2020 - Team Ratings After Round 5

Port Adelaide still tops both MoS Systems, though now trailed by Brisbane Lions and Collingwood on MoSSBODS and the same two teams, but in the opposite order, on MoSHBODS.

The Bottom 2 on both Systems remain Gold Coast and Adelaide.

In something of a more dramatic reshuffle than we’ve seen in recent weeks, six teams moved by more than two places on MoSSBODS, the Dogs, Dons and Eagles rising, and the Blues, Roos and Swans falling. On MoSHBODS, only four teams moved by more than a spot with the Giants, Dons and Eagles climbing two, and the Roos falling three.

Thirteen teams are now ranked the same on both Systems, and amongst the other five only Melbourne (10th on MoSSBODS and 12th on MoSHBODS) are ranked more than one spot differently.

In terms of Rating compression, on MoSSBODS, 4th and 14th are now separated by only 5.4 Scoring Shots, while on MoSHBODS 4th and 11th are separated by only 13.2 points.

Based on the similarity of Combined Rating, you could form the following rough groups based on the latest results:

Top Tier (span 2.4 Scoring Shots / 8.6 Points): Port Adelaide, Brisbane Lions, Collingwood, Richmond, Geelong

Middle Tier (span 2.3 Scoring Shots / 10.1 Points): Western Bulldogs, Hawthorn, St Kilda, Carlton, Melbourne, GWS, and maybe Essendon

Bottom Tier (span 2.0 Scoring Shots / 7.5 Points): North Melbourne, West Coast, Sydney, Fremantle, and maybe Essendon

Outliers: Gold Coast, Adelaide

On the Component Ratings, on offence we find find both MoSSBODS and MoSHBODS still with a Top 3 of Lions, Power and Cats, while on defence, MoSSBODS is sticking with a Top 3 of Collingwood, Richmond, and then Port Adelaide, while MoSHBODS has retained the same Top 2, but slotted Richmond back into 3rd.

On MoSSBODS, only 4 teams are now rated positively on offence and defence (down 1), 5 are rated negatively on both (down 1), none are rated positively on offence but negatively on defence (no change), and 9 are rated negatively on offence but positively on defence (up 2). As a result, the correlation between the teams’ MoSSBODS offensive and defensive Ratings is just +0.56.

For the first time that I can remember, no teams are in different quadrants under the two Systems.

And, finally, to MARS.

It re-ranked all but three teams this week, including slotting the Cats into 1st and dropping the Power and the Pies both back a spot each into 2nd and 3rd.

Geelong was one of five teams to climb by two spots, the others being Western Bulldogs, West Coast, Essendon and Fremantle. Just two teams fell multiple spots though, with the Roos and Swans both sliding three places each.

Ten teams are now rated as better-than-average, and the gap between the 1st- and 10th-ranked team is only 16.6 Rating Points (probably the equivalent if about 12-13 points in a typical season with full-length quarters). The gap between 6th and 13th is even smaller at just 13.5 Rating Points. Forming rough team groups, as we did for the MoS twins, we might get:

Top Tier (span 5.5 Rating Points): Geelong, Port Adelaide, Collingwood, Brisbane Lions, Richmond

Middle Tier (span 10.1 Rating Points): GWS, Hawthorn, Western Bulldogs, West Coast, Essendon, North Melbourne

Bottom Tier (span 9.3 Rating Points): Sydney, St Kilda, Fremantle, Melbourne, Carlton

Outliers: Gold Coast, Adelaide

Looking across the rankings of all three Systems and ordering the teams based on the current competition ladder (using competition points per game as the primary basis for that ordering), we find Essendon and Gold Coast as the teams highest on the ladder ranked lowest by the Systems, and Collingwood and Richmond as the teams lowest on the ladder ranked highest by the Systems.

MARS continues to provide the most outlying rankings of the three Systems, it having the outright most-extreme ranking for 16 of the teams, missing only Hawthorn and Collingwood. Put another way, it has a different view from both MoS twins about the correct ranking of every team except those two.

By comparison, MoSSBODS has the outright most-extreme ranking for only four teams (Brisbane Lions, Essendon, GWS, and Melbourne), and MoSHBODS has it for only one (Collingwood).

Lastly, if we consider the range of rankings that the three Systems have attached to each team, we find that Carlton (7 spots), and GWS, Melbourne, St Kilda and West Coast (all 5 spots) have the widest range of rankings, though 11 teams have rankings than differ by no more than 2 spots.

Hawthorn is the only team, however, about which the three Systems completely agree.