I have been unable to avoid looking at predictions for
the upcoming NFL season. After spending some time picking
apart ESPN’s Future
Power Rankings back in May, these predictions have again piqued my interest
– so I will pick them apart too. When will they ever learn that I will go away
if they pick the Browns to make the playoffs (I’m not even asking for a Super
Bowl, just to make the playoffs and maybe also to have Pittsburgh not do well).
Projecting win totals is definitely hard. Brian Burke,
the very talented founder of AdvancedNFLStats.com, has had a significant amount
of fun deconstructing Football Outsiders’ projections over the years. Among
other things, he has shown that the results could be improved by picking all
teams to finish 8-8 (he refers to this as the CoMA strategy) and picking all
teams to regress somewhat by projecting 6 wins plus ¼ of the prior year’s win
total – 10-6 becomes 6 + 10/4 = 8.5 wins (he refers to this as the ‘Koko the
Monkey’ strategy, fans of Seinfeld approve).