Team Efficiency Rankings: Week 3
The return of the team efficiency rankings comes with some important changes for 2014. As most of you know, Brian revamped the win probability model for this year to provide more precise estimates in a greater variety of contexts.
This obviously holds big implications for the rankings, which are based on the generic win probability (GWP) of a particular team against an average team. But more importantly, both are predictive models which emphasize factors that best suggest how likely a team is to fare in the future. When one improves, the other should theoretically improve alongside it.
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The Eyebrow-Raisers
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- The Tennessee Titans are 1-2 and have been outscored by a combined 59-17 margin over their last two contests. Nevertheless, they rank fifth overall after Week 3, highlighted by a sixth-ranked defense in terms of overall efficiency.
How do we begin to justify this ranking for a team that has generally appeared incompetent after an impressive Week 1 road victory at Arrowhead? Well, start with the pass defense, which has posted a pass success rate of 52.9 percent, ninth-best in the league. Indeed, the troika of Alex Smith, Tony Romo and Andy Dalton have combined for just 11.5 cumulative Expected Points Added (EPA), a mark that would rank 24th in the league if posted by a single quarterback.
http://www.advancedfootballanalytics.com/2014/09/team-efficiency-rankings-week-3.html
The top 5 efficient teams are Cincinnati, Seattle, Detroit, New Orleans, and Tennessee.
To give you an idea on how to look at this thing here are the final efficiency rankings of last season - http://www.advancedfootballanalytics.com/2014/01/final-team-efficiency-rankings-week-17.html