Tuesday, November 25, 2014

NFL Picks of the Week (POW)

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A couple weeks ago I introduced an attempt at rating the weekly NFL matchups in a metric I called WatchFactor. Nothing new or fancy, just a rating system based off the Pythagorean Wins Expectation formulas that has been done several times before. Since I had the Home Team Win Probablility calculated based off the Pythagorean Wins formula, I decided to keep track of how good the method was at predicting games.

The first week (Week 11) the POW system went 8-6. These are just a few of the outcomes from week 11.

  • Not many people outside of St. Louis saw the Rams beating the Broncos 22 - 7.
  • Saints looked terrible at home against the Bengals.
  • The Bears found a way to save themselves from 3 embarrassing wins in a row
  • The Bucs decimated the Redskins. The Redskins are awful
  • The Patriots dismantled the Colts in Prime time. 

So not a terrible week at 8-6, but not like you can quit your day job and become a full time NFL gambler either. As part of the POW projection system I setup a Python script to send out a tweet with the week's watch factor ratings. Here is the tweet for week 12


Week 12 had few games to really get excited about looking at the WatchFactor ratings for the week. How did POW stack up in Week 12...13-2. BOOM. Look out Vegas. I of course got the Chiefs/Raiers game wrong, and for the second week in a row missed the Bengals pick by picking the Texans over the Bengals. I need to stop betting against the Bengals.

You can see the Week 12 results here: http://www.thejoestory.com/winners/nfl_results.asp?week=12&season=2014

Week 13 is shaping up to be a huge week with 6 Barn Burners (according to the WatchFactor ratings) on the schedule, including two great games slated for Thanksgiving day. We'll see how the well we predict the games this week.


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