Presented without comment, the most current Simple Ratings, weighted for recency:

“Upper” and “Lower” are the 95% confidence intervals around each estimate. Roughly speaking, this means we can be 95% confident that, say, the 49ers’ “true” SRS rating is between 3.66 and 16.80.

What’s the point of power rankings now that there is just one week left in the regular season? If you’ve asked that question, you are implicitly saying that power rankings serve a purpose earlier in the year! If you want to see the playoff picture, I laid that out earlier this week, so I’ll assume you’ll be staying on this post for the snark.

I was on the Seahawks’ bandwagon a couple of weeks earlier than most, but they’re now #1 in Football Outsiders’ DVOA ratings and third in Advanced NFL Stats’ Efficiency Rankings. Seattle is also first in Pro-Football-Reference.com’s SRS Ratings; the Seahawks are second in the NFL in points differential, behind the Patriots, but a much tougher schedule was enough to close the gap there. Now that Richard Sherman is cleared to play in the postseason, Seattle is a legitimate Super Bowl contender. They may not have home field advantage in the playoffs, but they do have my Coach of the Year.

Here’s the week 17 schedule along with my projected winner:

That leaves us with the final week 17 standings:

With only two weeks left in the regular season, it’s time to change the format of my projected standings. At this point, we might as well just predict each of the remaining 32 games. So here goes:

I’m short on time this week, so let’s move on to the weekly Power Rankings.

[As always, the number of wins I’m projecting each team to finish the season with is in column 3. The fourth column – PWIN – shows how many wins I projected last week, and the difference column represents how many wins I added or subtracted this week. The “RSOS” column stands for the remaining SOS for the team, based on the number of projected wins I’m giving to each of their opponents. The “RHG” column stands for remaining home games.]

It’s time to take Seattle seriously. On Sunday, the Seahawks had a “name your score” game, the type of matchup college football powerhouses regularly use to beef up their statistics. The Seahawks defense took over the game, posting the 10th highest fantasy performance ever, but the offense wasn’t too shabby, either. Seattle rushed for 284 yards and 4 touchdowns, and Russell Wilson completed 7 of 13 passes for 148 yards.

Brian Burke now has the Seahawks 4th in his power rankings. Aaron Schatz has Seattle second overall, and even had them first before the Patriots blew out the Texans on Monday Night. Seattle is third according to the SRS, too. Seattle is better on offense than you think: the Seahawks rank 8th in ANY/A and 11th in NY/A and 4th in rushing yards and 5th in rushing first downs. Seattle is 15th in points scored and 14th in PFR’s Expected Points Added, but they’ve done all this despite facing a pretty difficult schedule filled with good defenses.

Defensively, they’re in the top 10 in rushing yards allowed, rushing first downs allowed, rushing touchdowns allowed and EPA. The Seahawks are 4th in NY/A and 2nd in ANY/A allowed, while ranking 7th in turnovers forced, 3rd in yards allowed and 2nd in points allowed.

They’re really good and really balanced. Are they a Super Bowl contender? Absolutely. So what about that 8-5 7-6 record according to Packers fans? Well, Seattle lost by 4 in Arizona, by 6 in St. Louis, by 7 in San Francisco, by 4 in Detroit, and by 3 in Miami. They were leading in the 4th quarter in every game except the 49ers loss (trailed by 4 late in the game) and the Rams loss (intercepted in Rams territory in the final minutes). They’ve lost some close games in the 4th quarter and dominated most of their other opponents. They’re one of the best teams in the NFL. Obviously they’re even better at home, but if New England defeats San Francisco this week, the entire landscape of the NFC playoffs will change.

If the 49ers lose in Foxboro, the Seahawks control their own destiny for the division title since they host the 49ers in week 16. And if the Packers lose one of their final three games, the Seahawks would control their own destiny for the 2 seed, which would mean a bye and a home playoff game — or possibly two, if Matt Ryan and the Falcons lose like everyone expects. Essentially, Seattle fans can dream about this scenario:

— New England wins at home against San Francisco (the Patriots are 5-point favorites)
— Green Bay loses in Chicago (or in Minnesota or at home against the Titans)
— Seattle wins in Toronto, which would be their last road game of the year if…
— Seattle beats San Francisco and St. Louis at home and…
— The Falcons lose to the Giants or 49ers or whichever team they face in the second round of the playoffs

There are a lot of “ifs” and “ands” but they’re in as good a position as I can ever remember an 8-5 team being. Of course, even as the 2 seed they would likely have to beat Green Bay and then either New York or San Francisco to get to the Super Bowl, so I wouldn’t book tickets to New Orleans just yet.

[As always, the number of wins I’m projecting each team to finish the season with is in column 3. The fourth column – PWIN – shows how many wins I projected last week, and the difference column represents how many wins I added or subtracted this week. The “RSOS” column stands for the remaining SOS for the team, based on the number of projected wins I’m giving to each of their opponents. The “RHG” column stands for remaining home games.]

We’re 75% of the way through the regular season. We know the Patriots, Broncos, and Texans are elite teams in the AFC, the Ravens and Colts aren’t as good as their gaudy records, and the Bengals and Steelers will consistently be inconsistent. In the NFC, the Giants remain the benchmark for consistent inconsistency. But if December plays out as another Groundhog’s Day for Daniel Snyder and Jerry Jones, the NFC East will again go to New York. The Falcons are going to grab the #1 seed and the NFC North will likely come down to the winner of the Green Bay-Chicago matchup in week 15. The last wildcard is up for grabs — the first is reserved for the NFC North runner-up — but unfortunately the likely prize is just a road game against one of the last two Super Bowl champions.

So let’s take a moment and look at how the 49ers tie against the Rams could impact playoff seeding. In retrospect, that tie was no better than a loss for San Francisco. As an initial matter, the team is battling Seattle for the NFC West crown. San Francisco plays in Seattle in week 16; if the Seahawks win, they have a legitimate shot at the division. Right now they’re 1.5 games behind the 49ers, and the rest of the Seahawks schedule (ARI, @BUF, STL) is manageable; meanwhile, San Francisco also has to go to New England. If the Seahawks run the table and the Patriots beat the 49ers, the Seahawks win the NFC West.

Had the 49ers defeated the Rams, even losing to Seattle and New England in the last two weeks wouldn’t cost them the division. That’s because Seattle already lost in Arizona, St. Louis, and San Francisco, so the 49ers would have won the tiebreaker. A win would have been helpful, while that tie against the Rams comes out as no more helpful than a loss — in either case, San Francisco would have 10 wins to Seattle’s 11. Since they would have had the tiebreaker, the difference between a win and a tie was much larger than the difference between a tie and a loss (which was essentially nothing).

But perhaps the more important race is against the Packers for the #2 seed. San Francisco is unlikely to lose to both Seattle and New England while the Seahawks run the table, so I think 49ers fans are more concerned about securing that bye. Right now, the 49ers are just a half-game ahead of Green Bay. Since the 49ers defeated the Packers, they would have held the tiebreaker if the two teams finished with the same record. Therefore, just like in the case of the Seahawks, “salvaging” a tie against the Rams will end up having been meaningless.

With that, perhaps it is time to turn our attention to the bottom of the list. We can skip from the top to the bottom after this short break

The Jets, the Eagles, Rex Ryan, the Chargers, Tim Tebow, Andy Reid, Mark Sanchez, Norv Turner

Now that that’s covered, the race for the #1 draft pick is on. Jason Lisk did a nice job handicapping the race, placing the Chiefs in the pole position but giving both the Raiders and Jaguars a better than 20% chance of the top pick. Football Outsiders sees things slightly different, giving both Kansas City and Jacksonville a two-in-five chance of shouting “We’re #1″… in April.

The contenders have emerged in both conferences. The numbers say that the Broncos, Patriots, 49ers, and Texans are legit, while there are still question marks surrounding Atlanta, Baltimore, and Chicago despite their records. What to make of the Giants? No one ever knows.

Are we headed towards a rematch of Super Bowl XXIV? That year involved a San Francisco team with two different starting quarterbacks and a Broncos team built around a future Hall of Fame quarterback. Perhaps John Elway will get his revenge this year. Football Outsiders puts the likelihood of a Denver-San Francisco Super Bowl at 8.2%, just behind San Francisco-New England as the most likely matchup.

While things seem set in the AFC, there’s a very important race still going on. Whichever team ends up with the 1 seed always has an advantage, but this year, having the first seed takes on added value. There are three Tier 1 teams in the conference; the 2 and 3 seeds will very likely have to beat two of them to get there, while the 1 seed will likely get an easy matchup in the division round of the playoffs. New England hosts Houston in two weeks. If the Patriots win, they’ll own the tiebreaker over both the Texans and Broncos, and will trail Houston by only one game. It’s easy to envision the Pats having a first round bye followed by a second round game against Indianapolis or Baltimore before hosting Houston or Denver in the title game.

But if New England loses to the Texans, they’ll be behind the Broncos and in line for the 3 seed. That might mean having to deal with a healthy Ben Roethlisberger and the Pittsburgh Steelers, followed by trips to Denver and Houston. New England’s matchup against Houston next Monday night (Dec. 10) is one of the most important games of the year.

[As always, the number of wins I’m projecting each team to finish the season with is in column 3. The fourth column – PWIN – shows how many wins I projected last week, and the difference column represents how many wins I added or subtracted this week. The “RSOS” column stands for the remaining SOS for the team, based on the number of projected wins I’m giving to each of their opponents. The “RHG” column stands for remaining home games.]

The majority of power rankings out there have the Broncos, Texans, Patriots, Falcons, Packers, and 49ers in their top six. Each conference appears to have three elite teams, and one can justifiably rank them in just about any order.

Brian Burke has Denver first, San Francisco second, and Houston third (although his algorithm leaves the Patriots batting in the nine hole). Football Outsiders puts the 49ers first, followed by the Patriots and Broncos (and his algorithm has Atlanta down at #12). I don’t see much room separating any of those teams, although I’d probably rank them Houston, Denver, San Francisco, Green Bay, New England, Atlanta, if forced to choose. But power rankings at this stage of the game (like every other week!) are meaningless; all six teams will make the playoffs, where their true legacies will be formed.

[As always, the number of wins I’m projecting each team to finish the season with is in column 3. The fourth column – PWIN – shows how many wins I projected last week, and the difference column represents how many wins I added or subtracted this week. The “RSOS” column stands for the remaining SOS for the team, based on the number of projected wins I’m giving to each of their opponents. The “RHG” column stands for remaining home games.]

Happy Thanksgiving to all the readers out there. Check back at noon EST for some Turkey Day trivia.

Jason Lisk put the Texans on top of his power rankings. Both Aaron Schatz and Brian Burke loves the Broncos. The Patriots offense looks historically great. I know what you’re thinking: wasn’t it only five weeks ago that I read somewhere that the NFC was by far the superior conference in the NFL?

That still may be true. Football Outsiders has the Jaguars, Chiefs, Raiders, Titans, Browns and… Colts as their bottom six teams in the league. Advanced NFL Stats largely agrees, putting the Jaguars, Chiefs, Titans, Bills, Cardinals, Colts, Browns and Raiders — that’s 7 AFC teams — in the bottom quarter of the NFL. There is a large gap between the ‘haves’ and ‘have-nots’ in the AFC, and the three teams straddling the border — Baltimore, Pittsburgh, and Indianapolis — are tremendously flawed. That says nothing of the middle tier of the AFC, populated by the schizophrenic Dolphins, Bengals, and Chargers. The AFC may not be any good this year, but that doesn’t mean it the Super Bowl winner won’t come from there.

[As always, the number of wins I’m projecting each team to finish the season with is in column 3. The fourth column – PWIN – shows how many wins I projected last week, and the difference column represents how many wins I added or subtracted this week. The “RSOS” column stands for the remaining SOS for the team, based on the number of projected wins I’m giving to each of their opponents. The “RHG” column stands for remaining home games.]

Maybe it was the election, the great weekend of college football, or the fact that I had no cable and barely watched the NFL this weekend, but power rankings this week don’t generate any buzz for me. I only was able to see the two night games this week, which worked out well, as I didn’t miss the rare opportunity to see the Cowboys or Eagles implode on a national stage.

I’ve already said my piece about the Falcons; with their remaining schedule, we should expect 5 or 6 more wins more than 50% of the time. Right now, the odds of them landing on “5” and “6” are almost identical, but that assumes independence; since they might bench players (or suffer injuries), 13 wins still feels like the best projection for them.

Advanced NFL Stats continues to love the Panthers; after their victory over the Redskins, perhaps they’re going to have a second-half surge? The most head-scratching result from Football Outsiders is probably their sixth-place ranking of the Seahawks, just in time for the Jets to visit. If that game doesn’t start the Tim Tebow era, I don’t know what will.

One thing Burke, Schatz, and the SRS Standings agree on is that the Chiefs are the 32nd best team. Sorry, Jason, but even he agrees.

[As always, the number of wins I’m projecting each team to finish the season with is in column 3. The fourth column – PWIN – shows how many wins I projected last week, and the difference column represents how many wins I added or subtracted this week. The “RSOS” column stands for the remaining SOS for the team, based on the number of projected wins I’m giving to each of their opponents. The “RHG” column stands for remaining home games.]

Here’s my weekly set of power ratings, according to a weighted version of the Simple Rating System:

KEY:
Talent – Regressed WPct talent for 2012; Talent = (W + 5.5) / (G + 11)
PWAG – Probability of Winning Any Game
Off – Offensive SRS (positive = better)
Def – Defensive SRS (negative = better)
SRS – Simple Rating System (Off + Def)
wpa_loc – Win Probability Added from location of games
wpa_veg – Win Probability Added from Vegas lines
wpa_1st – Win Probability Added in 1st quarter
wpa_2nd – Win Probability Added in 2nd quarter
wpa_3rd – Win Probability Added in 3rd quarter
wpa_4ot – Win Probability Added in 4th qtr/overtime

In Tuesday’s post, I outlined a method of regressing a team’s record to the mean to estimate its “true winning percentage talent” (the trick is to add eleven games of .500 ball to their record, at any point in the season). In the comments, FP reader Dave wondered if we could incorporate last year’s true WPct talent into our talent assessment for this season, so I thought I’d run a quick regression to look at that.

My dataset was simply every game from 2003-2012 (including Monday night’s game). For each game, I recorded:

• Whether the game was a win, loss, or tie for the team in question. Wins got you a “1”, ties a “0.5”, losses a “0”.
• The team’s WPct talent estimate going into the game. So in the first game of the season, that’s (0+5.5)/(0+11)=0.500 for everybody; meanwhile, for an 11-4 team going into the final game of the season, it’s (11+5.5)/(15+11)=0.635.
• The team’s WPct talent estimate from the previous season.

I then set up a logistic regression to predict whether the game was a win or a loss based on the two WPct talent variables, this year and last year:

Deviance Residuals: 
    Min       1Q   Median       3Q      Max  
-1.7686  -1.1489   0.1616   1.1429   1.7072  

Coefficients:
              Estimate Std. Error z value Pr(>|z|)    
(Intercept)    -2.6936     0.1982 -13.589  < 2e-16 ***
currenttalent   4.0297     0.3509  11.485  < 2e-16 ***
prevtalent      1.3571     0.2666   5.091 3.57e-07 ***
---
Signif. codes:  0 ‘***’ 0.001 ‘**’ 0.01 ‘*’ 0.05 ‘.’ 0.1 ‘ ’ 1 

(Dispersion parameter for binomial family taken to be 1)

    Null deviance: 6712.4  on 4843  degrees of freedom
Residual deviance: 6508.0  on 4841  degrees of freedom
AIC: 6516.1

Number of Fisher Scoring iterations: 4

That means to predict your likelihood of winning any given game, you plug your WPct talent numbers from this season and last season into this formula:

WPct ~ 1 / (1 + EXP(2.693606 - 4.029688*(Current_Talent) - 1.357123*(Prev_Talent)))

It's important to note the size of the coefficients here -- the current WPct talent coefficient is three times as big as that of last season's WPct talent, so it has much more bearing on the prediction.

At any rate, here are the probabilities of winning any given game that this formula implies for this year's teams:

I’d like to extend my best wishes to everyone dealing with the fallout from Sandy. I’m in my fourth location in five nights, and have lost power in my building for two days, but consider myself one of the lucky ones. This has been a tragedy for many out there, and thoughts and prayers go out to those who have been harmed.

But that won’t stop me from publishing the week 8 power rankings. This week it’s time to vault Atlanta to the top of the heap. I don’t love the Falcons, but it’s hard to see them not winning 13 games this year. So why don’t I love them?

• According to Football Outsiders’ drive stats, Atlanta ranks 8th in yards per drive, 3rd in points per drive (partially because they rank 3rd in starting field position per drive and 5th in fumble rate per drive), and 4th in drive success rate. That’s great; defensively, they’re 11th in yards per drive, 6th in points per drive, and 11th in drive success rate allowed. That’s less impressive but still pretty good. As far as “net” categories go, they are 6th in net yards per drive, 2nd in net points per drive, and 4th in net drive success rate. In other words, they look like an elite team, perhaps the best in the league. Except…
• In Football Outsiders’ Rankings, the Falcons are just 8th. Aaron Schatz sums up why: “First, close wins: four by a touchdown or less. Second, its schedule so far ranks 29th in the NFL. Third, the Falcons have recovered 75 percent of fumbles.” If you ignore SOS — which the drive stats do — Atlanta looks like an elite team. Factor in the fumble luck, and it makes sense why FO does not view the Falcons as a top-five team.
• Brian Burke now has Atlanta as his fifth ranked team; he doesn’t think Atlanta’s schedule has been all that easy. That’s because Denver is his #1 team and his system loves the Panthers and doesn’t think the Raiders are that bad.
• According to the Simple Rating System, the Falcons are just the 7th best team, behind the Texans, Patriots, and Broncos in the AFC and San Francisco, New York, Chicago in the NFC.

Atlanta is a very good team, but probably not the best team in the league. My guess is on a neutral site, they’d be an underdog to at least five teams in the NFL, if not more.

At 6-1, Houston is sitting pretty atop the AFC. They have to be the Super Bowl favorite right now, as they’re the most likely team in either conference to wrap up the 1 seed and they won’t have to go through two very good teams to get to New Orleans. In addition, they’re also really, really good.

Things are muddy in the NFC, and we get another NFC East showdown this week between the Giants and Cowboys. A New York win would open up a three-game lead over Dallas, but that would make things way too smooth in New York. The Atlanta Falcons already have a four-game lead in the NFC South, but it won’t take much for them to slip and miss out on a bye. The Packers, Bears and Vikings all look like playoff teams; Chicago might be the favorite to win the division right now, but these teams still play each other 5 more times. The NFC West looks like a competitive division but one that everyone assumes the 49ers will win. A Cardinals upset this weekend would send ripple effects throughout the conference. We’re in for a treat, as that’s the Monday Night game this week, and I expect the Cardinals to play well despite the three-game losing streak.

[As always, the number of wins I’m projecting each team to finish the season with is in column 3. The fourth column – PWIN – shows how many wins I projected last week, and the difference column represents how many wins I added or subtracted this week. The “RSOS” column stands for the remaining SOS for the team, based on the number of projected wins I’m giving to each of their opponents. The “RHG” column stands for remaining home games.]

Here are the current SRS Ratings, weighted for the recency of each game, along with each team’s quarter-by-quarter Win Probability Added (WPA) so far this season:

Here are the current SRS Ratings, using the recency-weighted system I described on Monday:

Also, just for fun, here’s how SRS sees this weekend’s games going (with the Vegas lines and over/unders for comparison’s sake):

Jason Lisk and the wisdom of crowds say the Giants are the best team in the league; Aaron Schatz’ DVOA numbers agree. The computer operated by Brian Burke prefers Denver and Bill Barnwell’s wheel landed on Chicago. ESPN prefers the Falcons, a pick that is surely more retrodictive than predictive.

Technically, I don’t do power rankings, because I don’t even know what power rankings are supposed to represent. What I do is predict how many games I expect each team to win in 2012. And while it was ugly and under the spotlight, Houston’s performance against the Packers on Sunday Night wasn’t enough to make me think any other team ends up winning more games than the Texans will this season.

[As always, the number of wins I’m projecting each team to finish the season with is in column 3. The fourth column – PWIN – shows how many wins I projected last week, and the difference column represents how many wins I added or subtracted this week. The “RSOS” column stands for the remaining SOS for the team, based on the number of projected wins I’m giving to each of their opponents. The “RHG” column stands for remaining home games.]

I agree with Aaron Schatz and Brian Burke: the 49ers are the best team in the league, not that such a designation holds any meaning. Last week, I had Houston as my only 13-win team, and the Texans aren’t dropping from that pedestal (and Jason Lisk still has Houston at #1).

But the big mover this week is Miami, who look to be one of the six best teams in the AFC. Disagree? Quick, name another good team in the AFC outside of Houston, New England, Baltimore, Pittsburgh, and Denver. As I wrote in this week’s Fifth Down post, the AFC is clearly the inferior conference in the NFL today. Well, Miami legitimately appears to be a playoff contender in the watered down conference. Note that all of Miami’s three losses have come to either Houston or in overtime in games in which Miami looked to be the superior team.

One reason for Miami’s success is the dominant play of outside linebacker-turned-defensive end Cameron Wake. Miami’s defensive line is dominating the run and Wake is leading the league in combined sacks, hits, and hurries. This offseason, the media gushed about the Bills and wouldn’t stop talking about the Jets, but so far this season, Miami has been the second best team in the division.

[As always, the number of wins I’m projecting each team to finish the season with is in column 3. The fourth column – PWIN – shows how many wins I projected last week, and the difference column represents how many wins I added or subtracted this week. The “RSOS” column stands for the remaining SOS for the team, based on the number of projected wins I’m giving to each of their opponents. The “RHG” column stands for remaining home games.]

Just like last week, my #1 and #32 teams remain in the same slots. The Houston Texans continue to dominate, while the Browns are still looking for their first win. Suddenly it all makes sense, until next week.

As a reminder, after the team name column, I have listed each team’s record in the second column and the number of wins I’m projecting each team to finish the season with in column 3. The fourth column – PWIN – shows how many wins I projected for that team last week, and the difference column represents how many wins I added or subtracted this week. The “RSOS” column stands for the remaining SOS for the team, based on the number of projected wins I’m giving to each of their opponents. The “RHG” column stands for remaining home games. Lastly, my witty and insightful comments remain in the final column.

The Denver-New England game is easily the most anticipated matchup of the weekend, but it is also one of the most important. Both teams are in weak divisions, which means their main goal should really be beating out the other team and the AFC North winner for the conference’s second bye. In that vein, the loser of this matchup is going to have an uphill road to get a bye. And obviously in the event that these teams meet in the playoffs, Sunday’s game could determine home field.