2016 - Team Ratings After Round 17

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It was a relatively quiet week for team re-rankings on both MARS and ChiPS this week, with MARS promoting or demoting three teams by a single place and ChiPS doing the same for five teams.

At the top of the respective rankings, MARS left its number 1 and 2 teams, Adelaide and West Coast, in place, but swapped Hawthorn into 3rd in place of Sydney. ChiPS left Sydney in 1st, moved Adelaide into 2nd at the expense of West Coast, and left Hawthorn in 4th.

All the changes left the two Systems disagreeing most about the ranking only of Sydney, ranked 4th by MARS and 1st by ChiPS.

One noticeable feature of ChiPS ratings now is how compressed they are at the top, with just under 13 Rating Points (RPs) separating Sydney in 1st from the Kangaroos in 8th. That augurs well for the Finals.

MARS is only a little different, with about 22 RPs separating Adelaide in 1st from Port Adelaide in 8th, but with a gap of over 8 RPs between Sydney in 4th and Geelong in 5th. Outside the top 8, there's also a sizeable gap between the Kangaroos (1,011.5) in 9th and Collingwood (994.2) in 10th.

The correlation between raw ChiPS and MARS ratings now stands at +0.988.

MoSBODS RATINGS

On Combined Ratings, MoSSBODS was even more stable than ChiPS and MARS this week, with just four teams moving. Towards the top, Geelong took 2nd spot from Sydney and, further down, St Kilda and Melbourne swapped 11th and 13th.

Rankings on the Offensive and Defensive components were a little more dynamic. Nine teams changed places on Offensive rankings, though only one by more than a single spot - St Kilda, up two places into 11th - while three teams changed places on Defensive rankings, just one (Melbourne) by more than a single spot.

These latest ratings appears as follows when placed in an historical context.

Adelaide, we see, continues to sample rare air, and now has a sizeable gap over Geelong of about 2.4 Scoring Shots (SS) in Combined Rating.

The next five teams, Geelong, Sydney, the Western Bulldogs, Hawthorn and GWS, are quite bunched in terms of Combined Rating, with just 1 SS separating them all, but they are spread out in terms of their respective Offensive and Defensive Ratings. West Coast is another 1.2 SS further back on Combined Ratings and finds itself in roughly the bottom third of rating of previous Grand Finalists at the same point in the season. Collingwood is another 1.8 SS adrift and it, along with the Kangaroos and Port Adelaide, lies in the lowest decile of previous Grand Finalists. 

After that, the teams would need to make history (and, in some cases, redefine the mathematical notion of 'addition') to make the Finals.

The manner in which the teams have assumed their current ratings is described below in our regular Dance of the AFL 18.

MoSSBODS' team rankings are now most divergent from those of MARS and ChiPS for:

  • Geelong, ranked 2nd by MoSSBODS, 5th by MARS, and 6th by ChiPS
  • The Western Bulldogs, ranked 4th by MoSSBODS, and 7th by MARS and ChiPS
  • West Coast, ranked 7th by MoSSBODS, 2nd by MARS, and 3rd by ChiPS

Lastly, let's take a look at the team rating changes for this past week alone.

This week, the only teams increasing both their Offensive and Defensive Ratings were:

  • Hawthorn
  • GWS
  • Port Adelaide
  • St Kilda
  • Carlton
  • Essendon

... and the only teams decreasing both were:

  • Sydney
  • West Coast
  • The Kangaroos
  • Richmond
  • Melbourne
  • The Brisbane Lions