Harvard - Panthers bottom 10 team in 2015

[Jeremy Igo]

http://harvardsportsanalysis.org/2015/07/a-way-too-early-prediction-of-the-nfl-season/

 

Now that it’s late July, football fans everywhere are looking forward to the opening of training camp, preseason, and the not-so-distant start of the regular season.  Even though the so-called football experts struggle to forecast the outcomes of the 16-game season, I’ll try to put together a prediction model for the NFL season using a more quantitative method than the likes of Trent Dilfer.

The biggest challenge obviously is to come up with a sound way to estimate team strength, an endeavor that’s demanding considering the amount of personnel turnover each offseason and the lack of advanced statistics to evaluate player interactions.  The method that I came up with uses Pro Football Reference’s Approximate Value statistic, the site’s best measure of trying to tease out individual talent.  Then, using ESPN’s NFL depth charts, I aggregated each team’s per game approximate value of what I considered to be the “core” makeup of an NFL team: QB, RB, 2 WR, TE, Top 2 OL, the Top-4 “Front Seven” defensive players, and the Top-2 players from the secondary.

 

 

Not much love at all for the Carolina Panthers this season. What does this Harvard guy know that we don't? (Or vice versa)

 

[RealBitsOfPanther]

I mean, every other article has us pegged in the same category. Why would this one be any different?

[kungfoodude]

Under the radar works for me.

[juliosantos]

Lol all those nerds base it off is stats. Stats are only good for fantasy football . There are alot more to football to stats and thats where they are wrong.  Looks like we are the underdog once again.

[PntherPryd]

< Always been a Yale Man

 

[Mr. Scot]

Well, there's certainly no source I trust more for good football analysis than Harvard.

[TN05]

Worse than the Browns? Wat?

[Jangler]

Shouldn't he be covering cricket or rowing?

[juliosantos]

The Luck praise is one thing, but having the Colts as a team that high is absurd. They're the most imbalanced team in the league, that defense is a complete joke.

they all love to suck off andrew luck and make him seem like hes the best qb to ever play but they make excuses for why he throws intos and gets blown out in the playoffs

[Rags]

Dolphins 3, Chiefs 4, Jets 7, 

Cowboys, Ravens bottom 12

 

K'

[updownsigma]

*Insert joke about him being associated with Harvard and questioning his intelligence after he picks our team to do poorly here* But really, haven't read the whole thing yet but his method for determining what/how good the "core" of a team is seems extremely flawed and arbitrary. Why look at AV of only the top 2 OL for example? Say one team has 5 very good to all pro lineman, why discount those remaining 3 players (maybe this is why the Cowboys are so low? Could just be because the Cowboys suck though).

[2jakefansinva]

with him basing it off of the "Pro Football Reference Approximate Value Statistic"............

I'm sure we would have scored better under Hurdog.........

since we were paying everyone including the waterboy too much money.

[Donald LaFell]

It seems honestly better to just be subjective and hope you get lucky. 

[Cary Kollins]