It is, I'm beginning to think, somehow in the nature of the 2016 season that teams will continue to rise and fall in the rankings of MoS' various Team Rating Systems right up until the Grand Final is over.

For MARS especially, those re-rankings are concentrated on teams from the top half of the ability spectrum. This week it moved eight teams, six of them teams in last week's Top 9, and four of those by more than a single place. GWS and Port Adelaide climbed two places each into 4th and 7th respectively, and West Coast and the Western Bulldogs slipped two places each into 5th and 9th respectively..

MARS' Top 3 is now Hawthorn, Adelaide, Sydney.

ChiPS re-ranked nine teams, including every team from last week's Top 5, though it moved only three teams by two places. St Kilda rose two places into 11th (despite losing), and Hawthorn and Richmond dropped two places into 3rd and 13th respectively. 

That left ChiPS with a Top 3 of Sydney, GWS, Hawthorn.

It's fascinating to me that the same result can cause one System (MARS) to leave one team (Hawthorn) in 1st, while another, similar System (ChiPS) demotes the same team by two places. With ELO systems, it's all about performance relative to pre-game expectations.

All those changes leave MARS and ChiPS now differing in their rankings of only a single team by more than two places: Adelaide, which MARS ranks 2nd and ChiPS only 5th.

For ChiPS, the biggest gap in Rating Points (RPs) between consecutive teams near the top of the rankings is now that separating Collingwood in 10th and St Kilda in 11th. That gap is almost 10 RPs.

MARS' major gap is, instead, between the Dogs in 9th and the Pies in 10th. That gap is about 19.5 RPs, though there is also a significant gap of about 10.5 RPs between Geelong in 6th and Port Adelaide in 7th.

It's interesting to note, however, that the gap between the first six teams on ChiPS is less than 9 RPs and between the first six teams on MARS is less than 7.5 RPs. It really does shape up as an outstanding Finals series this year.

The correlation between the raw MARS and ChIPS ratings now stands at +0.987.

MoSSBODS RATINGS

MoSSBODS re-ranked eight teams on Combined Ratings this week, four of them by more than a single place, dropping Geelong down two places into 4th and West Coast down two places into 10th, while elevating Sydney up two places into 3rd and Port Adelaide up two places also into 8th.

Four of the eight teams it moved were from last week's Top 5, Adelaide being the only team to hold its place.

The moves left MoSSBODS with a Top 3 of Adelaide, GWS, Sydney.

Component rankings were, as usual, more volatile, 14 teams being re-ranked on Offensive ability - Port Adelaide and West Coast the most dramatic movers, rising and falling three places, respectively - and 11 teams being re-ranked on Defensive ability.

That leaves MoSSBODS assessing the three best Offensive teams to be Adelaide, GWS and Hawthorn, and the three best Defensive teams to be Sydney, the Western Bulldogs and Geelong.

Putting the latest Ratings in an historical context we find that Adelaide continues to inhabit its own space on Combined Rating but also, especially, in terms of its Offensive rating. That rating of +7.51 SS is amongst the best of all the teams that played a Round 19 in their home-and-away season and went on to make the Grand Final.

GWS, Hawthorn, Geelong and Sydney all now sit around or slightly above the median Combined Rating of previous Grand Finalists, while the Western Bulldogs sit slightly below that mark. Further down, Port Adelaide, North Melbourne, Collingwood and West Coast are all rated somewhere in the bottom 10% of all teams that were subsequent Grand Finalists.

Of the remaining teams, only St Kilda has a Combined Rating that exceeds any of the historical Grand Finalists at the end of Round 19 of their respective season.

Each team's journey to reach their current Offensive and Defensive Rating is mapped out in the animation that follows.

It's interesting the extent to which the highest-rated teams on Combined Rating continue to span a broad range of Offensive and Defensive Ratings. If we look at just the Top 8 teams on Combined Rating we have the Western Bulldogs with a +0.1 Offensive Rating and Adelaide with a +5.7 Offensive Rating, and we have Port Adelaide with a -0.6 Defensive Rating and Sydney with a +4.6 Defensive Rating.

Lastly, focussing solely on the Rating movements during the most-recent round, we obtain the chart below.

This week, five teams saw both their Offensive and Defensive Rating increase, even though two of them were losers on the scoreboard. Those five were:

• Sydney
• Western Bulldogs
• Port Adelaide
• Collingwood
• Carlton

The five teams that they met saw their Offensive and Defensive Rating decline:

• Fremantle
• Geelong
• Brisbane Lions
• West Coast
• Hawthorn