FiveThirtyEight gives Rams 39% chance to make playoffs, less than Seattle

[RamnSD]

It's pretty clear that FiveThirtyEight's algorithm is not equipped to deal with the quick changing fortunes of NFL teams. The algorithm is set up to see the signal through the noise. The problem is that when teams get much better quickly the program sees the last three years of history for a team and thinks that last year is a one-off.

FiveThirtyEight gives Rams 39% chance to make playoffs, less than
Seattle

 

[RamFan503]

You put it out there to continue developing it and trying to work out the kinks.

And in doing so, you lose credibility for the future. Good plan. They know they are putting out a flawed product. Damn good thing they're not building passenger jets.

Yep, they do.

So I guess we put Jrry down for 8.2 wins for the Rams and to finish behind the shecocks and a half game ahead of the other two in the league.

If the shit they're putting out is garbage, they are not doing a good job. With their system, the NFCW will finish 9-7, 8-8, 8-8, 7-9.

They may be good at other things but this ain't one of them.

 

[jrry32]

And in doing so, you lose credibility for the future. Good plan. They know they are putting out a flawed product. Damn good thing they're not building passenger jets.

I don't purport to know how you live your life, but I never shy away from trying my best and accepting that what I put out won't be perfect. By putting it out there, you better yourself. I'm sure they're trying, but they're honest about what they're putting out. As they and others identify flaws, it'll improve. That's how all of us better ourselves. We do our best, and if we fail, we learn from our failures.

So I guess we put Jrry down for 8.2 wins for the Rams and to finish behind the shecocks and a half game ahead of the other two in the league.

If the crap they're putting out is garbage, they are not doing a good job. With their system, the NFCW will finish 9-7, 8-8, 8-8, 7-9.

They may be good at other things but this ain't one of them.

You're taking one statistical analysis and generalizing it off of that. They put out a lot of interesting content. You get to judge how you much stock you put into it. You think this one sucks. Doesn't mean everything they do sucks. And I'm not going to get worked up over it.

 

[rdlkgliders]

Nauseating these Computer generated predictions are. As long as humans play Computers will be wrong.

 

[Legatron4]

Remember when ESPN predicted us to go 0-16 lol

 

[RamFan503]

I don't purport to know how you live your life, but I never shy away from trying my best and accepting that what I put out won't be perfect. By putting it out there, you better yourself. I'm sure they're trying, but they're honest about what they're putting out. As they and others identify flaws, it'll improve. That's how all of us better ourselves. We do our best, and if we fail, we learn from our failures.

That's a specious argument counselor. And don't back hand your way to a swipe at how I might live my life. If someone puts out a shit product whether it is their best effort or not, they are open to criticism - especially if it is indeed a shit product like this one. If they want to build a reputation on this kind of product, that's on them. If they want to put out a product they know damn well is flawed, that's on them. Companies die all the time for rushing products to market when they are not ready. This product wasn't ready.

You're taking one statistical analysis and generalizing it off of that. They put out a lot of interesting content. You get to judge how you much stock you put into it. You think this one sucks. Doesn't mean everything they do sucks. And I'm not going to get worked up over it.

Read Jrry. Read. We are discussing THIS particular "product" - their pre-season NFL predictions and the quality of that very product. I have even said:

And no WE don't and no THEY don't - as far as the NFL is concerned.

And......

They may be good at other things but this ain't one of them.

They do a lot of other analytics. Maybe they should stick to being wrong on elections.

 

[jrry32]

That's a specious argument counselor. And don't back hand your way to a swipe at how I might live my life. If someone puts out a crap product whether it is their best effort or not, they are open to criticism - especially if it is indeed a crap product like this one. If they want to build a reputation on this kind of product, that's on them. If they want to put out a product they know damn well is flawed, that's on them. Companies die all the time for rushing products to market when they are not ready. This product wasn't ready.

I wasn't swiping at how you live your life. I don't know what you do, so I didn't want to make any assumptions. We'll see if it's a crap product. That's the nice part of putting it out there. We all get to judge it at the end of the year. They can then figure out what went wrong and try to see if they can improve it.

Read Jrry. Read. We are discussing THIS particular "product" - their pre-season NFL predictions and the quality of that very product.

Well, you criticized them for their NFL analyses. This is only one NFL analysis. As I said, I think they bring interesting data to the table.

They do a lot of other analytics. Maybe they should stick to being wrong on elections.

It's kind of weird to take a swipe at them on elections in light of:
https://fivethirtyeight.com/feature...rump-a-better-chance-than-almost-anyone-else/

 

[Gandalf]

FiveThirtyEight gives Rams 39% chance to make playoffs, less than
Seattle


By: Cameron DaSilva | 1 hour ago

Last season, for the first time in more than a decade, the Los Angeles Rams made the playoffs. They did so by winning 11 games and taking home the NFC West title, supplanting the Seahawks atop the division.

It was a campaign that caught everyone off guard, one that almost no one predicted for the Rams. Yet, as good as they were in 2017, the Rams should be even better this season after adding Ndamukong Suh, Marcus Peters, Aqib Talib and Brandin Cooks.

Analytics website FiveThirtyEight isn’t quite as high on Los Angeles this season as fans and media members are. According to the site, the Rams have just a 39 percent chance to make the playoffs with a projected win total of only 8.2, which ranks 15th in the NFL.

To deflate fans’ hopes even more, FiveThirtyEight gives the Seahawks a better chance to make the playoffs (48 percent) and win the division (37 percent) than the Rams. Seattle’s projected win total is 8.9, nearly a full point higher than the Rams’.

Brace Hemmelgarn-USA TODAY Sports

Based on Seattle’s crumbling defense and lack of stability on offense, it would seem the Rams are the runaway favorites in the NFC West. If anything, the 49ers seem like the next-best team in the division, not the Seahawks. However, FiveThirtyEight puts San Francisco’s win total at 7.3 games, less than the Cardinals’ projected total (7.4). The 49ers have a 25 percent chance to make the postseason, while Arizona’s odds sit at 27 percent.


No matter how you cut it, FiveThirtyEight is going against the grain out West. The Rams appear to be Super Bowl contenders, but the site believes it’s more likely that they miss the playoffs than making it.

https://theramswire.usatoday.com/2018/09/05/nfl-rams-playoff-odds-seahawks-fivethirtyeight/

Now you have a link that is cluttering up your favorites and you can delete. delete! delete!

 

[Mojo Ram]

I just wasted 6 minutes of my life on this thread.

 

[Karate61]

They make predictions, but completely ignore off season transactions? Correct me if I'm wrong, but how dumb is that?

 

[Merlin]

Seahawks defense will be better than many expect because it's a simplistic system and very well coached. And Wilson of course is a heckuva QB even though our defense eats him for lunch. But they just don't have enough to run the tables unless other teams tank.

To come out and predict otherwise is to not look deep enough to see the disparity in rosters. And on top of that the Rams have elite coaching on both sides of the ball and not many teams can say that.

 

[shaunpinney]

As soon as they start counting fractions of games in the won/loss column, I'll pay attention to these bozos.

Until then? I'm gonna "deep six" FiveThirtyEight (whatever the hell that stands for).

I thought "Deep Sixing" was illegal in most US states

 

[The Ramowl]

Y'all need to chill. 538 does a good job. They even admit the flaw in their preseason predictions:
At the start of each season, every existing team carries its Elo rating over from the end of the previous season, except that it is reverted one-third of the way toward a mean of 1505. That is our way of hedging for the offseason’s carousel of draft picks, free agency, trades and coaching changes. We don’t currently have any way to adjust for a team’s actual offseason moves, but a heavy dose of regression to the mean is the next-best thing, since the NFL has built-in mechanisms (like the salary cap) that promote parity, dragging bad teams upward and knocking good ones down a peg or two.

That's why Seattle isn't getting hammered for their crappy off-season and we aren't getting credit for our great one. We play a very difficult schedule this year if you base it on last year's results.

I currently work as an analyst, so those things annoy me. Their excuse isn't valid, they choose the parameters for their analysis. Their parameters are flawed and are clearly the product of someone who doesn't watch football.

I think they are good with political stuff. Saying Trump had a 10% chance wasn't per se wrong, sometimes the 10% chance take the win, and seeing how his victory happened, it needed a lot of pieces to fall right and a lot of states to change side.

But football wise, do the Rams have less chance than the Ravens, the Seahawks or the Cowboys to make the playoffs ? No, that is ridiculous. Will we make the playoffs ? maybe not, but as of today, we are certainly one of the teams (top 10 minimum) with the highest probability of doing so.
The ELO ratings in preseason have no value. If they know that, they shouldn't build playoff chances on top of ELO rankings. If your foundation isn't solid, you don't extrapolate.

 

[XXXIVwin]

My take: 538 has had a remarkably successful run in predicting elections, but the idea that the Seahags should be favored over the Rams is ridiculous.

2008: 538 correctly predicted 49 out of 50 states.

2012: 538 had a perfect score, correctly predicting 50 out of 50 states.

2016: 538 was one of the only prediction sites that allowed for the chance of an upset.

I think Nate is a gifted statistician, which makes me surprised that he is using such an obviously flawed predictive model for the NFL. Dude needs to read ROD more often!

 

[Loyal]

Y'all need to chill. 538 does a good job. They even admit the flaw in their preseason predictions:
At the start of each season, every existing team carries its Elo rating over from the end of the previous season, except that it is reverted one-third of the way toward a mean of 1505. That is our way of hedging for the offseason’s carousel of draft picks, free agency, trades and coaching changes. We don’t currently have any way to adjust for a team’s actual offseason moves, but a heavy dose of regression to the mean is the next-best thing, since the NFL has built-in mechanisms (like the salary cap) that promote parity, dragging bad teams upward and knocking good ones down a peg or two.

That's why Seattle isn't getting hammered for their crappy off-season and we aren't getting credit for our great one. We play a very difficult schedule this year if you base it on last year's results.

Disagree my man, 538 BLOWS. jmho.

 

[Loyal]

I currently work as an analyst, so those things annoy me. Their excuse isn't valid, they choose the parameters for their analysis. Their parameters are flawed and are clearly the product of someone who doesn't watch football.

I think they are good with political stuff. Saying Trump had a 10% chance wasn't per se wrong, sometimes the 10% chance take the win, and seeing how his victory happened, it needed a lot of pieces to fall right and a lot of states to change side...

But even that isn't quite right, because their models should have seen that white working class voters were coming out in Virginia like crazy and adjusted like many other prediction models did. Yes, Trump lost there, but he was supposed to get smoked in that state and he was leading until they started counting northern Virginia. Similar working class whites in West Virginia, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota...538 had no clue, and were obstinate about adjusting their model during election night. While the NY Times had DT winning, after saying there was a 98 % chance of him losing, 538 was still calling for a HC win after Virgina (I believe). They didn't see the trend, or ignored the power of it.

 

[sjm1582002]

Vegas has the Rams and Eagles as favorites to win the NFC championship at 6/1.

Money talks and stats lie.

 

[jrry32]

Something that has a 21% chance of happening (they later revised it to 29% before the election) can still happen.