Professional Football Researchers Association Forum

Rupert Patrick wrote:

JuggernautJ wrote:
But I do like Rupert's formula!
As best I can follow it, that makes sense to me.

I wonder how all NFL champions would stack up in that rating system?
Who won the title against the most difficult opposition?

Rupert?

That will take some time, because I don't have an excel spreadsheet with division record for teams for each season, which would make this very easy; I would have to manually input the data which would take a couple days . I have a strength of schedule database, but it is standard strength of schedule.

I was able to create a new database for ASOS, which is Adjusted Strength of Schedule, and it took some time to input the division record data for all seasons and also double check the data. Here goes:






The top table is 10 best and worst for all League/Conference champions, the second is all League/Super Bowl Champions, and the third is all Super Bowl teams. The bottom two are 25 best and worst of all AFL/AAFC/NFL teams 1933-2017.

ASOS is defined as the average winning percentage of a team's opponents in all games in which they do not play the team in question. Any team above .5 is a tough schedule, any team below .5 is an easy schedule. The 1975 Cleveland Browns opponents had an average winning percentage of .6307 in all games in which they did not play the Cleveland Browns.

Wow.... Rupert, Thank you very much.
That was a lot of work to answer an idle speculation but it is much appreciated.

I will have to study that for a lot longer to appreciate all the information but one question does pop to mind:
I see the 1982 'Skins (and a few other 1982 teams) show up a couple of times in this study.
Do you think the 1982 Redskins really faced the toughest competition ever en route to a championship or does the small sample size (strike shortened season) skew the results?

JuggernautJ wrote:Wow.... Rupert, Thank you very much.
That was a lot of work to answer an idle speculation but it is much appreciated.

I will have to study that for a lot longer to appreciate all the information but one question does pop to mind:
I see the 1982 'Skins (and a few other 1982 teams) show up a couple of times in this study.
Do you think the 1982 Redskins really faced the toughest competition ever en route to a championship or does the small sample size (strike shortened season) skew the results?

I think it was the fact that they played uneven schedules, that due to the strike the games they missed were a bunch of games against tough teams, for example. I don't put much faith in any of the stats from the 1982 season due to the irregular schedule.

Fantastic work, Rupert!

Of course these lists are best of the bests, and perhaps they’re on the very outside looking in, but I thought I’d see the ’78 Rams or ’90 Bills on the ‘best’ list. The Rams played against eight teams that would end up with a winning record not to mention going 7-1 against them (Steelers & Cowboys being two of those wins; they won at Oilers as well). The Bills played against seven winners (going 5-2 vs them): two vs 12-4 Mia, one vs 12-4 Raiders, one at 9-7 Hou, and the remaining three vs the three playoffs teams from the NFC East: at 13-3 Giants, home vs 10-6 Eagles, and at 10-6 Redskins.

Other than Steelers, I see no other team from either 1979’s AFC Central nor NFC East. Both divisions had three winning teams along with being matched up against each other that year.