I'm about ready to do my power rankings but can't without tonight's game in the books. I've eliminated Sacks as a criteria this year. I'm looking for a site with QB pressures or hits or something to replace that stat. Currently the fish are a smidge ahead of the Jets. I expect tonight's game to correct that. First, the honorable mentions: Arizona - Worst pass defense in the league. San Diego - Worst rushing game in the league. Washington - Bad offense. Detriot - League worst at stopping scoring. No highlights on D at all. I couldn't do just 5 this time as I would have had to leave out Tampa. In the mean time, we get the bottom of the slime pool. 27) Tampa Bay - Poor offense all around. Can't stop the run or their opponents scoring. 28) Cleveland - Really bad passing game leads to few 3rd down conversions and fewer points. Decent kick return game. Worst rushing defense in the league. 29) StL - Bad passing game with a near complete inability to score. Their punter can. Tied for 2nd worst defense. 30) KC - They might as well punt on third down with the league worst conversion rate. Their punter can. Worst all around defense in the league. 31) Carolina - They are a turnover factory. This leads to scoring very few points. Their punter can't. No one passes very much on them, their opposition is too busy rushing the ball and scoring. 32) Oakland - Nonexistant passing game matched with a bad rushing game creates an inability to score. On defense they have serious trouble stopping the rush. Their punter sure can.
Oakland is just in a league of its own. I almost feel bad for them. I think that the Rams might be next. The Panthers are surprising due to the weapons they have on offense. Besides that, i agree.
The rams will draft a franchise QB in 2010..and they can start building the franchise again. But what do the raiders have? Franchise bust qb Franchise bust RB Franchise bust OL Franchise Bust franchise.
How the hell are there 3 teams worse than the Rams? Including Carolina??? And don't call SD the worst run offense in the league. Worst run defense? Maybe. And how are the Dolphins ahead of the Jets? And as bad as Oakland is, they did beat the Chiefs. Who have the Chiefs beaten?
No kidding... the only team they've beaten is the Bills. With their rushing game as good as it is, I don't know if they're bad, but if it weren't for the buffet table, their passing game would be the worst in the league. And KC and STL are both worse than Carolina.
Lets give this a go. As for teams worse than the Rams, Oakland is passing for 108.6 yards per game. This is less than the NFL rushing average. They convert 25% of 3rd downs and score only 9.8 pppg. On the defensive side they allow 26 ppg, 161 rush ypg, and only have 7 takeaways. Carolina has given the ball away 24 times with a league average of 12. They have converted 31% of third downs while scoring 14.2 ppg. Their defense is allowing 155.5 passing ypg and 29 ppg. Their punting game is averaging 33.7 ypp. Their biggest flaw is their turnovers, they've put the ball on the rug 10 times and have 9 Ints. If they don't continue to get worse here their ranking will rise. KC is converting on only 1 in 5 3rd downs and putting up 162.4 passing ypg. Their defense is horrendous. Allowing 27.6 ppg, 132.8 rushing ypg, and 270 passing ypg for a total of 402.8 total ypg. The league average allowed ypg is 329.4. 5 takeaways isn't helping their cause on the defensive front either. As for the Rams, they simply don't score. Otherwise they have an NFL average rushing game with a bad passing game that converts 3rd downs 1 out of 3 times. Their defensive ypg stats are poor but not horrendous. They only have 5 takeaways matched with poor return team play making their anemic offense go long fields each time. If they had more takeaways they may score a bit more. Arguably they will rank lower than the Panthers as the season goes along but Carolina is just giving the ball away too much. San Diego has rushed for the fewest yards per game in the league. 53.8 yards per game vs a league average of 110.9 ypg. Arizona, Houston and Indy, Oakland follow with 56.5, 75.4 and 78.8, 83 ypg respectively. No other team has less than 91 ypg. Not much more rocket science to it than that. SD is rushing for the fewest yards per game. As for run defense, Cleveland is allowing 170.4 ypg rushing compared to SD's 151. Not really a competition there. Not to mention that Oak, Car, Buffalo and TB are allowing more rushing ypg than SD. The Jets rank poorly due to a bad passing game, low 3rd down and pts scored. Their punting squad is well below NFL average as well. Miami's rushing game has them ranked highly on the offensive side of the ball, they also convert 54% of 3rd downs compared to the Jets 35%. My system is not measuring the QB pressure the Jets are getting due to their lack of stats and my lack of access to a QB pressure stat. I take wins/losses into account as a factor but I'm trying to look past just wins and losses when I do the rankings. I currently have Philly ranked quiter highly with Oakland and Carolina ranked at the bottom each with a win. In the end this is still the NFL where any team can beat any other on any given Sunday.
I'm assuming that the final group are all very close together (other than Oakland), since otherwise I can't see any way that Carolina is behind St. Louis.
This is a pretty bad way to assess a team's strengths. Miami with one win is ranked higher than the Jets, who lead the AFC East. Your two worst teams have wins while four teams without a win are ranked above them. Yards per game and 3rd down conversion rates really don't mean much come playoff times. The only thing that counts is wins and losses. This is just a case of over analysis.
Washington has to be one of the worst three teams in the league. The Skins lost to Detroit and Carolina and they barely beat St. Louis and Tampa Bay. Washington has played 4 of the worst teams in the NFL and they are barely 2-3.
They sure are. Been saying this all year long. Their offense is as inept as it gets. Only Oakland and TB are worse. And I'm not really sure TB is worse as they completely blew the lead and the game AT washington. The Rams never would've lost to the skins if it wasn't for a bonehead call by spags. Oakland worst by a lot then Washington in all honesty. Then STL, TB/Carolina tie, KC.
Last year my system worked fairly well up to the playoffs. It picked up on B'more before most people. Unfortunately early in the season it is strongly affected by opponents played. Of course getting in the playoffs is all about wins, not how pretty they are. Then again the standings show you those. My system is designed to try to find the unexpected.
I've not found that X beating Y beating Z means that X can beat Z. Washington may well be benefiting from playing poor opponents because their defense currently looks decent.
We'll have to see I guess. I can't write about your system last year as I only got tuned into TGG last March or so. Your system does seem well researched, but I have come to believe that sometimes too much research makes you over look some of the most obvious.
You can look for my earlier worst 5 threads to see how things change. After the first week or two I had Houston rated very low, due to their game against the Jets.
i have never seen this league with as weak of a bottom end as it does this year. there are going to be more teams with 4 or less wins than i have ever seen. there are literally 6 teams that are just god awful and another 7 that are also poor just not as poor... sure they COULD win some games but i really dont think so. cleveland kc oakland detroit tampa st louis are just absolutely terrible teams and i dont expect any of them to win more than 4 games buffalo jacksonville houston tennesee san diego washington seattle are also not good teams, i wouldnt expect any of them to have more than 8 wins. with seattle, washington and jacksonville not being far from the under 4 group. then there are the usual suspects that actually have decent records right now but i just dont think they are as good as their record. cinci denver i just dont think they are as good as they appear right now and will level off to have decent but not great teams. i have really honestly never seen so many absolute shit teams in one year, there are always a couple bad teams and a number of mediocre bad teams. this year there is a ton of both.
As long as the bills got my man LEE EVANS they shouldnt be mentioned with such terrible teams like the browns or rams.
