2016 - Team Ratings After Round 8

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This week, only two teams moved by more than a single spot on both MARS and ChiPS Team Ratings, Melbourne falling two places on both Systems, and Collingwood rising two places on MARS and three places on ChiPS.

MARS, alone, moved four other teams by more than a single spot, lifting West Coast up two places into 1st, GWS up two places into 6th, and dropping Sydney down two places into 3rd and Adelaide down two places into 8th. In total, MARS altered the ranking of 10 of the 18 teams.

ChiPS, alone, moved just one other team by more than a spot, elevating Fremantle by two places into 13th, but overall found reason to re-rank more of the teams than did MARS, moving 12 teams and leaving only the teams in 3rd and 4th, and 15th through 18th unchanged.

Six teams are now separated by more than a single place on MARS and ChiPS rankings, though none by more than three places:

  • GWS, ranked 6th on MARS and 3rd on ChiPS
  • West Coast, ranked 1st on MARS and 4th on ChiPS
  • Western Bulldogs, ranked 5th on MARS and 7th on ChiPS
  • St Kilda, ranked 14th on MARS and 12th on ChiPS
  • Melbourne, ranked 12th on MARS and 14th on ChiPS
  • Brisbane Lions, ranked 18th on MARS and 16th on ChiPS

In total, nine teams are rated above-average (ie over 1,000) by MARS, but only eight by ChiPS. There's a noticeable gap in both Systems between the final above-average rated team and the next in the ordering - that is, between Adelaide (1,009.9) and Richmond (996.6) for ChiPS, and between Port Adelaide (1,005.7) and Richmond for MARS (992.6).

MoSSBODS RATINGS

MoSSBODS has again been very active in its re-ranking of teams this week, changing the Overall ranking of all but two teams, West Coast and Hawthorn.

Only four teams, however, moved by more than a single spot, Collingwood leading the climbers with a leap of four places into 9th, with Melbourne the fellow multi-spot climber rising three places into 13th.

The Brisbane Lions suffered the week's largest fall, plummeting five places into 16th, St Kilda the only other team to fall significantly, dropping two places into 12th.

Looking at the component MoSSBODS Ratings we find that:

  • On Offence, the top 4 teams are now, in order: GWS, Geelong, Adelaide and West Coast.
  • On Defence, the top 4 teams are now, in order: Western Bulldogs, Geelong, GWS and West Coast.

Overall, the top 4 are Geelong, GWS, West Coast and the Western Bulldogs, these the only teams with Combined Ratings of more than +5 Scoring Shots.

Aside from those four, only two other teams have positive Offensive and Defensive Ratings - Sydney and Hawthorn. Five teams have positive Offensive but negative Defensive Ratings, and the remaining seven have negative Offensive and Defensive Ratings. The competition is still yet to have a team with a positive Defensive Rating and a negative Offensive Rating.

We can add a little historical context to these current Ratings by comparing them with those of every Premier and Runner Up since 1897, which we do in the chart below.

Each dot on the chart relates to the Rating of a single team as at the end of Round 8 in any of the 120 years of the V/AFL competition. Red dots relate to teams that were eventual Premiers, orange dots to teams that were Runners Up, blue dots to the teams from 2016, and grey (actually 'honeydew' for those that are curious) dots to every other team from every other year. You can see that the Premiers and Runners Up cluster towards the upper right of the chart, as you'd expect.

The dashed lines demarcate the Overall Ratings of teams that finished as either Premier or Runner Up in any year, the line labelled "Min CR for GF" denoting the lowest Combined Rating of any eventual Premier or Runner Up, that labelled "10% cutoff for GF" denoting the Combined Rating attained by 90% of all Premiers and Runners Up after Round 8, and so on for the 50% cutoff (which half of the Premiers and Runners Up attained) and the 90% cutoff (which only 10% attained).

The overall message of this chart is that the Ratings of all teams below that of North Melbourne (aka the Kangaroos) are below the Ratings achieved as at the end of Round 8 by the vast majority of eventual Premiers and Runners Up.

Finally, a brief look at the Rating movements over the weekend, which included improvements in both Offensive and Defensive Ratings for seven teams (GWS, Geelong, West Coast, Hawthorn, Collingwood, Richmond and Essendon) and declines in both Ratings for the teams they played (Gold Coast, Adelaide, St Kilda, Fremantle, Brisbane Lions, Sydney and the Kangaroos). 

For the four remaining teams, Melbourne, the Western Bulldogs, Carlton and Port Adelaide, their Offensive Ratings climbed but their Defensive Ratings fell.

Those moves can be placed in the context of history and the season moves to date by reviewing the animation below which records each team's Ratings as at the end of every round this season (and how this compares to history in a similar manner to that described for the earlier chart).