Power Ratings

[Ben E Lou]

Since this question comes up (usually at Week 3) in just about every league every season, I thought I'd post a quick little primer here for future reference.

First off, in the first three weeks of the season, just don't compare them week to week. They clearly aren't meant to work that way, because they use an entirely different system of scaling. In the first two weeks of the season, the Power Rating is simply your team's roster rating (the one that's in the "Franchise Value" screen). Roster ratings are scaled so that the "best" roster gets a 100, and the "worst" gets a score of roughly 10 or less, and everything else is spread out between those. Even if there are 32 nearly-equal teams, someone will get a 100, and someone will get a score of 10 or less. Period.

Beginning in Week 3, the Power Rating becomes performance-based. But in Week 3 itself, it's also "scaled"--this time from roughly 45 to 76. I suspect it's designed to go in one-point increments that week, with a little wobble for *really* bad teams possible. (We had a 37 in WOOF in a Week 3 from a team that would eventually go 0-16 with 113 PF and 420 PA, for example. That's the lowest I've seen for any team at that point in the season.) After Week 3, both the bottom and the top of the scale can expand for really good and really bad performances.

So in short:

Weeks 1 & 2: Performance completely ignored. Purely roster rating. All of a roughly 5 to 100 scale is used, no matter what.

Week 3: Performance-based, but "squished." Scale is roughly 45 to 76.

Weeks 4 and Beyond: Performance-based. Scale expands on both ends as season progresses.

So, when your team that started out with a 5 jumps to a 40 or so in Week 3, even though they're 0-2, and got blown out both games, this is why.

[belanma]

Interesting. Thanks for that.