Geelong still heads both MoS Team Rating Systems, but there’s now agreement about the ranking of only one other team in the Top 8, and that’s about Brisbane Lions, who both Systems rank 4th.

MoSSBODS has Port Adelaide in 2nd and Richmond in 3rd, while MoSHBODS has those same two teams in those spots but in the opposite order.

Overall, nine teams were re-ranked by MoSSBODS, and eight by MoSHBODS, leaving nine teams ranked differently by the two Systems, but only Carlton by more than two spots. The correlation between MoSSBODS and MoSHBODS Combined Ratings now stands at +0.9966.

Ratings remain fairly compressed at the top such that, on MoSSBODS, 2nd and 11th are separated by only 5.2 Scoring Shots, while on MoSHBODS, 2nd and 10th are separated by only 13.1 points.

Based on the similarity of Combined Rating, you could form the following rough groups based on the latest results:

Top Tier (span 3.9 Scoring Shots / 13.7 Points): Geelong, Port Adelaide, Richmond, Brisbane Lions, Carlton, Collingwood, Melbourne, and Western Bulldogs.

Middle Tier (span 2.1 Scoring Shots / 7.7 Points): St Kilda, West Coast, Hawthorn, and GWS.

Bottom Tier (span 1.0 Scoring Shots / 4.0 Points): Essendon, North Melbourne, Sydney, Fremantle, and Gold Coast

Outliers: Adelaide.

The fact that eight teams are now in the top tier underscores the closeness of the competition and the fact that there are no clearly outstanding teams this season.

On the Component Ratings, on offence we find MoSSBODS now with a Top 3 of Lions, Power, and Cats, with those last two swapping places, and MoSHBODS with exactly the same Top 3 but switching 2nd and 3rd. On defence, MoSSBODS now has a Top 3 of Pies, Cats, and Tigers, and MoSHBODS has exactly the same Top 3 but switching 1st and 2nd.

On MoSSBODS, 7 teams are now rated positively on offence and defence (up 1), 5 are rated negatively on both (no change), none are rated positively on offence but negatively on defence (no change), and 6 are rated negatively on offence but positively on defence (down 1). The correlation between the teams’ MoSSBODS offensive and defensive Ratings now stands at +0.601, up fractionally compared to last week.

And, finally, to MARS, which re-ranked only nine teams this week, but none in the Top 6.

The big movers were Western Bulldogs (up 3), Fremantle (up 2), and Melbourne, GWS, Sydney, and North Melbourne (all down 2).

It still has a Top 3 of Geelong, Richmond, and West Coast, with the Cats now enjoying a 10.5 Rating Point lead.

Ten teams remain rated as better-than-average by MARS, with the gap between the 2nd- and 10th-ranked teams only 20.7 Rating Points (probably the equivalent of about 15 points in a typical season with full-length quarters).

Forming rough team groups, as we did for the MoS twins, we might get:

Top Tier (span 17.9 Rating Points): Geelong, Richmond, West Coast, Brisbane Lions, and Port Adelaide

Middle Tier (span 7.3 Rating Points): Collingwood, Western Bulldogs, St Kilda, Melbourne, and GWS

Bottom Tier (span 8.3 Rating Points): Hawthorn, Carlton, Fremantle, Sydney, Essendon, and North Melbourne

Outliers: Gold Coast and Adelaide

Looking across the rankings of all three Systems and ordering the teams based on the current competition ladder (using competition points per game as the primary basis for that ordering), we find Hawthorn as the team lowest on the ladder ranked highest by the Systems (though the picture for West Coast remains confused).

MARS continues to provide the most outlying rankings of the three Systems, it having the outright most-extreme ranking for 10 of the teams, with West Coast, and Carlton now the most notable examples.

By comparison, MoSSBODS has the outright most-extreme ranking for five teams, and MoSHBODS for just four.

Lastly, if we consider the range of rankings that the three Systems have attached to each team, we find that Carlton and West Coast (7 spots) have the widest range of rankings, while 13 teams have rankings than differ by no more than 2 spots, including Adelaide, Brisbane Lions, Geelong, Gold Coast, and Hawthorn, for which all three Systems have the same ranking.