2024 - Team Ratings After Round 3

There’s probably been enough football played now by each of the teams that it’s meaningful to look at how the various MoS Team Rating Systems rate and rank them.

MoSSBODS and MoSHBODS have the same teams in their Top 5s, but none of them in the same position. MoSSBODS has Melbourne 1st, Port Adelaide 2nd, and GWS 3rd, while MoSHBODS has GWS 1st, Melbourne 2nd, and Port Adelaide 3rd.

On both Systems, however, the Ratings are quite compressed at the top. On MoSSBODS, 1st and 13th are separated by only 4.3 Scoring Shots (which is about 13 points), and on MoSHBODS, 1st and 11th are separated by only 14.7 points.

The correlation between MoSSBODS and MoSHBODS Combined Ratings now stands at +0.9768 and, roughly speaking, each team’s Combined MoSHBODS Rating is about 3.55 times its Combined MoSSBODS Rating.

On the Component Ratings, on offence we find MoSSBODS with a Top 3 of Power, Swans, and Giants, and MoSHBODS with a Top 3 of Power, Giants, and Swans. On defence both Systems have a Top 3 of Dees, Dockers, and Saints.

MoSSBODS has only 7 teams rated as above average on offence, while MoSHBODS has 10 teams so rated. Also, MoSSBODS has 14 teams rated as above average on defence, while MoSHBODS has 11 teams so rated.

We can also review the trajectory that each team has followed to arrive at its current MoSSBODS Rating.

On MoSSBODS, 7 teams are rated positively on offence and defence, 4 are rated negatively on both, none are rated positively on offence but negatively on defence, and 7 are rated negatively on offence but positively on defence.

The correlation between the teams’ MoSSBODS offensive and defensive Ratings now stands at +0.44, which is about as low as I can remember it being.

And, finally, to MARS, which re-ranked 8 teams this week and now has Melbourne in 1st, GWS in 2nd, and Geelong in 3rd.

As we saw in the MoS Rating Systems, there is considerable Rating compression on MARS, with under 10 Rating Points separating 1st from 8th, and only just over 12 Rating Points separating 1st from 10th. Previous analyses have suggested that a MARS Rating Point is equivalent to roughly 0.75 points, so these gaps equate to about 7.5 and 8 points respectively.

This suggests that, at this stage, home ground advantage is going to play a relatively larger role than usual.

There are now 12 teams rated better-than-average by MARS, and three more that are only a run of 3 or 4 strong performances away from being the same.

Looking across the rankings of all three Systems and ordering the teams based on the competition ladder (as per the MoS methodology), we find relatively large differences between the teams’ ladder positions and their rating system ordering for:

HIGHER ON LADDER THAN ON RANKING SYSTEMS: Essendon (and maybe Geelong)

LOWER ON LADDER THAN ON RANKING SYSTEMS: Brisbane Lions, Port Adelaide, and Melbourne

MoSSBODS this week provides the most outlying rankings at 9, ahead of MARS with 7, and MoSHBODS with four.

MARS’ rankings are particularly different for Geelong and Fremantle.

MoSHBODS and MARS agree about the ranking of eight teams, MoSSBODS and MARS about five, and MoSSBODS and MoSHBODS about six teams.

Looking finally at the range of rankings that the three Systems have attached to each team we find that Fremantle (6 spots) has the widest range of rankings, but that there are only three teams for whom the rankings span a range of more than two spots.

There are also three teams that the Systems unanimously rank the same way: Carlton, North Melbourne, and West Coast.