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SCOAR: Wild Card Rankings & Predictions

Seattle leaps up the leaderboard after a dominant close to the season.

Mark J. Rebilas-USA TODAY Sports

The Seahawks closed out the season strong, blowing out the previously top ranked Cardinals. This gave them the best performance of the week and propelled them up the leaderboard. Seattle’s offense closes the season ranked 4th and the defense, after an impressive showing, finishes ranked first. The Seahawks will travel to Minnesota in the Wild Card round to take on the ninth ranked Vikings. The Vikings defense projects to match up well with the Seahawks offense but the Seahawks defense gives Seattle the edge in the matchup.

For those of you who still aren't familiar with SCOAR...

SCOAR (SCaled Opponent-Adjusted point Ratio) is explained in detail here, but I'll provide a quick recap. Opponent-adjusted point ratio is the ratio of a team's points to the average points of that team's opponents, normalized with a logarithm. This value is calculated for a team's points for and points allowed then combined for a total rating. These results are then scaled using the average points scored across the league in order to give a result that corresponds directly to points.

Looking Back

SCOAR closed out the regular season in mediocrity. Week 17 brought a straight up record of 8-8 and an atrocious 4-10-2 against the spread. This brings the final regular season numbers to 159-97 (0.621) and 117-114-25 (0.506) ATS. Overall a disappointing season.

Game Predicted Actual Game Predicted Actual
New York Jets 22 17 New England Patriots 31 10
Buffalo Bills 22 22 Miami Dolphins 17 20
Tampa Bay Buccaneers 17 10 New Orleans Saints 21 20
Carolina Panthers 34 38 Atlanta Falcons 29 17
Baltimore Ravens 14 16 Pittsburgh Steelers 29 28
Cincinnati Bengals 30 24 Cleveland Browns 17 12
Jacksonville Jaguars 20 6 Tennessee Titans 19 24
Houston Texans 25 30 Indianapolis Colts 25 30
Oakland Raiders 17 17 Washington Redskins 21 34
Kansas City Chiefs 30 23 Dallas Cowboys 18 23
Philadelphia Eagles 25 35 Detroit Lions 23 24
New York Giants 30 30 Chicago Bears 26 20
Minnesota Vikings 19 20 San Diego Chargers 14 20
Green Bay Packers 22 13 Denver Broncos 25 27
Seattle Seahawks 21 36 St. Louis Rams 18 16
Arizona Cardinals 28 6 San Francisco 49ers 13 19

Highs & Lows

  • Week 17 Best Single Game SCOAR – Seattle Seahawks: 47.62
  • Week 17 Worst Single Game SCOAR – Jacksonville Jaguars: -32.45
  • Season Best Single Game SCOAR – Carolina Panthers: 91.21 (week 14)
  • Season Worst Single Game SCOAR – Atlanta Falcons: -80.59 (week 14)

On to the Numbers!

And your regular season SCOAR champion, with a SCOAR of 9.90, is… The Seattle Seahawks! The Seahawks have been on top of the leaderboard at the end of the season for all three seasons for which I’ve crunched the numbers. It’s certainly possible they would be the 2012 champions also, but I haven’t gone back and done those calculations. The Cardinals (9.22) dropped into second place after receiving a healthy ass-kicking. In third we have the Bengals at 9.19. The Panthers remain in 4th place with a SCOAR of 8.94. Rounding out the top five are the Patriots (8.15).

Team W L SOS O-SCOAR O Rank D-SCOAR D Rank SCOAR Last Week Change
1 Seattle Seahawks 10 6 0.36 4.32 4 -5.57 1 9.90 6 5
2 Arizona Cardinals 13 3 -0.23 7.03 1 -2.18 13 9.22 1 (1)
3 Cincinnati Bengals 12 4 0.45 3.85 6 -5.35 2 9.19 2 (1)
4 Carolina Panthers 15 1 -2.42 5.57 2 -3.37 7 8.94 4 -
5 New England Patriots 12 4 -0.97 5.19 3 -2.96 9 8.15 3 (2)
6 Kansas City Chiefs 11 5 0.50 2.87 7 -4.76 4 7.62 5 (1)
7 Pittsburgh Steelers 10 6 0.78 4.16 5 -2.57 10 6.74 7 -
8 Denver Broncos 12 4 0.90 -0.25 19 -4.78 3 4.53 8 -
9 Minnesota Vikings 11 5 0.47 0.50 12 -3.96 5 4.46 10 1
10 Green Bay Packers 10 6 0.98 1.27 9 -2.46 12 3.73 9 (1)
11 New York Jets 10 6 -1.68 0.18 15 -3.07 8 3.25 11 -
12 Buffalo Bills 8 8 0.16 1.05 10 -0.82 16 1.87 12 -
13 Houston Texans 9 7 -0.80 -2.25 24 -3.89 6 1.64 13 -
14 Washington Redskins 9 7 -1.44 0.25 14 0.77 18 -0.52 14 -
15 Oakland Raiders 7 9 1.11 0.77 11 2.50 25 -1.73 18 3
16 New York Giants 6 10 -1.20 2.66 8 4.57 31 -1.91 15 (1)
17 Atlanta Falcons 8 8 -2.19 -3.32 26 -1.32 14 -2.00 17 -
18 Detroit Lions 7 9 1.03 0.36 13 2.39 24 -2.03 19 1
19 St. Louis Rams 7 9 1.35 -5.10 29 -2.55 11 -2.55 16 (3)
20 Philadelphia Eagles 7 9 -0.38 0.02 16 2.68 26 -2.66 22 2
21 Chicago Bears 6 10 1.24 -0.73 20 2.14 20 -2.87 20 (1)
22 Baltimore Ravens 5 11 1.27 -1.30 21 2.32 23 -3.62 23 1
23 Jacksonville Jaguars 6 10 -1.68 0.02 17 3.69 30 -3.66 21 (2)
24 San Diego Chargers 4 12 1.21 -2.14 23 2.14 21 -4.28 24 -
25 Indianapolis Colts 8 8 -0.39 -2.12 22 2.28 22 -4.39 25 -
26 New Orleans Saints 6 10 -1.04 0.02 18 5.37 32 -5.35 27 1
27 Miami Dolphins 6 10 -0.48 -4.19 27 1.16 19 -5.35 29 2
28 Tampa Bay Buccaneers 6 10 -1.78 -2.73 25 2.96 27 -5.69 26 (2)
29 Dallas Cowboys 4 12 0.45 -7.14 31 -1.02 15 -6.12 28 (1)
30 Cleveland Browns 3 13 2.06 -4.51 28 3.62 29 -8.12 30 -
31 Tennessee Titans 3 13 -1.18 -5.28 30 3.39 28 -8.67 31 -
32 San Francisco 49ers 5 11 2.29 -8.28 32 0.66 17 -8.94 32 -

Notable Rankings

  • Biggest Climb – Seahawks, moving up 5 spots to #1
  • Deepest Fall – Rams, dropping 3 spots to #19
  • Highest Loser - Raiders at #15
  • Lowest Winner - Redskins at #14
  • Most Neutral – Redskins (#14) with a SCOAR of -0.52

Wild Card SCOAR predictions

I do not recommend using these for betting purposes (although you're more than welcome to send me money if they help you).

A reminder that SCOAR doesn't know what a normal football score looks like, so it's bound to put up some very unlikely point totals.

Kansas City Chiefs 20 Pittsburgh Steelers 20
Houston Texans 18 Cincinnati Bengals 25
Seattle Seahawks 21 Green Bay Packers 23
Minnesota Vikings 19 Washington Redskins 23