Anyone who follows football knows how big a part of the game that parity is. One team can be good one year and bad the next and vice versa for seemingly no reason. This series, called Predicting Parity, seeks to discover why that is and figure out how to predict it. This is the last part of the season. In the 2nd last part, talk about what I have named points of parity. A point of parity is a change in win total, either positive or negative. If a team wins 8 and then wins 5, that’s 3 points of parity. Same if they go from 8 to 11.
Since 2003, there has been about 98.3 points of parity per season, more than 3 per team. That means, on a yearly basis, teams, on average, either win or lose 3 more games than the year before. Season predictions almost never take this into account. Mine didn’t before this year, but it has to be taken into account. What teams did the year before is actually not that great a predictor of future performance.
On average, 1.8 teams have 7+ points of parity, 4.4 teams have 6+ points of parity, 7 have 5+ points of parity, 11.3 have 4+ points of parity, 15.5 have 3+, 23.8 have 2+, and 29.6 have 1+. That means, on a yearly basis, only 2.4 teams, on average, post the exact same win total as the year before. In this final part of this series, I’ll put this into action, as well as the other parts, in order to predict team’s records for 2012. From that, I’ll be able to identify which teams are going to be under/overrated by Vegas early in the season.
7 or more points of parity (1.78 per season since 2003)
1. St. Louis Rams 9-7
6 or more points of parity (4.44 per season since 2003)
2. San Francisco 49ers 7-9
3. Oakland Raiders 2-14
4. Indianapolis Colts 8-8
5 or more points of parity (7.00 per season since 2003)
5. Cincinnati Bengals 4-12
6. Arizona Cardinals 3-13
4 or more points of parity (11.3 per season since 2003)
7. Buffalo Bills 10-6
8. Baltimore Ravens 8-8
9. Philadelphia Eagles 12-4
10. Chicago Bears 12-4
3 or more points of parity (15.5 per season since 2003)
11. Washington Redskins 8-8
12. Jacksonville Jaguars 2-14
13. Tampa Bay Buccaneers 7-9
14. Detroit Lions 7-9
15. Minnesota Vikings 6-10
2 or more points of parity (23.7 per season since 2003)
16. Houston Texans 12-4
17. Green Bay Packers 13-3
18. New Orleans Saints 11-5
19. San Diego Chargers 10-6
20. Tennessee Titans 11-5
1 or more points of parity (29.6 per season since 2003)
21. Atlanta Falcons 11-5
22. New York Jets 7-9
23. Miami Dolphins 5-11
24. Kansas City Chiefs 6-10
25. Seattle Seahawks 6-10
26. Carolina Panthers 7-9
27. New York Giants 8-8
28. Cleveland Browns 3-13
29. Denver Broncos 9-7
30. Pittsburgh Steelers 11-5
The rest
31. Dallas Cowboys 8-8
32. New England Patriots 13-3
Total points of parity: 85 (98.3 per season since 2003)
Now, this is actually a little bit on the conservative side (though you wouldn’t know it from some comments I get), but I figure that unpredictable injuries are going to account for a good amount of parity themselves and I’m not even going to try to predict those. What this has allowed me to do is find 5 underrated and 5 overrated teams for 2012.
What you see below are some Vegas odds from weeks 1-3 last season.
Detroit (+1) at Tampa Bay
Indianapolis (+9) at Houston
Cincinnati (+6.5) at Cleveland
Tennessee (+3) at Jacksonville
Seattle (+5.5) at San Francisco
Chicago (+7) at New Orleans
Houston (-3) at Miami
Dallas (-3) at San Francisco
San Diego (+7) at New England
St. Louis (+4.5) at NY Giants
Philadelphia (-3) at Atlanta
San Francisco (+3) at Cincinnati
NY Giants (+9) at Philadelphia
Kansas City (+15) at San Diego
Baltimore (-4) at St. Louis
Green Bay (-4) at Chicago
Those look comical to us now, but they were once legitimate lines. If you had predicted beforehand that teams like Detroit, San Francisco, Houston, Tennessee, and Cincinnati would exceed expectations and teams like Tampa Bay, Chicago, St. Louis, San Diego, Philadelphia would do the opposite, that’s 15 wins (and one push) for you in 3 weeks easily. Obviously, that’s easier said than done, but I’m going to try.
Underrated
St. Louis Rams
Indianapolis Colts
Buffalo Bills
Chicago Bears
Tampa Bay Buccaneers
Overrated
San Francisco 49ers
Oakland Raiders
Cincinnati Bengals
Baltimore Ravens
Detroit Lions
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