Hey Jets fans! You listen too, Steelers fans! You may have 10 wins each in 2015, but don’t get excited. Experimentally, there is only a 40% chance either of you return to the playoffs next year. Like my last blog, my data goes back to 2002. So since 2002, teams with 10 wins go back to the playoffs 40% of the time. But, 37.5% of teams in the league make the playoffs per season. Meaning if you chose one random team of the 30 left, there is a better chance that the Jets or the Steelers would make the playoffs next year than that random team. But only barely.
But wait. I’ve only been typing about 10-win teams. What about the others? Your answer:
One thing that strikes me about this data is that, according to these results, a previously 4-win team has a 26% chance of making the playoffs next year based on win total last season. Maybe the Cowboys will have a half-decent season after all!
You may be surprised about the large spike at nine wins, and the smaller spike at 12 wins. If you look at the nine column you’ll see that it seems much higher than 8 or 10 wins, and it is. But if you look at the trend line, you’ll see that those win #s really just have a large, negative absolute deviation from the trend line. At 12 you may not be so surprised, but then look at the interval.13-16. And the large, positive absolute deviation from the trend line at 12 wins. The Broncos and Patriots have a 61% chance to make it to the playoffs in 2016 based on 2015 win total, while the Cards and Panthers have a 59% chance.
Now if we want to get more specific on your team’s position by week 17, then this would be something to look at:
Looking at this, the unsolved mystery (with Robert Stack) I see is the fact that all of the division winners last year are all more likely to miss the playoffs, rather than be a division leader. The reasons I say it is an unsolved mystery is 1.) I wanted to put a reference in this blog post, and 2.) it comes as a big surprise to me.
Overall, the correlation of last year’s win total and making the playoffs next season is 0.95. Now that is a surprisingly high correlation, considering 1 is perfect correlation. And going back to when I started with the Jets and the Steelers, they have a very slightly higher than normal chance to make the playoffs, but basically even with the other teams. So I wouldn’t be too confident in the Steelers or the Jets.
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