesota | 13.7 | 92.5-78.8 | WRONG |
| Green Bay-Detroit | 11.1 | 11.1-0.0 | CORRECT |
| Houston-Chicago | 9.0 | 69.0-60.0 | CORRECT |
| Tennessee-Indianapolis | 8.8 | 96.3-87.5 | WRONG |
Iterative had Chicago over Houston; other than that the picks were the same.
MIN->NYG and IND->TEN were the only games where a team resting starters for the playoffs lost. Of course, in Tennessee’s case, their opponent was resting starters, too… but I think you can make an argument for ignoring those games.
Yeah, I would have no qualms about not having those games calculated.
Boga
After looking at the new graphs over at beatgraphs.com, I would definitely like to see the rankings without MIN->NYG. Seeing the Vikings all the way up there based on a game that was meaningless for the Giants is sort of ridiculous. In iterative, this also drags Atlanta up, because they retain their win over Minnesota. If Minnesota’s best wins are still Houston and Arizona, the whole graph looks a lot more reasonable.
The IND->TEN game is much less disruptive, as all it does is remove Tennessee’s beatpath to Indianapolis. Those two teams are both sitting on the top of the rankings with or without that game.
Random aside: could this be the first time that all four road teams were favored on wild card weekend? It’s pretty crazy.