This week it's MARS doing most of the rethinking about team strengths, it seeing fit to re-rank 11 of the teams on the basis of the Round 20 results including eight teams from its previous Top 10.

None though were moved by more than two places. Sydney rose two spots to claim 1st and the Western Bulldogs two spots to take 7th, while Hawthorn fell two spots into 3rd, GWS fell two spots into 6th, and Port Adelaide fell two spots into 9th.

ChiPS, on the other hand, moved only four teams, and just a pair by two spots, Adelaide climbing two places into 3rd and Hawthorn dropping two into 5th. The only other teams to move at all were Carlton and Fremantle.

That leaves MARS and ChiPS with rank differing by more than two places for just one team, GWS, which MARS ranks 6th and ChiPS 2nd.

For ChiPS, the week's changes have served to generally reduce the gaps between the teams' ratings, the largest gap now between any of the Top 13 teams just 5.6 Rating Points (RPs). That's the gap between West Coast in 6th and the Roos in 7th. ChiPS now rates nine teams as "above average", Collingwood narrowly failing to be included on this list with its Rating of 999.9.

MARS now has a particularly large gap (13 RPs) between GWS in 6th and the Western Bulldogs in 7th. It also puts a gap of more than 6 RPs between Adelaide in 2nd and Hawthorn in 3rd. It also rates the same nine teams as "above average".

The raw correlation between MARS and ChiPS ratings now stands at +0.988.

MoSSBODS DETAILS

MoSSBODS was more ChiPS than MARS this week, re-ranking only six teams on Combined Rating - though, importantly, all of them were from amongst its Top 10 as at the end of Round 19.

West Coast and Port Adelaide, who swapped 8th and 10th between them, were the only teams to move multiple places, however.

MoSSBODS' Top 4 is now Adelaide, Sydney, GWS and Geelong, which is the same Top 4 as ChiPS albeit in a different order. MARS though swaps in Hawthorn and West Coast for GWS and Geelong.

Adelaide, in giving up just nine Scoring Shots to the Lions, continued to improve its Defensive Rating where it is now ranked 4th. Other teams moving significantly on Defence this weekend were the Kangaroos, up two places into 8th, and St Kilda, also up two places into 11th. No team fell on Defensive ranking by more than a single spot.

On Offence, Sydney were the big climbers, ascending three spots into 4th, St Kilda the only other team to climb multiple spots, they moving up two places into 8th. The Dogs (now 11th), Roos (7th) and Lions (14th) were the only teams to fall by more than a single spot.

Taking an historical view, we find that Adelaide's Combined Rating still places it near the top decile of all previous Grand Finalists as at the end of Round 20 in their respective seasons (assuming they had a Round 20 in their Home and Away season).

This week, to provide a little more context, I've annotated many of the teams that have outlying Ratings.

Sydney, GWS and Geelong have Combined Ratings that are above the median for previous Grand Finalists, while Hawthorn and the Western Bulldogs lie just below the median.

The Roos sit close to the lower decile for previous Grand Finalists, and West Coast, Collingwood, Port Adelaide and St Kilda sit between that decile and the lowest Combined Rating of any subsequent Grand Finalist (which belongs to the Melbourne side of 1988 who were 4th with a 102.8 percentage at the end of Round 20).

Each team's path to its current Offensive and Defensive Rating is shown in the animation below. It's interesting to note how Adelaide's Defensive Rating has continued to improve as the season has progressed.

Finally, let's look at the Rating changes that took place based on last weekend's results alone.

Six teams improved their Offensive and Defensive Ratings this week:

• Adelaide
• Sydney
• St Kilda
• Melbourne
• Richmond
• Fremantle

Their opponents all saw their Offensive and Defensive Ratings decline:

• Brisbane Lions
• Port Adelaide
• Carlton
• Hawthorn
• Collingwood
• West Coast