2023 - Team Ratings After Round 17

The Top 2 teams on both Systems remained unchanged this week, with Port Adelaide leading Brisbane Lions on MoSSBODS, and Brisbane Lions leading Port Adelaide on MoSHBODS. On both Systems, however, Port Adelaide lost Rating Points and Brisbane Lions gained them.

The big movers for the week were Carlton (up 3 places on both Systems), Sydney and Fremantle (both down 2 places on MoSSBODS), and Adelaide (down 2 places on MoSHBODS).

In total, eight teams changed places on MoSSBODS, and seven changed places on MoSHBODS.

The correlation between MoSSBODS and MoSHBODS Combined Ratings now stands at +0.9926 and, roughly speaking, each team’s Combined MoSHBODS Rating is about 3.63 times its Combined MoSSBODS Rating.

On the Component Ratings, on offence we find MoSSBODS still with a Top 3 of Power, Lions, and Crows, and MoSHBODS still with a Top 3 of Lions, Power, and Crows. On defence MoSSBODS has a Top 3 of Dees, Lions, and Power/Blues (the latter two tied), while MoSHBODS still has it as Dees, Pies, and Blues.

MoSSBODS now has 11 teams rated as above average on offence, while MoSHBODS also now has 11 as well. MoSSBODS also still has 12 teams rated as above average on defence, while MoSHBODS now has 11.

To put the latest MoSSBODS Ratings in some historical context, here are the Ratings of all teams after Round 17 of their respective seasons across V/AFL history.

Port Adelaide and Brisbane Lions are now the only teams with a Combined Rating in the top 50% of teams that eventually went on to make the Grand Final while West Coast continue to dwell with some of the lowest-rated teams in history.

We can also review the trajectory that each team has followed to arrive at its current Rating.

On MoSSBODS, 9 teams are now rated positively on offence and defence (no change), 4 are rated negatively on both (down 1), 2 are rated positively on offence but negatively on defence (up 1), and 3 are rated negatively on offence but positively on defence (no change).

The correlation between the teams’ MoSSBODS offensive and defensive Ratings now stands at +0.71, which is a little lower again this week.

And, finally, to MARS, which re-ranked all but Port Adelaide in 5th and the bottom 4 teams this week, although none by more a single spot except Carlton, which it elevated by two spots into 8th after transferring 4.7 Rating Points to it from Fremantle.

The five teams that currently fill the Top 5 spots all gained Rating Points this week, while 6 of the Bottom 8 teams surrendered Rating Points to their opponents.

There are still 11 teams rated better-than-average by MARS with St Kilda on 999.5 very much within range of joining that group.

The Rating gap between first and last now stands at a season-high 94 Rating Points, while that between first and eighth stands at only just over 23 Rating Points. The gap between first and fifth remains just under 6 Rating Points.

Looking across the rankings of all three Systems and ordering the teams based on the current competition ladder, we find relatively large differences between the teams’ ladder positions and their rating system ordering for:

HIGHER ON LADDER THAN ON RANKING SYSTEMS: St Kilda, Essendon, and GWS

LOWER ON LADDER THAN ON RANKING SYSTEMS: Sydney and Carlton

MoSSBODS this week provides the most outlying rankings at 10, ahead of MARS on 9. MoSHBODS, remarkably, has provided the outright most extreme ranking for no teams at all. MARS is particularly different in terms of its ranking of Port Adelaide and Gold Coast.

MoSHBODS and MARS agree about the ranking of nine teams, MoSSBODS and MARS about only four, and MoSSBODS and MoSHBODS now about eight teams.

Looking finally at the range of rankings that the three Systems have attached to each team we find that Gold Coast and Port Adelaide (4 spots) still have the widest range of rankings, and that there are still only four teams for whom the rankings span a range of more than two spots.

There are also now four teams that the Systems unanimously rank the same way: Hawthorn, North Melbourne, Sydney, and West Coast.