And with one week, many teams fall out of playoff contention… The Detroit Lions (9-6) are unable to stamp a Wild Card berth against the Dallas Cowboys (13-2) and find themselves with a real possibility of losing out to the Green Bay Packers (9-6), the Washington Redskins (8-6-1), and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers (8-7). The…
In our previous post, we identified the probabilities that each team had of winning their respective divisions. In this post, we saw how muddled a couple divisions were (NFC North and AFC South in particular). However, these divisions have nothing on the Wild Card races. In this second part, we race the Giants-Eagles game to…
After an incredible shake-up in the Week 15 standings, and a monumental collapse of BOTH my fantasy football teams, we find the landscape of the NFL playoffs ever so tightening heading into Week 16. For instance… Chiefs Take First from Raiders, Drop First to TITANS… A week after grabbing first place of the AFC West…
As week 12 completed on Thanksgiving day, we finally hit the 164 game mark of the 256 game NFL season. With almost two-thirds of the season being completed, we take a quick look at our power rankings, a combination of win-loss total by team-vs-team match-ups and points scored versus points allowed by team-by-team match-ups. Currently…
(Warning: Math Heavy) The NFL has an adage: “Any given Sunday.” This phrase typically means that during any week, for any given match-up between two teams, either team has a relatively high probability of winning the game. This translates into parity within the league. Typically we should see teams win between 6 and 10 games…
As the final week of the regular season played out in the NCAA Division I FBS, we witnessed Michigan State power to a 16-13 win over Iowa to win the Big Ten as Clemson managed to weather a comeback attempt from North Carolina for a 45-37 win en route to winning the ACC. In our…
As Week 11 has wrapped up in the NFL, two teams still remain undefeated (New England Patriots, Carolina Panthers) and a couple divisions have entered into gridlock for first place (AFC South, NFC East). Currently, the playoffs have shaped up to be the following: AFC Playoffs #1 Seed: New England Patriots (10-0; East Leader) #2 Seed: Cincinnati…
As Week 7 of the NFL season comes to a close, we have tallied a total of 119 of the 256 regular season football games. This equates to just over 46% of the season completed. In these seven weeks, we have four undefeated teams remaining: New England, Cincinnati, Denver, and Carolina. In a previous post, we used…
As the Seattle Seahawks (3-4) wrap up a 20-3 victory over the San Francisco 49ers (2-5), we note that both teams are still below .500 with slightly over half a season left of play. While the Seahawks have proven they can run the table, the question is whether they are still a feared team. On a…
Squared Statistics: Understanding Basketball Analytics 