Nate Silver: Seattle may be one of the best ever

There's a new article up on fivethirtyeight.com about the playoffs and it focuses on Seattle. The basic point is that if Seattle repeats, they're in the discussion for best team ever.

Nate Silver":3jdpa2jh said:

If the Seahawks win the Super Bowl again this year, they should be in the conversation about the greatest team ever — at least according to Elo. In the 32 percent of simulations we ran this week where Seattle won the Super Bowl, it finished with an average Elo rating of 1799. That would rank as the third-best end-of-season Elo rating since 1970, behind only the 2007 Patriots (who hold the top spot despite having been upset by the New York Giants in Super Bowl XLII) and the 2004 Patriots — and just ahead of the 1985 Chicago Bears and the 1989 San Francisco 49ers.

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The full article is here: http://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/week ... s-edition/

Something good is about to happen. We're going to hit ELO 1800 come 2/1/15.

This should blow everyone's mind: Seahawks notching an ELO rating of 1800+ would be an absolutely stunning, yet achievable, accomplishment.

Thanks, SeatownJay, for sharing that link.

I like ELO.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z9nkzaOPP6g

Never was a fan of ELO.

I only liked them when they upgraded their game--bringing in Olivia Newton John.

ELMO>ELO

I'm just glad .nets EMO rating has declined significantly since week 12.

ELO is based on margin of victory which is a very strong predictor for most sports. It is potentially a bit weaker in football because teams will intentionally give up points in order to secure a victory by draining the clock. As a result, many games are not nearly as close as it looks on the final score.

The Hawks are a prime example of this because with our dominant defense and conservative offense we do not put up the same sort of point differential in a blowout win that a purely offensive driven team would. Being well regarded in ELO is especially impressive for the Hawks because of this, and is a testament to how even our losses have been close games were we had a chance to win. Plenty of other teams have bigger blowouts when they win, but also get blown out themselves a few times per year.

The most amazing thing about this article is the fact that this projection gives St. Louis just an 11% chance to win, even though they beat us in the last meeting.


Seahawks are big favorites to win the Super Bowl out of the NFC - 32% when no one NFC team has a better than 7% chance.

morgulon1":322kagv2 said:

Never was a fan of ELO.

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Well aren't you Mr. Blue Skies

Here, have some Christmas cheer!

[youtube]PLNR4xfh1Qc[/youtube]

Chapow":3pq4yhif said:

I'm just glad .nets EMO rating has declined significantly since week 12.

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Lmao, winner.

It's Strange Magic I tell ya.