2020 - Team Ratings After Round 2
/Port Adelaide, with its 75-point win over Adelaide, completed its rapid rating climb over the weekend, moving from 3rd to 1st on both MoS Rating Systems.
On MoSSBODS, that saw Richmond and Collingwood slide one place each into 2nd and 3rd respectively, while on MoSHBODS Richmond slipped from 1st and 3rd, and Collingwood held onto 2nd.
The week’s other big movers on both Systems, besides Port Adelaide, were North Melbourne, Carlton, and Essendon. St Kilda also rocketed up the rankings on MoSHBODS, moving into 6th place to match their ranking on MoSSBODS.
The largest falls were recorded by Hawthorn and West Coast on both Systems, and Richmond, GWS, Western Bulldogs, and Melbourne on MoSHBODS.
In total, 16 teams were re-ranked by both Systems, which is probably as it should be at the start of a new season while the Systems are recalibrating.
The two Systems now differ in their rankings of only Melbourne (12th on MoSSBODS, 15th on MoSHBODS) and Essendon (13th and 11th) by more than a single spot.
On MoSSBODS, 1st and 16th are now separated by only 6.2 Scoring Shots (and 5th and 16th by only 3.3 Scoring Shots), while on MoSHBODS 1st and 8th are separated by only 14 points.
On the Component Ratings, on offence we see the Port Adelaide taking top spot away from Brisbane Lions on MoSSBODS, and from Richmond, who fall to 4th, on MoSHBODS.
On defence, both MoSSBODS and MoSHBODS now have it as Collingwood, Richmond, and then Port Adelaide.
On offence, no team is ranked more than two places differently by the two Systems, but on defence we have Brisbane Lions 12th on MoSSBODS and 15th on MoSHBODS, Essendon 16th on MoSSBODS and 12th on MoSHBODS, and Fremantle 14th on MoSSBODS and 11th on MoSHBODS.
On MoSSBODS, 5 teams are now rated positively on offence and defence, 6 are rated negatively on both, none is rated positively on offence but negatively on defence, and 7 are rated negatively on offence but positively on defence).
Only two teams are in different quadrants under the two Systems:
Brisbane Lions (positive offence and defence on MoSSBODS, positive offence and negative defence on MoSHBODS)
Carlton (negative offence and positive defence on MoSSBODS, negative offence and defence on MoSHBODS)
Next, let’s compare each team’s current ratings with those of teams from the past at the same point in their respective seasons (ie after 2 rounds of the home-and-away season).
Teams shown as red points are teams that eventually finished premiers, and those shown in orange finished as runners up.
No team has yet broken into the top decile of teams that went on to make the Grand Final, though Port Adelaide, Richmond, Collingwood, and Geelong are all comfortably above the median.
If we focus purely on the seasons from 2000 onwards, we get a fairly similar story.
Finally, let’s see what MARS thinks.
It also significantly promoted Port Adelaide this week, but only into 4th, trailing Richmond (no change), Geelong (up 2), and Collingwood (down 1).
West Coast and Hawthorn suffered heavy downgradings this week, both dropping at least 6 Rating Points and slipping to 6th and 8th respectively.
St Kilda was the only other team rising sharply, grabbing 4.4 Rating Points and moving up three places into 13th.
Ten teams remain rated as “above average”, while the gap between 1st and 10th is only 18 Rating Points, and between 5th and 10th is less than 6 Rating Points.
Looking across the rankings of all three Systems and ordering the teams based on the current competition ladder, we find that:
West Coast has the widest range of rankings (from 7th on MARS to 15th on MoSSBODS)
St Kilda (6th to 12th) and Sydney (8th to 14th) have the next-widest ranges of rankings
Generally speaking, MARS seems to be the outlier at the moment, it having the outright most-extreme ranking for 16 of the teams. By comparison, MoSSBODS has it for only five teams, and MoSHBODS for only two.
Gold Coast and Fremantle are the only teams ranked identically by all three Systems, but five other teams’ rankings cover only two or three values.
