2026 - Team Ratings After Round 12
/MoSHBODS changed the ranking of 10 teams this week, which included swapping 1st and 2nd, 3rd and 4th, and 5th and 6th, which left it with a Top 3 of Swans, Cats, and Hawks. The only multi-spot movers were Western Bulldogs up 2 into 9th, and St Kilda down 2 into 11th.
MARS moved only seven teams, and none in the Top 5. Its Top 3 then remains Cats, Swans, and Hawks. Its bir movers were GWS up 3 spots into 7th, and Melbourne down 4 spots into 12th.
MoSHBODS RATINGS
Overall, MoSHBODS now has 13 teams rated as above average.
On the Component Ratings, on offence we find MoSHBODS with a Top 3 of Swans, Cats, and Lions, while on defence it has a Top 3 of Dockers, Hawks, and Pies. Fourteen teams are rated as above average on offence but only seven on defence.
Offensive ratings currently span a range of 1.47 standard deviations (steady) and defensive ratings a range of 1.2 standard deviations (up). The standard deviation of offensive ratings across all teams is 0.39 and that for defensive ratings 0.32. Teams therefore continue to be more differentiated by their offensive abilities than their defensive abilities.
The correlation between the teams’ MoSHBODS offensive and defensive Ratings now stands at +0.69, which is slightly higher than last week.
We can put the MoSHBODS Ratings into an historical context by looking at the offensive and defensive ratings that teams in other seasons had after Round 12 (recognising that this will have meant different numbers of games per team in different years)
We see that the Cats, Swans, Hawks, and Dockers are now the only teams rated above the median for Grand Finalists at this point of the season in the context of history, but none is in the top decile.
We can also look at the trajectory that each team has taken so far in 2026 to arrive at their current rating.
MARS RATINGS
MARS still has 12 teams rated better-than-average, with St Kilda next best on 995.7.
As noted earlier, it has the same teams in its Top 3 as MoSHBODS, but in a different order.
The gap from 1st to 2nd is now only 1.5 Rating Points (down), from 1st to 4th is 9.2 Rating Points (down), and from 1st to 10th is 30.3 Rating Points (down).
Across all 18 teams, the Ratings span 85.5 Rating Points (up), the mean is 1,000 Rating Points, and the standard deviation is 24.5 Rating Points (up).
COMPARISON OF MOSHBODS AND MARS
The correlation between MoSHBODS’ Combined Ratings and MARS’ Ratings stands at +0.987 and, roughly speaking, each team’s Combined MoSHBODS Rating is about 0.026 times its MARS Rating less 26.3.
Looking firstly at the comparison between the ordering of the teams on MoSHBODS and MARS compared to their ordering on the competition ladder we see that the teams with the largest discrepancies are:
HIGHER ON THE LADDER THAN ON THE TEAM RATING SYSTEMS
Melbourne
HIGHER ON THE TEAM RATING SYSTEMS THAN ON THE LADDER
None
MoSHBODS and MARS agree about the ranking of eight teams now, and differ by no more than two spots about the ranking of only GWS, which MARS has 7th and MoSHBODS 13th.
Overall, the rank correlation between the two Systems is +0.938, dragged down by that GWS disparity.
