2016 - Team Ratings After Round 18

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Well that was quite a round.

Enough, in fact, to have MARS re-ranking half the teams and ChiPS re-ranking eight.

In ChiPS' case, all of the activity was at the top end, with last week's Top 8 teams all being reshuffled by at least one spot. Hawthorn and West Coast moved most, but in opposite directions, the Hawks climbing three spots into 1st, and the Eagles falling three spots into 6th.

Other multi-spot movements were the Crows' slide from 2nd into 4th, and the Giants' climb from 5th into 3rd.

MARS, in comparison, moved teams from all over the ordering and only one team by more than a spot, the Hawks also being elevated by it into 1st place.

ChiPS' Top 10 teams are now all rated above-average and span a ratings range of only just over 21 Rating Points (RPs). Interestingly, St Kilda is not one of those 10 teams, despite being the only team currently outside the competition's Top 8 with realistic chances of playing Finals football.

On MARS, with Collingwood falling slightly further than Port Adelaide this week, the gap between those two teams in 9th and 10th has increased to just over 23 RPs. The Top 6 teams, however, are separated by only 12 RPs, which is the smallest the gap between 1st and 6th has been on MARS since Round 15.

MARS and ChiPS now disagree most about the rankings of:

  • GWS: ranked 6th by MARS and 3rd by ChiPS
  • West Coast: ranked 3rd by MARS and 6th by ChiPS 

For no other team do the rankings differ by more than two places. The correlation between raw MARS and ChiPS ratings now stands at +0.985.

MoSSBODS RATINGS

On Combined Ratings, MoSSBODS moved 11 teams this week, including six from within last week's Top 8.

GWS climbed most, up three places into 3rd, while the Kangaroos and Carlton climbed two spots each, into 7th and 13th respectively. Three teams fell two places, Sydney from 3rd to 5th, the Western Bulldogs from 4th to 6th, and Richmond from 12th to 14th. 

Adelaide, despite surrendering about 0.4 Scoring Shots (SS) of Combined Rating to Geelong, is still rated almost 1.7 SS higher, while the gap between Geelong and GWS has narrowed to just 0.5 SS.

There was also a lot of activity on Offensive and Defensive rankings as 11 teams moved on Offence, five by more than a single spot, and 14 teams moved on Defence, five by more than a single spot.

That left MoSSBODS most significantly in disagreement with MARS and ChiPS about the rankings of:

  • Geelong: ranked 2nd by MoSSBODS but 5th by MARS and ChiPS
  • Hawthorn: ranked 4th by MoSSBODS but 1st by MARS and ChiPS
  • West Coast: ranked 8th by MoSSBODS but 3rd by MARS and 6th by ChiPS

The chart below, as usual, puts the latest team ratings in an historical context.

Adelaide has now dropped marginally below the line marking the Combined Rating of the Top 10% of teams that subsequently went on to make the Grand Final. Nonetheless, it continues to be rated very highly in historical terms, its loss this week to Geelong being, from MoSSBODS' viewpoint, only by 5 Scoring Shots.

The spread of Offensive and Defensive ratings across the top teams remains wide, the Dogs now being rated a below-average team on Offence (-0.1 SS) with Adelaide rated about +5.9 SS on this component, and GWS being rated only 1.2 SS above-average on Defence and the Western Bulldogs +4.2 SS.

Next, the animation showing the evolution of team ratings from Round 1 to the current round.

One interesting thing I noticed when reviewing this animation this week was how little movement there's been in the Western Bulldogs' Offensive and Defensive Ratings since Round 6. Broadly, the same can be said for North Melbourne, too.

Finally, let's look at the latest set of rating changes in isolation.

This week five teams saw their Offensive and Defensive Ratings rise:

  • Hawthorn
  • St Kilda
  • Melbourne
  • Carlton
  • Gold Coast

Five more - their opponents - saw their Offensive and Defensive Ratings rise:

  • Richmond
  • Western Bulldogs
  • West Coast
  • Sydney
  • Fremantle