ptdotme’s NFL Elo Power Rankings After Week 8

(By popular demand, see the rankings without the influence of last year’s season-ending ratings in my comment below, or here.)

This is OC. I’ve written code to calculate and format NFL team Elo ratings^1 on a week to week basis. The goal is to use simple Elo ratings to create power rankings without the influence of human bias and emotion. The ratings are based on each team’s rating from the previous week, with a “parity reset” applied every offseason. The model has been tested for accuracy against game outcomes since week 1 of the 2013^2 season. The ratings are derived only from each game’s score, venue, and date. There are a number of variables/weights in my secret sauce but otherwise they’re fairly conservative, basic, Elo ratings.

This is all a work in progress and feedback is appreciated! See more stats and info on my 2023 NFL Elo Power Rankings page.

Note: You may feel teams are ranked too high or low based on recent games, and you may be right. However, the model has been tested and is more accurate when it doesn’t overreact to individual games. The goal is model accuracy, not rankings that “look right.” ^(2)  

Rank	Team	Elo Rating	Record
1 (+1)	Buffalo Bills	1554 (-2)	5-3
2 (-1)	San Francisco 49ers	1551 (-10)	5-3
3 (+2)	Dallas Cowboys	1542 (+9)	5-2
4	Philadelphia Eagles	1541	7-1
5 (-2)	Kansas City Chiefs	1536 (-11)	6-2
6	Baltimore Ravens	1531	6-2
7	Cincinnati Bengals	1526 (+10)	4-3
8 (+1)	Miami Dolphins	1519 (+4)	6-2
9 (+1)	Detroit Lions	1515 (+2)	6-2
10 (+1)	Jacksonville Jaguars	1515 (+4)	6-2
11 (-3)	Seattle Seahawks	1515	5-2
12 (+1)	Los Angeles Chargers	1507 (+6)	3-4
13 (-1)	New Orleans Saints	1507 (+4)	4-4
14 (+3)	Minnesota Vikings	1505 (+7)	4-4
15 (+1)	Cleveland Browns	1499 (+1)	4-3
16 (-2)	Green Bay Packers	1493 (-8)	2-5
17 (+2)	Tampa Bay Buccaneers	1493 (+2)	3-4
18	New York Jets	1491 (-1)	4-3
19 (-4)	Los Angeles Rams	1490 (-9)	3-5
20 (+1)	Tennessee Titans	1489	3-4
21 (+1)	Houston Texans	1486 (-1)	3-4
22 (-2)	Pittsburgh Steelers	1485 (-4)	4-3
23	New England Patriots	1479 (-5)	2-6
24 (+7)	Denver Broncos	1478 (+11)	3-5
25 (-1)	Atlanta Falcons	1477	4-4
26	Washington Commanders	1473	3-5
27 (-2)	Indianapolis Colts	1469 (-4)	3-5
28 (+1)	New York Giants	1469 (+1)	2-6
29 (-2)	Las Vegas Raiders	1468 (-2)	3-5
30 (+2)	Carolina Panthers	1468 (+2)	1-6
31 (-1)	Arizona Cardinals	1468	1-7
32 (-4)	Chicago Bears	1462 (-6)	2-6

The Eagles and Ravens have a legitimate claim at 1st place in human-written rankings, but in week 8 neither won by a wide enough margin to improve their Elo rating. As expected, the Bills’ Elo rating continues to deteriorate. They are on a 4-game, -18 Elo slide. But other top teams are struggling even more, and the Bills have fallen backwards into 1st place after the 49ers’ latest loss. With another big win the Cowboys, who have been bouncing between 3rd and 5th place, move back into 3rd. The Chiefs fell to 5th after losing by 15 points to the Broncos. The Dolphins, Lions, and Jaguars all move up a spot at Seattle’s expense. The Jaguars finally crack the top 10: they’re on a 5-game, +28 Elo hot streak.

Big games to look forward to in week 9 are Cowboys/Eagles, Chiefs/Dolphins, Bills/Bengals, and Ravens/Seahawks.

^(1)See Wikipedia. Elo ratings are numeric and assigned to each contestant. The ratings are used to estimate performance. After each game, the difference between a contestant’s estimated and actual performance is used to update their rating. For the NFL, this can all be summarized as "Who did you beat/lose to and by how much? And who have they beaten/lost to and by how much? And who have they beaten/lost to …

^(2)Moving backward through the years, each preceding season has a much smaller impact on the current ratings. Team ratings from 2011 have zero impact on today’s ratings. Ratings from only a couple years ago, say 2021, have almost no effect on today’s ratings. Seasons going back to 2011 are only used by the model to ensure its accuracy over thousands of NFL games.