Confidence Picks
The NFL season is at it’s 1/3 mark and I’m already thinking playoffs. Why? Because I’m a douche bag. There. I said it. Build a bridge and get over it. Now, I just put a lot of work into this. It’s called “Confidence Picks”. I heard it on ESPN Radio today and this is my variation of it. I took the NFL team ranking of Passing Offense, Rushing Offense, Passing Defense and Rushing Defense and Coaching (objective ranking, of course); then I added the numerical value of all of these rankings for one set number. The lowest number is the Confident Pick to win the Super Bowl. Get it?
Starting from worst, going to first:
32. Raiders- 135
31. Bucs- 125
30. Browns- 120
29. Chiefs- 112
28. Lions- 109
27. Redskins- 105
26. Rams- 100
25. Bills- 97
24. Falcons- 94
T-23. Texans-92, Panthers- 92
21. Chargers- 90
T-20. Packers- 88, Vikings- 88
18. Jaguars- 87
17. 49ers- 86
16. Bengals- 84
15. Bears- 83
14. Cowboys- 80
T-13. Cardinals- 75, Seahawks- 75
11. Titans- 70
10. Colts- 67
9. Dolphins- 65
8. Ravens- 62
7. Jets- 61
T-6. Patriots- 52, Eagles- 52
4. Steelers- 44
3. Giants- 42
2. Broncos- 41
1. Saints- 35
Okay, that’s the list. Obviously the Titans have a tough road ahead of them to win the Super Bowl, but they have two aspects of their game in the top 10 of the NFL. You can just tell that their Passing Defense is killing them by coming in at 31st in the league. The Vikings would be much higher on the list if they had a coach that ANYONE who watches the NFL would call “decent”, but that’s a stretch and he probably couldn’t coach my high school team (we were 3-5 my senior year). On the other hand, at the top of the list are 3 undefeated teams, so my system was fairly accurate compared to “an analyst” who came out with Power Rankings.
There you have it. You can do the math yourself if you want (with the NFL.com rankings). Or if you would prefer not destroying hours of your life like I did, any and all stats will be available upon request by email or in the comments section. Especially the rankings I gave the “coaching” due to the subjective nature. Just for reference, Bill Bellichick is #1 and Brad Childress is #32. And Rex Ryan’s coaching ability may or may not have been influenced by this.
*p.s. Giants didn’t get #2 in coaching to get a higher ranking. They got 13.
UPDATE:
Team Rankings from Offensive Rushing, Offensive Passing, Defensive Passing, Defensive Rushing… And a side note, I did not choose the rankings for NFL.com, I’m not that high-powered of a sports blogger yet.
The Gally Blog 
You should be shot for tying the Vikings with the Packers. WTF is wrong with you?
1. Are you using total yards gained on offense for the offensive rankings or a ranking of scoring offense like total points scored? Same for defense.
2. Are you adjusting for strength of schedule?
3. Your coaching rankings are atrocious. There’s no way you can rank Childress behind coaches such as Tom Cable (who’s said in interviews they don’t scheme…they play straight up football), Dick Jauron, Raheem Morris, the list goes on.
4. If you’ve watched the Steelers at all it’s very obvious they’re mismanaging games. Spiking timeouts at the wrong time, spiking the ball when they don’t need to, play calls that don’t make sense. Their wins are masking some poor, poor game management.
5. I’m not sure how your rankings came up with Tennessee and Jacksonville ranked ahead of Atlanta. Or for that matter, how Green Bay ranks the same as a Minnesota team that beat them??
In gambling parlance, you fall on the square side of things. I think the only unarguable assertion you’ve made is that the Raiders are the worst team in the league.
@SC, it’s ok. I didn’t expect someone like you to understand this.
1. I used whatever the default setting was for the NFL.com links I just posted.
2. No. Why would I? Is this the fucking BCS?
3. How can you honestly call my coaching rankings atrocious after knowing 3 of them? I told you Belichick was #1, Childress was #32 and Coughlin was #13. I also said it was arguable because it’s my opinion. I think Childress is the worst coach in the league. I think you can’t judge Tom Cable (ranked #31 on my list) on his coaching ability after 1 season with a miserable team that he didn’t put together. Same with Raheem Morris (#28 on my list). Dicky J (#27 on my list), on the other hand is a bad coach but I don’t think he’s worse than Childress, Cable, Zorn, Mangini and Todd Haley. Now I might be hypocritical of the rankings after I just said you can’t judge some of the new coaches with their new teams but to be fair, I think you agree.
And yeah, I get it. Childress is 5-0 while the other “bad coaches” all have very bad records. So what I’m going to do, is let you make a case that Childress is a “good coach” with examples. Go ahead.
4. I agree, the Steelers aren’t the powerhouse they normally are. The rankings were not up to me.
5. If you read any of the post besides the rankings, you would know that Tennessee has 2 of their 4 team rankings in the top 10 of the NFL (according to those websites) and that’s why they have a good score. Not to mention Jeff Fisher is a great coach.
So please, before you comment about how terrible I ranked these teams, remember I only ranked a small portion of these teams and that barely affected the outcome. I dare you to do the math yourself and come up with different rankings.
Bad Logic. /whacks him on nose with newspaper
So snippy.
I’m sowwy.
Oh, sorry, my first post was slightly inaccurate. There were 2 indisputable arguments that were in your original post. The fact that the Raiders were ranked last and the fact that you called yourself a douchebag.
Oh man. You burned me good. How about replying to all the facts/stats/rankings I just threw at you after you tried oh so hard to make me look dumb? Instead of just being some jaded, faceless commenter who disagrees just to disagree.
In his defense, gimp is faceless, too. To that point, you’re covering your face as well. :P
I would but there weren’t that many facts or valid stats that made sense in the context of the argument. I did, however, respond to your comments.
I agree about Cable. The Raiders shit storm is only going to get bigger as the season goes on.
In regards to Childress, yes he is doing better than Cable. But if you look at Childress’ whole body of work it’s not very good. I think Logic was trying to say Cable doesn’t have much in the way of a body of work. Strong right hook? Definitely. Not much in the way of a body of work, but it’s not looking like it will get any better.
Sure, a 5-0 start is good for the Vikes and Childress, but remember 2 or so seasons ago when the Bills started out the season 5-0? That didn’t turn out so well. We’ll have to wait and see if Childress can finish up the season strong, and overshadow his past coaching mishaps.
Absolutely. These new coaches inherited bad teams. Childress inherited THE BEST player in the NFL, and (arguably) THE BEST QB of all time fell into his lap not to mention an amazing defense with a shit ton of stars. I guess we’ll see if they live up to that Minnesota Choke that Berstreet always talks about, I just thought it was like a sexual position. Like the Rusty Trombone or Angry Pirate.
For someone who’s name is logic, you don’t think very logically. First of all you try to present your “confidence” picks as an objective comparison of the strength of an individual team but 1) you don’t understand where the NFL gets it’s rankings from and 2) you throw in a subjectivity variable “coaching” which makes your results…wait for it…SUBJECTIVE.
Here are some other major problems with your model:
* You weight passing and rushing offense, and passing defense separately but no rushing defense? So, by default your system is inaccurately tilted towards better offenses when defense is half the game.
* You weight coaching the same as your other 3 factors. What you don’t understand is that your so called “coaching” variable is already reflected in the performance of both the offense and the defense. A good offense (and likewise a good defense), obviously is somewhat dictated by scheme, preparation, and playcalling and, by association, coaching. That is, you need to weight coaching LESS. For example, 40% offense, 40% defense, and 20% coaching is more accurate.
* You incorrectly penalize unbalanced teams who may be very good. If a team passes for 500 yards a game, rushes for 100, puts up 40 points a game, gives up 250 yards passing and 50 rushing yards, they’re rated poorly by your system. What scenario am I describing? In other words, their passing offense is off the charts, their total offense is off the charts, their running offense is horrible because they only run in obvious way ahead situations, and their defense is constantly playing with a large lead and gives up a lot of passing yards.
* In fact, if you were to split one side of the ball into 2 separate factors, it would be more accurate to split defense. An offense that’s one dimensional can put up a lot of points (see Dolphins, Miami) whereas a defense that gives up a lot of yardage in either the running or passing game will, by default, give up a lot of points.
* Likewise, it doesn’t matter how many component parts you have in the top 10 if you don’t ever get to play to your strengths. For example, the Tennessee Titans may have a highly ranked running offense (I would argue this isn’t necessarily the case based on YPC and one outlier game), but they don’t ever get to run the ball because they’re playing from behind. In this case, their passing game and their overall defense are the biggest determiners of W/L record. In the case of the Colts, they may have a horrible run defense, but it doesn’t matter because they’re always playing from ahead, and so their weaknesses are masked.
Point by point:
2. In order for your rankings to hold any weight you need to adjust for strength of schedule.
3. Html tables. They’re nice. Try them out sometime. If I had access to your coaching rankings, then I could look at your results objectively instead of only going off the 3 datapoints I had. What evidence do you have that Childress is worse than Cable? W/L? No. Preparation? No. Scheme? No. Team plays hard and shows improvement? No. Team gets worse throughout season? Yes. At least list some examples where you think Childress is horrible, because the Vikings have come in prepared and they’ve played hard in every game. The games may have been mismanaged (3rd down pass on the GB game anyone?) but at least they have a scheme (which is more than the Raiders can say). I don’t care how bad your QB sucks, if you’re down 30 points and you’re not letting him throw the ball, what are you trying to accomplish?
5. This is why I brought up strength of schedule. The Titans scored a ton of points in 1 outlier game against a team that can’t stop the run. Their offense wouldn’t be in the top 10 if you remove the outlier game or account for strength of schedule, and their defense is definitely not a top 10 defense.
And yes, I could come up with better rankings. If you want, we each come up with a system, we bet against the moneyline going forward, and we’ll see who wins the most amount of money. If I win at the end of the year, you stop posting garbage like this. If you win, I’ll paypal you 100 bucks.
It’s either deja-vu or I’m already drunk, but I feel like you already posted this. It appears as though it has disappeared though. A regular fucking Houdini.
1. There is a Rushing Defense? You obviously can’t read.
2. I don’t have to do anything? This is a system of ranking teams that I heard on the radio (Mike and Mike) by breaking down each team in baseball and I wanted to do it for football.
3. I wrote that the coaching rankings were available on demand. Just ask and I would’ve typed up another X amount of words after slaving over this under appreciated post that I’m just being ridiculed for. BTW you’re still arguing that the Vikings deserve 1 more points. So make them an 87 if you wish. IT DOESN’T FUCKING MATTER.
4. You skipped #4, dickbag.
5. It’s strictly a system of rankings at the current time. These will obviously change the next time I make them at week 10 and the bad teams will get higher scores as the good teams get lower scores
And I will go moneyline with you? Are you kidding? I offer my Best Bets every Thursday and if people actually listened to me on those picks they’d be up 340% like I am currently on CentSports.com. And I wouldn’t take your money if you begged me to. I can already buy and sell you twice over. Peasant.
1. The 4 factors you mentioned were passing offense, rushing offense, passing defense, and coaching. I didn’t see a passing defense. If you included rushing defense in your rankings, then I’d suggest editing your posts or rereading them for accuracy before posting. Or, if you were actually not lazy, you’d post all your data that you grabbed from NFL.com and your coaching rankings in a table so that people could compare and look at where your #s came from.
2. Baseball is largely a sport of individuals. A team is largely a sum of its individual parts. Strictly applying a baseball model to football isn’t accurate. Although you could probably do something with pythagorean win/loss.
3. I’m not arguing that the Vikings deserve 1 more point, I’m arguing that your whole system is inaccurate because you’re weighting coaching more than once.
4. I didn’t have to answer #4 because, clearly, we actually agree.
5. What is the point of this post if it’s inaccurate at the time of posting? To prove the point that a random system you decided to try converges to something reasonable as you gather more data? Genius.
I’m in on the moneyline. Every week I’ll respond to your pics with my pics, we’ll tally up the records, and then we’ll see who wins at the end of the year. I’ll do it for this year’s NBA season too, if you’d like.
I’m not into basketball. I just bet football. But I accept your challenge.
#1. If you scroll up, there is an update with the 4 rankings that I used and Coaching. It is all factored in. Give me your fucking email address, I’ll send you what I worked out. Deal?
#2 and #3 I thought it was a cool idea that Mike and Mike did for Playoff Baseball. It’s OK you disagree but I tried to base it solely off of how they did it (Starting Pitching, Batting, Bull Pen, Manager). And I guess Mike and Mike did it wrong on ESPN radio because managers weigh heavily on the line-up and bull pen usage. You make sense, but that’s not how they did it and that’s not how I’m going to do it. I just didn’t make this shit up. I don’t have that much free time.
#4. Then #5 becomes #4. No more insulting me when you can’t count or read.
#5. Come back after I eat some dinner and check out A Night Cap with Logic post which will have an NCAA Best Bet, NFL Best Bet, Suicide Pick, Fantasy Start of the Week and Possible NFL Upset of the Week. And it’s not moneyline it’s with the spread but I’ll add a pick just for you, cupcake.
YALFS – Yet Another Logic False Statement. You can buy and sell me twice over. Sure. Send your coaching rankings to giorified@aol.com.
On the #4 vs no #4. I was trying to reference my #s to your #s so there’d be less confusion.
Rest of the season, by Friday, post your spread picks. Pick every single game, I’ll respond in comments with my picks. On Monday, you post the results and we’ll see who’s more accurate at the end of the season. I figured spreads were too advanced for you…
Sorry, I pick them on a week by week basis. Mostly due to spread changes, injuries and momentum. Like a normal person.
YALSF… Yet Another Logic Statement that is False would make you seem more educated.
What the hell? I said post your picks by Friday before the games (if there are Thursday games, post those on Tuesday). That means, by each Friday, you post your picks for the week so that I have 2 days to respond before the games start. How do you get post the entire season’s picks from that?
“Rest of the season, by Friday, post your spread picks. Pick every single game,”
Alright, so by your argument, you can’t judge Childress’s body of work because he inherited a good team. Let’s take this argument to its logical conclusion. So, you’re pretty much saying there are no metrics to evaluate coaches on bad teams. If a coach inherits a bad team, you can’t ever evaluate him, so he should remain coach for the foreseeable future. After all, he inherited that team right?
According to your metric, Raheem Morris becomes the worst coach in the NFL. He took a 10 win playoff team from last year to an 0-5 start. You know, he inherited a playoff team. Likewise, Tony Sporano inherited a horrible Dolphins team in 2008-2009 and turned them into a winning team. Same story in Atlanta. Josh McDaniels inherited one of the worst defenses, historically, in last year’s Denver Broncos defense. This year, it’s ranked in the top 5. Whoever the Lion’s coach is inherited an 0-16 team. Yet, they’ve shown improvement and have been competitive. You can say all you want about an inherited team, but bad coaching is bad coaching and there are metrics out there to evaluate new coaches. It’s also blatantly obvious Spagnoulo is a horrible coach despite the team he inherited.
What are reasonable metrics? How about improvement from both the previous season and improvement from game to game? These are things that you don’t see in this Raiders team. Say what you will, but it was Childress’s call to bring in Favre. They’re also not blatantly getting outcoached.
Oh God. Did you really try to just bring “Whoever the Lions’ coach is” to the table? I don’t even know why I’m arguing with you. This is just visual pollution. You remind me of a very sad 16 year old boy.
Again. I had Cable at #31 on my list? Where would you have Childress out of #32, just curious?
I whipped these up quickly, and a few spots might change if I spent more time on it. But, he here’s how my coaching rankings would break down. For the record, I wouldn’t want anyone in below the top tier coaching my football team.
Top Tier – Stars, team is prepared, doesn’t kill themselves, will outscheme and outcoach opposing coach. Wins close games they shouldn’t win on coaching alone.
————————
1. Bill Belichick
2. Josh McDaniels
Second Tier – Team is prepared, schemes are good, some coaching mistakes / game mismanagement errors.
——————————————–
3. John Harbaugh
4. Mike Tomlin
5. Sean Payton
6. Tom Coughlin
7. Love Smith
8. Jeff Fisher
9. Jim Caldwell
10. Andy Reid
11. Tony Sparano
12. Rex Ryan
The Dan Reeves Tier – Average coaches that I wouldn’t want coaching my team. Their teams are ready to play for the most part, many egregious coaching errors, teams perform commensurate to talent. Wins games against bottom tier and loses to coaches in top 2 tiers.
——————————-
13. John Fox
14. Jack Del Rio
15. Mike Smith
16. Ken Whisenhunt
17. Marvin Lewis
18. Mike McCarthy
19. Jim Mora
20. Mike Singletary
21. Wade Philips
22. Brad Childress
23. Gary Kubiak
24. Jim Schwartz
25. Todd Haley
Absolutely Horrible – Players have given up, they’re hopelessly outclassed week after week. Obvious coaching mistakes. Team is unprepared. There’s no excuse to have one of these guys as your coach with the guys who are out there.
———————————-
26. Norv Turner
27. Eric Mangini
28. Jim Zorn
29. Steve Spagnoulo
30. Dick Jauron
31. Raheem Morris
32. Tom Cable
Guys I Would Take Before Every 2nd Tier Coach
—————————————————————
1. Mike Shanahan
2. Jon Gruden
3. Bill Cowher
4. Marty Schottenheimer
Guys Who Would Easily be in the 2nd Tier
————————————————————-
1. Mike Holmgren
2. Brian Billick
Our lists are basically identical except I didn’t have spelling errors, retired coaches and a sense of entitlement.
Coaching
32. Vikings- Brad Childress
31. Raiders- Tom Cable
30. Redskins- Jim Zorn
29. Browns- Eric Mangini
28. Bucs- Raheem Morris
27. Chiefs- Todd Haley
26. Bills- Dick Jauron
25. Lions- Jim Schwartz
24. Chargers- Norv Turner
23. Texans- Gary Kubiack
22. Cowboys- Wade Phillips
21. Seahawks- Jim Mora
20. Falcons- Mike Smith
19. Panthers- John Fox
18. Jaguars- Jack Del Rio
17. Packers- Mike McCarthy
16. Colts- Jim Caldwell
15. Dolphins- Tony Sparano
14. Eagles- Andy Reid
13. Giants- Tom Coughlin
12. Rams- Steve Spagnuolo
11. Cardinals- Ken Wisenhunt
10. Bengals- Marvin Lewis
9. Ravens- John Harbaugh
8. Bears- Lovie Smith
7. Broncos- Josh McDaniels
6. Titans- Jeff Fisher
5. 49ers- Mike Singletary
4. Saints- Sean Payton
3. Jets- Rex Ryan
2. Steelers- Mike Tomlin
1. Patriots- Bill Belichick
Our lists are the same except you somehow have Spagnoulo ranked #12 when they’ve been painfully outcoached every single game and for some reason you have Childress #32, which I still have issue with. In fact, his whole reputation was built around 1 game — the Giants Super Bowl victory over NE, where he had one of the most talented DLines in history and the Giants knew Brady’s signals because he was mic’d up all year (there was an NFL Networks scene where Brady complained they knew all his signals). That’s a sample size of 1. St. Louis hasn’t been prepared in any game this season and have been getting blown out from week to week. I remember when he was a coaching candidate for Denver and everyone wanted him and all I wanted to do was gouge my eyes out at the thought of replacing Shanahan with Spagnoulo.
Also, Mike Singletary, in terms of technical coaching, isn’t actually a good coach. In terms of coaching a tough, hardnosed football team, he does a great job. I feel like everyone has him rated way too high.
Like I said, I whipped this up quickly and didn’t reread or edit it. If I was posting something on a blog, I’d probably take the time to edit it or verify that it makes sense.
I see you’ve edited your original post to now include “rushing defense”.
I might have to make a drinking game for this thread.
I concur! Where do we start?
I’m drinking everytime logic says something illogical. I’m on shot 18 already :(
I hope you’re shooting beer instead of shots.
I thought the end of the world wasn’t until 2012…crap.
logical/illogical jokes about my name are tired and lame.
What about jokes about your atrocious posts?
#1. you haven’t made any.
#2. calling them “atrocious” isn’t a joke, it’s a statement that would become your unfunny, douchey opinion.
For the record aren’t things like this usually subjective or am I confusing it with Power Rankings?
There’s a ton of ways to do power rankings. Some people crunch #s, some people just subjectively pick (usually the quants do a better job, especially in baseball and basketball). I think ESPN uses a wisdom of the crowds approach, has 5 or 6 writers rank all teams and then adds the #s up and then orders the teams from lowest to highest.
The most accurate way is a combination of watching games, asking subjective questions, and answering them quantitatively.
Fuck it! Stats won’t solve this. You guys are just gonna have to whip it out. Ber can declare the winner.
/covers eyes, but peeps through spread fingers