Ranking NFL Teams By Performance Against the Same Opponent

Let’s walk through the opponents of the Atlanta Falcons to show how it was done. With eleven games played, teams can be assigned between a 10-0 and 0-10 record for each opponent. In the case of Atlanta, they have only lost to two teams, to Pittsburgh in OT and to Philadelphia. The Eagles get a 10-0 record compared to Atlanta’s other opponents, and the Steelers are assigned a 9-1 record. After that, New Orleans gets the next best result, an overtime loss, to go 8-2 against the other teams that played Atlanta. It continues on down until Arizona is assigned a record of 0-10 for their 41-7 trouncing in Atlanta. This same process was used for all 32 teams.

I certainly wouldn’t claim this method is the best way to rank teams, but it does provide some interesting perspective. It minimizes blowouts (so long as you were the best result against a team, it doesn’t matter if you won by 15 or 30 or 45), and relatively speaking, rewards close wins over good teams while penalizing close wins over bad ones that everyone has beaten. It also inserts a strength of schedule component into just looking at a team’s won-loss record. Here are the teams ranked 1-32 based on their “winning percentage” against the other opponents of teams they have played.

Atlanta (0.732)
Green Bay (0.714)
New England (0.700)
Baltimore (0.682)
Pittsburgh (0.636)
Chicago (0.632)
San Diego (0.623)
New York Jets (0.600)
Philadelphia (0.595)
Indianapolis (0.595)
New Orleans (0.550)
New York Giants (0.541)
Tennessee (0.527)
Kansas City (0.514)
Houston (0.505)
Miami (0.482)
Jacksonville (0.468)
Cleveland (0.468)
Buffalo (0.450)
Oakland (0.441)
Tampa Bay (0.436)
Detroit (0.423)
Washington (0.418)
San Francisco (0.418)
Dallas (0.414)
Seattle (0.409)
Minnesota (0.405)
St. Louis (0.382)
Denver (0.373)
Cincinnati (0.336)
Arizona (0.314)
Carolina (0.218)

[photo via Getty]