Tom here with commentary on the rankings changes from Week 8.

Stability & Variance

Two big movers this week, Philadelphia and Arizona, each moving over ten ranks. The overall ranking changes have fallen again, demonstrating more overall stability in the rankings after the shakeup in Week 6.

One point of comparison with Week 8 is Week 5. Approximately the same overall number of rank changes (86 vs. 84), but a higher variance this week. The difference in variance means that back in Week 5 lots of teams moved an average amount, whereas in Week 8 most teams had a small change in rank while a few teams had major shifts.

Pick Confidence

Last week the pick confidence didn’t do well. The top confidence picks were less reliable than the low confidence picks. We’ll see if the shuffle in the ranks gives us greater accuracy in making picks.

Matchup (Winner-Loser)	“Confidence” (out of 100)	EdgePower comparison (predicted winner – predicted loser)	Result
Atlanta-Washington	40.25	60.98-20.73	✓
Green Bay-Tampa Bay	38.42	54.27-15.85	✗
New Orleans-Carolina	38.41	71.95-33.54	✓
New England-Miami	15.85	65.24-49.39	✓
Jacksonville-Kansas City	15.24	48.78-33.54	✓
Indianapolis-Houston	12.19	65.24-53.05	✓
Dallas-Philadelphia	10.97	65.24-54.27	✓
San Francisco-Tennessee	10.36	47.56-37.20	✗
Denver-Pittsburgh	8.53	70.73-62.20	✗
Cincinnati-Baltimore	4.87	66.46-61.59	✓
San Diego-NY Giants	4.27	56.71-52.44	✓
Seattle-Detroit	1.22	43.29-42.07	✓
Arizona-Chicago	0	51.83-51.83	✓

As usual, I’ll return to fill in the results as they roll in.