Wonders what good quarterback play looks like.
New York lost by 23 in Buffalo this weekend; that 20-point adjusted MOV was the best single game for the Bills this year.
Back in week four, the Jets lost by 25 in Tennessee, and as you can probably guess, that is the best single game for the Titans this year.
And in week six, at home against the Steelers, New York lost by 13, and that 16-point adjusted MOV was the top performance for Pittsburgh this year.
That’s pretty bad, of course. Four different teams had their best games of the season against the Jets. The only team that’s been worse is the Jaguars, who have seen five different opponents (San Francisco, San Diego, Kansas City, Indianapolis, and Arizona) post their best games against Jacksonville. But the Jets were close to matching the Jaguars: Tampa Bay’s best game of the year came on Sunday against Atlanta, making the Bucs’ second best performance in 2013 the game against the Jets in week 1. [1]How can the 2-8 Bucs have had only one game better than their loss to the Jets? Because Tampa Bay lost in New York by 1, which is an adjusted MOV of +2, while their home win against Miami of 3 points … Continue reading
If we do this for every team, we can get a sense of the best/worst teams in the league. You can read some fine print here [2]26 teams have played 10 games, but the Bills, Eagles, Seahawks, and Bengals have yet to have their bye. In addition, the Panthers and Patriots have only played 9 games as of the date of this post. … Continue reading, or just take a look at the rankings. Lower is better, as you get a 1 point for producing the worst game by your opponent all year, and 10 points for being the victim of your opponent’s best game.
The Jets are 31st in points differential, although some have argued that this is the result of “outlier” games like the 40-point drubbing against the Bengals. This method smooths out outlier games, and brings New York all the way up to … 29th.
Another interesting result: seeing 6-4 SF essentially equal to 9-1 Kansas City and 10-1 Seattle. How does that happen? The 49ers had ugly games against Seattle and Indianapolis, receiving 8.2 points for the Seattle game and 9 for the Indianapolis game. But the 49ers received 1 point for games against the Titans and Rams, 1.5 points for the blowout against Houston, 2 points for the blowout against Jacksonville, 2.5 points for the three-point road loss to the Saints, 3 points for the 12-point win over Arizona, 4 points for the 6-point home win against the Packers, and 4.4 points for losing by one at home to the Panthers. That’s pretty good. In other words, close losses to New Orleans and Carolina don’t kill the 49ers.
The Chiefs aren’t even penalized for the Broncos game: that was the 3rd best showing against Denver of any team this season. But a 1-point home win against Houston (8 points), a 6-point home win against Cleveland (6), and a 1-point home win against Dallas (6) bring down the average.
As for Seattle, winning by just 3 at home against Tampa Bay (7.5), winning by only three in Houston (5.5), and losing to the Colts (5.5) drop down the rating. Narrow wins over the Rams (5) and Titans (5) don’t help much, either. Essentially, this formula says the 49ers get more credit for losing close games to Carolina and New Orleans than the Seahawks do for barely beating the Rams and Texans. I’ll leave it to the reader to decide if that is desirable.
The table below lists every game this year. Here’s how to read it: In week 4, Denver was home against Philadelphia, and won 52-20. The Broncos therefore get credit for an adjusted margin of victory of 29 points, which is the #1 aMOV against the Eagles this season. That gives Denver 0.9 points for that game, a pro-rated number since Philadelphia has played 11 games.
References
| ↑1 | How can the 2-8 Bucs have had only one game better than their loss to the Jets? Because Tampa Bay lost in New York by 1, which is an adjusted MOV of +2, while their home win against Miami of 3 points gets an adjusted MOV of 0. |
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| ↑2 | 26 teams have played 10 games, but the Bills, Eagles, Seahawks, and Bengals have yet to have their bye. In addition, the Panthers and Patriots have only played 9 games as of the date of this post. To account for that, I’ve scaled all games against those six teams on a 1-to-10 scale. So the Jets get only 10 points for the games against Cincinnati and Buffalo, but the Jets get 3.33 points instead of 3 for the two games against New England. That brings up one other note: the Jets had an adjusted MOV of 0 in both games against New England, as did the Saints. The Patriots worst game was against Cincinnati, so the second-worst game was a three-way tie between the two Jets games and the New Orleans game. Each of those games gets a 3 (then pro-rated to 3.33), since that is the average rank. |
