NFL Predictions for Week 18
Team Ratings for Week 18
The basic method is described on my Department home page.
Here are the team ratings prior to this week’s games, along with the ratings at the start of the season.
| Current Rating | Rating at Season Start | Difference | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Seahawks | 8.75 | 1.60 | 7.20 |
| Rams | 7.84 | 3.32 | 4.50 |
| Patriots | 6.37 | -6.88 | 13.30 |
| Lions | 5.74 | 9.26 | -3.50 |
| Texans | 4.69 | 0.65 | 4.00 |
| Packers | 4.15 | 5.92 | -1.80 |
| Bills | 4.03 | 8.28 | -4.30 |
| Ravens | 3.36 | 11.27 | -7.90 |
| Chargers | 3.31 | 2.67 | 0.60 |
| 49ers | 3.15 | -3.05 | 6.20 |
| Eagles | 2.95 | 12.46 | -9.50 |
| Jaguars | 2.95 | -6.28 | 9.20 |
| Vikings | 1.74 | 2.67 | -0.90 |
| Bengals | 1.57 | 3.45 | -1.90 |
| Broncos | 1.53 | 3.65 | -2.10 |
| Steelers | 0.60 | -0.33 | 0.90 |
| Bears | 0.29 | -3.03 | 3.30 |
| Chiefs | -0.90 | 3.00 | -3.90 |
| Colts | -0.96 | -5.52 | 4.60 |
| Falcons | -1.08 | -3.22 | 2.10 |
| Cowboys | -2.55 | -3.23 | 0.70 |
| Dolphins | -2.76 | 0.72 | -3.50 |
| Saints | -2.84 | -5.63 | 2.80 |
| Browns | -3.23 | -9.54 | 6.30 |
| Giants | -3.75 | -7.54 | 3.80 |
| Buccaneers | -4.42 | 3.86 | -8.30 |
| Panthers | -6.36 | -7.28 | 0.90 |
| Commanders | -6.70 | 2.74 | -9.40 |
| Raiders | -7.20 | -5.45 | -1.70 |
| Titans | -7.34 | -9.40 | 2.10 |
| Cardinals | -7.81 | 0.58 | -8.40 |
| Jets | -9.27 | -3.87 | -5.40 |
Performance So Far
So far there have been 256 matches played, 154 of which were correctly predicted, a success rate of 60.2%.
Here are the predictions for last week’s games.
| Game | Date | Score | Prediction | Correct | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Commanders vs. Cowboys | Dec 25 | 23 – 30 | -1.70 | TRUE |
| 2 | Vikings vs. Lions | Dec 25 | 23 – 10 | -6.50 | FALSE |
| 3 | Chiefs vs. Broncos | Dec 25 | 13 – 20 | 0.70 | FALSE |
| 4 | Browns vs. Steelers | Dec 28 | 13 – 6 | -5.20 | FALSE |
| 5 | Colts vs. Jaguars | Dec 28 | 17 – 23 | -1.70 | TRUE |
| 6 | Dolphins vs. Buccaneers | Dec 28 | 20 – 17 | 2.50 | TRUE |
| 7 | Jets vs. Patriots | Dec 28 | 10 – 42 | -10.90 | TRUE |
| 8 | Titans vs. Saints | Dec 28 | 26 – 34 | -1.80 | TRUE |
| 9 | Bills vs. Eagles | Dec 28 | 12 – 13 | 3.30 | FALSE |
| 10 | 49ers vs. Bears | Dec 28 | 42 – 38 | 3.80 | TRUE |
| 11 | Packers vs. Ravens | Dec 28 | 24 – 41 | 5.80 | FALSE |
| 12 | Chargers vs. Texans | Dec 28 | 16 – 20 | 1.00 | FALSE |
| 13 | Falcons vs. Rams | Dec 29 | 27 – 24 | -10.50 | FALSE |
| 14 | Panthers vs. Seahawks | Dec 29 | 10 – 27 | -13.00 | TRUE |
| 15 | Bengals vs. Cardinals | Dec 29 | 37 – 14 | 7.50 | TRUE |
| 16 | Raiders vs. Giants | Dec 29 | 10 – 34 | 2.00 | FALSE |
Predictions for Week 18
Here are the predictions for Week 18. The prediction is my estimated expected points difference with a positive margin being a win to the home team, and a negative margin a win to the away team.
| Game | Date | Winner | Prediction | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Falcons vs. Saints | Jan 05 | Falcons | 2.80 |
| 2 | Bills vs. Jets | Jan 05 | Bills | 14.30 |
| 3 | Bears vs. Lions | Jan 05 | Lions | -4.50 |
| 4 | Bengals vs. Browns | Jan 05 | Bengals | 5.80 |
| 5 | Broncos vs. Chargers | Jan 05 | Chargers | -0.80 |
| 6 | Texans vs. Colts | Jan 05 | Texans | 6.70 |
| 7 | Jaguars vs. Titans | Jan 05 | Jaguars | 11.30 |
| 8 | Rams vs. Cardinals | Jan 05 | Rams | 16.60 |
| 9 | Raiders vs. Chiefs | Jan 05 | Chiefs | -5.30 |
| 10 | Vikings vs. Packers | Jan 05 | Packers | -1.40 |
| 11 | Patriots vs. Dolphins | Jan 05 | Patriots | 10.10 |
| 12 | Giants vs. Cowboys | Jan 05 | Cowboys | -0.20 |
| 13 | Eagles vs. Commanders | Jan 05 | Eagles | 10.60 |
| 14 | Steelers vs. Ravens | Jan 05 | Ravens | -1.80 |
| 15 | 49ers vs. Seahawks | Jan 05 | Seahawks | -4.60 |
| 16 | Buccaneers vs. Panthers | Jan 05 | Buccaneers | 2.90 |
David Scott obtained a BA and PhD from the Australian National University and then commenced his university teaching career at La Trobe University in 1972. He has taught at La Trobe University, the University of Sheffield, Bond University and Colorado State University, joining the University of Auckland, based at Tamaki Campus, in mid-1995. He has been Head of Department at La Trobe University, Acting Dean and Associate Dean (Academic) at Bond University, and Associate Director of the Centre for Quality Management and Data Analysis at Bond University with responsibility for Short Courses. He was Head of the Department of Statistics in 2000, and is a past President of the New Zealand Statistical Assocation. See all posts by David Scott »
Seattle at San Francisco, and Carolina at Tampa Bay are being played on Jan 4, not Jan 5.
I found your list order mysterious until I realized it’s sorted alphabetically by home team location, which isn’t shown. ;-)
2 months ago
Thank you for your interest. You are correct if you are living in New Zealand. If you are on the East Coast of the USA those games are being played on January 3rd I believe (and others on January 4). There are a number of problems getting dates right, different time zones being one as I just outlined. Also in some leagues, Top 14 for one, the initial published schedule can list all games in a particular week as being on the same day, and dates are a firmed up later. Possibly this is why I got them wrong on this occasion, I am not sure. Overall I don’t worry to much about the exact date a game is played provided there is no intervening game which would require adjustment of my ratings. (The competition where this requires attention to detail is the NPC where teams can play two games in a week.)
To obtain the schedule for the NFL and results of previous seasons I did not use my normal web scraping because of how the results were being presented. Normally and in future for the NFL as well, the game date is the date in New Zealand. (To be fussy, I am not sure if the game time overlaps midnight in NZ which date is given: I think the day the game starts.) The sorting of the list is also down to the site from which I obtained the schedule. Normally and in future that should be by start time so there will still be the possibility of some variability in sorting of games in the same time zone, starting at 1:00 pm.
Dropping the home team location in the team name was a decision I had to make. It was influenced again by the source of the past data I used in choosing parameter values. I understand that NFL teams do relocate from time to time which might explain why that source of the results did not give the team location as part of the name.
The fact that teams have also changed the other part of their names also bit me when I was first creating my past results data set. I was about to publish my predictions when I realised I had 34 teams instead of 32, including two teams called Redskins and Football Team. Fortunately I did know about changes of names such as Redskins although Football Team was pretty weird.
1 month ago