Yesterday, I looked at the least-conforming games of the season. I used the SRS to derive opponent-adjusted team ratings, and then came up with a predicted point spread (based on those team ratings and the location of the game) for each game in 2016. By definition, the amount by which each team will exceed its expected points in “overachieving games” will equal the amount by which it fell short of its expected points in “underachieving games.” Since we are just manipulating the 16-game sample, a point by which a team overachieves in one game has to come from another game.

But what we can do is take the absolute value of the difference between the expected margin of victory and actual points differential to get a sense of how consistent or inconsistent each team was last year. And by that measure, the most consistent team was the New York Giants. In 13 of 16 games last year, the final margin came within a touchdown of expectation, and in 3 of 16 games the final margin came within one point of expectation.

The table below shows how to calculate these ratings. Let’s use week 1, which happens to have been one of the rare Giants games that went off script.

We can also plot this in a graph: the blue dot represents the expected points differential in each game, and the red dot represents the actual.

Let’s close with a look at how consistent or inconsistent each team was last year. The most inconsistent team? That would be the Los Angeles Rams. Five Rams games were off by more than two touchdowns (including each of the first four games of the season!), and just six came within one touchdown of the expected result.

As always, please leave your thoughts in the comments.