The Dolphins Make Me Cry.com - Forums

Let's start with the previous week's rankings:

average rank last week: 6.6

Based on who they have beaten, MIA should be a clear #1.  But I'm going to predict that MIA's average rank this week is 3rd, behind PHI and one of BUF or KC.

^ The Dolphins beat the Bills by pretty much exactly the average home field advantage margin. For the Dolphins in September, that advantage is likely higher, meaning that the Bills would still be expected to win on neutral ground. The Bills also had an obscene number of plays compared to the Dolphins, which a lot of the win-prediction models rate heavily in determining who "should have" won. This will negatively affect any power rankings that use statistical modelling, which I'll admit is probably quite few. The Bills D was also decimated by injuries, which is going to affect the more subjective rankings.

Based on that, I'd ballpark the average rank at around 5.

Buffalo should remain the clear #1, as they are currently best in the league with regard to the two strongest predictors of winning in the NFL, combined -- pass offense and pass defense.  The Dolphins are slightly outperforming them with regard to pass offense but are well behind them in pass defense (28th in the league to 2nd).

So again we're talking about power rankings (or ratings) here, not some sort of system that places a premium on wins and losses (like the NFL playoffs, for example, where a win keeps you going and a loss ends your season).  If you consider the data above, you have to consider that Buffalo would very likely beat the Dolphins the vast majority of times they played them, with yesterday's loss representing an unlikely outcome of a game between them, and certainly that should factor into any sort of power ranking of this nature if it's utilizing the objective data most strongly related to winning in its formulation.

In other words, if the Bills would beat the Dolphins let's say 80 times of every 100 times they played (theoretically, based on the important data), and yesterday's game represented one of the other 20, then the Dolphins certainly shouldn't vault ahead of Buffalo in a power ranking that utilizes the important objective data.

I still think Phiily is a fraud but they will outrank us just because they started much higher. As well, I don't see us jumping Buffalo, KC, and possibly the Rams at this point.

If the Bills are within a couple of points of the Dolphins (enough that homefield could decide the game), and the Bills were the best team in the league, why should the Dolphins be any lower than second?

People keep talking about the injuries on the Bills D, but they aren't getting Hyde back this year (and probably not Jackson either).  If MIA lost Tyreek Hill, they would immediately tumble down the rankings.  So why should BUF be ranked above MIA before those injured players return?

A lot of this rationale will ring extremely hollow if PHI is #1 this week, even though they haven't faced teams anywhere near the same caliber as the Dolphins' opponents.

This again, for me, goes to asking what Power Rankings are.

I don't think we're a better team than the Bills, but if this is college football rankings and you beat a team directly above you, you surpass that team.  So, I don't know.  Is there any explanation of what the power ranking is based on?  Do these sites list a criteria?

Everybody keeps saying that the Bills are a better team than we are. They aren't. If that were the case they'd have won the game.

We rope-a-doped the bills .. we kept letting them take swings and swings and swings without letting them land any big ones. In the 4th quarter they were all punched out and couldn't even clock the ball.

You are what your record says you are. And we're #1 in the AFC. Period, end of story.

I like this!!!

Power rankings are click bait, Miami will be like a 4, because the excuses for their winning will continue.

That approach matters when playoff teams are determined, as records become paramount then, but it tends to work comparatively poorly for predicting future performance.

Consider that if a team loses 80-0 to the worst team in the league and another team loses 2-0 to the best team in the league, both losing teams experience the same result in terms of win percentage -- a hashmark in the loss column.  Wins and losses alone aren't necessarily highly informative.

And if the better team always won, there would be no such thing as an upset.  The better team would always win.

At the most basic level, no one cares who the best team was last year, or any other year.
We care who won the championship, right?

Power Rankings themselves have limited value beyond discussion like this.  But still, as fans it's fair to want to have your favorite team be accorded the respect you believe they've earned.

I just wanted to throw out a separate side prediction about the Eagles:

1) PHI is ranked #1 by at least 3 of the ranking sources listed above
2) PHI has a better ranking than MIA in at least 5 of the ranking sources listed above
3) PHI's average ranking among those ten sources is at least 1 full spot better than MIA's

Results are starting to come in:

ESPN, The Athletic, and The Sporting News all have the Dolphins #1 (shocked), with the Bills and Eagles taking second and third in mixed order.
The Ringer has the Dolphins 6th, Eagles 7th. The top 5 spots are the preseason favorites sans Rams: Bills, Chiefs, Packers, Bucs, Ravens - in that order.
Pro Football Network has switched to a "tiered ranking" for week 4, with the Dolphins and Eagles alone in Tier 1.
Yahoo! keeps the Bills on top, followed by the Eagles and Chiefs, then the Dolphins.

As of right now, the others have yet to be published.

Judging by the early results, those are some bad side bets ;).

We definitely aren't the best team in the league.

But we have the best track record, so the #1 ranking is just, if it is supposed to emulate college ranking.

We beat the Bills and Ravens -- arguably the two best teams in the AFC.  Our other win is the equivalent of a big name school that's having an off-year, but is a rival game.  And we beat them soundly.

This is one I'd give a good bit of credence:

https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2022-nfl-predictions/

Notice it has the Giants where they belong in my opinion, despite their 2-1 record, along with a prediction that they finish the season 8-9.  Their current win percentage alone (67%) would predict nothing of the sort.

The college rankings can be garbage at times as well.  This is a much better system:

https://www.espn.com/college-football/fpi

Consider that last year Cincinnati was deemed a CFP team but entered its game against Alabama double-digit underdogs, whereas multiple other teams would've provided much greater parity.  I realize there's a "reward" associated with regular season record, but with these power rankings (or ratings) the #1 goal should be prediction of future performance.

If this is the case, then the Dolphins are ranked too high.  We're not a top 5 NFL team, I don't think.  We've played great, but I can think of many teams that would be favored over us on a neutral field.

name 5 teams that are better than the dolphins.

So if I understand this correctly, a big reason behind MIA beating BUF is the "practice squad secondary" the Bills were forced to field in Miami.  Are all of their starters coming back next week? If not, why aren't they being ranked like a team with a practice squad secondary?

Rounding out the results:

nfl.com have the Dolphins 3rd, Bills 2nd, and the Eagles grabbing #1.
Pro Football Talk have the Dolphins #1, followed by the Eagles and Bills.
Sports Illustrated go Dolphins #1, followed by the Bills and then the Eagles.
CBS Sports has the Eagles #1, followed by the Dolphins and then the Bills.

The Ringer is the obvious outlier. Everyone else has the Dolphins, Eagles, and Bills in the top 3 spots, with the exception of Yahoo! that let the Chiefs slip into third, ahead of the Dolphins.

Bucs
Vikings
Packers
Rams
Eagles
Bills
Chiefs
Ravens
Bengals

I don't want to nitpick every choice, but here are several teams where we wouldn't be favored, probably.

That's not to say they've played better.

These obviously vary on the basis of whether they use a "strength of record" or a more statistical approach.

This is a good rundown of that as applied to college football:

https://www.espn.com/blog/statsinfo/post/_/id/125801/best-or-most-deserving-which-will-the-cfp-committee-value-on-tuesday

Pretty hilarious that Pro Football Network changed their entire ranking system rather than give the Dolphins or Eagles the lone #1 spot.  In any case:

CBS Sports
MIA: 2 PHI: 1

NFL.com
MIA: 3 PHI: 1

The Athletic
MIA: 1 PHI: 2? (paywall, but implied in the page title)

Pro Football Talk
MIA: 1  PHI: 2

Yahoo Sports
MIA: 4 PHI: 2

Sports Illustrated
MIA: 1 PHI: 3

Pro Football Network
MIA: t-1 PHI: t-1

ESPN
MIA: 1 PHI: 3

The Ringer
MIA: 6 PHI: 7

The Sporting News
MIA: 1 PHI: 3

average MIA rank: 2.1
average PHI rank: 2.5

I hit on the first prediction, lost on the second, lost big on the third.  Six sources put MIA as #1, which I did not expect.

Miami has beaten 3 very good teams and thus far has outperformed any other team in the league. They deserve to be ranked #1 until proven otherwise in my opinion.

Perhaps you failed to consider that BUF gained a lot of yards in their loss, which is almost the same as winning.
Therefore in a sense, they proved that they were better than the Dolphins, who merely scored more points.

Someone made a spreadsheet....

NFL Power Rankings combined week 3 (https://www.reddit.com/r/miamidolphins/comments/xpjl9b/nfl_power_rankings_combined_week_3/)

The point above has everything to do with the following distinction:

https://www.espn.com/blog/statsinfo/post/_/id/125801/best-or-most-deserving-which-will-the-cfp-committee-value-on-tuesday

If power rankings are focused on determining the "most deserving" teams, then the Dolphins should be atop the league.  If on the other hand power rankings are focused on determining the "best" team (which in my view means the one expected to beat all other teams on a neutral field), then the Dolphins are not #1 at present.

There are better predictors of future performance than what the scoreboard says at the end of a mere one game.  Consider that if Miami and Buffalo played tomorrow on a neutral field, the opening line would favor Buffalo.

Would BUF's secondary be healthy tomorrow?  Because that's the excuse that was trotted out repeatedly to dismiss Sunday's outcome.

If the argument is that a healthy Bills team should be expected to be better than the Dolphins in week 15 when they play again, then let's have that discussion when the Week 15 Power Rankings are being determined.  But the Bills team that exists today is not healthy, yet people insist on ranking them as if they were.

LOL ... It's hard to fathom some people actually believe that results don't matter. Kim Bokamper from those dreaded Killer Bs of the Dolphins said that was a philosophy they followed. Make them go the length of the field and keep the big plays from happening. The more plays they ran the more opportunites our defense has to capitalize on their mistakes.

Sure seems like that's is how defense plays too. We'e won 3 big games in 3 different ways. I'd think that would count for something.

Results certainly matter, because the playoffs are determined almost exclusively by record, but results aren't stronger predictors of future performance than other variables.

Last year Alabama beat Georgia convincingly in the SEC Championship game, yet Georgia was favored over Alabama in the National Championship game just a month later.  Obviously there were better predictors of both teams' future performance in that game than merely the result of the game they played previously.

That logic works both ways.  Did those same predictors say that Georgia would beat Alabama in the first game? You can't just ignore half the results and point to the remaining half as "proof" of validity.

Did these predictors say that KC would beat CIN in the regular season last year?  How about in their AFCCG rematch?

I'm not saying anything about the degree to which such predictor variables are accurate -- I'm merely saying there are variables in that regard more accurate than team win percentage over a relatively small sample of games or the result of a single previous game between two teams.

Consider that right now Buffalo and the Giants are both 2-1, yet the expectation would be for Buffalo to all but trounce the Giants.  That expectation has to be determined by something other than their records.  And if they actually played, the Giants might win the game, but if they played again the following day Buffalo would be favored again nonetheless.

It helps to pan back and ask yourself which team would win the majority of games if they played 100 times.  If the Giants played Buffalo and by chance beat them, and that represented one of the perhaps 10 times out of 100 they would beat them, well then Buffalo remains clearly the better team.

Again none of that matters in terms of who reaches the playoffs, because there again we're using team records almost exclusively -- this pertains again only to which variables are best used to determine the better team and the one expected to win.

When Eli's Giants played Brady's Patriots in SB XLII, the predictors said NE was favored.
When they played again in the 2011 regular season, the predictors said NE was favored again.
When they played in SB XLIV, again NE was favored.
No matter how many times Eli's Giants beat Brady's Patriots, Brady's Patriots were always the favorite.

The idea that the prediction industry is "accurate" is far from substantiated.

Prediction of single game outcomes is difficult using any variables, but there are variables that do it far better than win percentage over a relatively small sample of games and the outcomes of previous meetings between teams.  This is again why Buffalo would be favored against the Dolphins right now, even though the Dolphins are 3-0 and Buffalo 2-1 and the Dolphins beat them four days ago.

Again the larger point is that if you're generating power rankings as a measure of the "best" teams and not the "most deserving" teams, you do it with more than just win percentage and/or H2H outcomes.  Otherwise you would simply put money on the Giants "tying" the Bills in a game between them, since they're both 2-1, whereas such a bet would obviously be ridiculous.  There's obviously a far better way of determining what's most likely to happen in a game between Buffalo and the Giants.

Can you cite someone who has proven over time to be better at predicting the outcome of a game than our boy George Washington on a standard-issue United States quarter dollar?

The entire industry is a scam.

If we order 100 2021-2022 regular season and playoff games randomly and look at the percentage of favored teams that won, that percentage is 63%.

If you would've bet let's say $100 on each game and used just a coin flip, instead of the Vegas favorite, to determine the teams bet on (win or lose), you likely would've lost about $1300.

That's cool and all, but when talking about actual outlets that exist in the real world, I doubt any of them simply predict chalk down the line... especially since (in the early weeks) either you have very little data to work from, or you're using last season's data with outdated rosters.  So in practice, you would need to offset that 63% with the number of games that a given outlet predicts an upset that doesn't happen.

This is why I asked for a specific "someone who has proven over time to be better" rather than stats on amorphous favorites.

As a side note: please don't derail this conversation into yet another discussion about how Vegas works.  I'm not talking about Vegas; I'm talking about the analysis industry who claims to be able to predict the outcome of games, many of whom charge delusional marks a fee for their insight.