NFL Week Four Power Ranking Roundup

10/7/2016 update: The original version of this post had the incorrect FPI rankings. The table has now been updated and some of the text as well. Thanks to Steve in the comments for pointing out the error.

For the past several years, I have archived various NFL power rankings following week four of the season. When the regular season is finished, I compare how accurate each ranking was at predicting wins for weeks 5 through 17. Over the past nine seasons, the most accurate ranking system was the Vegas-based ranking system I publish here on my site.

Here are the rankings:

SRS - What's known as the Simple Ranking System, which is based solely on margin of victory and strength of schedule.

DVOA - Football Outsiders' DVOA rankings, a proprietary ranking system based on analysis of detailed play by play data.

538 - FiveThirtyEight's Elo rankings. The Elo ranking system was originally developed for chess, but has been extended to the NFL by Nate Silver.

ESPN - ESPN's weekly NFL power rankings.

Market - The betting market rankings found here at inpredictable.

FPI - ESPN's Football Power Index (stat-based model developed by Brian Burke).

In addition to these rankings, the table below has two additional columns:

• Consensus: The consensus ranking derived by taking a straight average of each team's ranking.
• Consistency: How consistently a team is ranked by the various systems.

Here is the ranking table:

team	SRS	DVOA	538	ESPN	MARKET	FPI	Consensus	Consistency
DEN	4	4	1	1	5	1	1	5
MIN	3	3	3	5	4	2	2	2
PIT	2	5	4	3	3	4	3	3
SEA	10	2	2	2	2	7	4	14
PHI	1	1	9	7	9	6	5	17
GB	8	6	6	6	6	3	6	4
NE	12	17	5	4	1	5	7	30
ATL	5	8	13	8	12	11	8	9
CIN	11	12	10	10	10	12	9	1
CAR	9	21	8	15	8	9	10	28
BUF	6	10	11	20	16	10	11	26
ARZ	15	16	12	17	7	8	12	21
DAL	7	9	17	11	17	14	12	20
OAK	13	7	21	9	14	13	14	25
KC	19	15	7	18	11	15	15	24
BAL	14	11	16	14	19	21	16	15
NYG	16	20	22	12	20	20	17	16
SD	18	13	24	22	21	16	18	19
HOU	29	29	14	13	13	18	19	32
WAS	20	14	20	19	22	24	20	13
LA	25	24	15	16	23	29	21	29
NYJ	27	32	18	21	15	22	22	31
NO	22	18	26	24	28	19	23	18
IND	30	27	23	26	18	17	24	27
DET	21	26	19	25	24	28	25	12
MIA	17	22	25	30	26	23	25	22
JAC	31	19	30	23	27	26	27	23
CHI	26	23	28	28	29	27	28	6
TEN	28	25	32	27	31	25	29	8
SF	23	28	27	31	30	31	30	10
TB	32	30	29	29	25	30	31	7
CLE	24	31	31	32	32	32	32	11

The consensus #1 team is the Denver Broncos. The team ranked most consistently is the Cincinnati Bengals, with a ranking that varies from just #10 to #12. The least consistently rated team is the Houston Texans. ESPN and the market have them ranked 13th, while DVOA and SRS have them at #29.

Overall, the rankings with the least disagreement are my market rankings and FiveThirtyEight's Elo rankings (Spearman correlation of 94%). The two rankings with the most disagreement are Football Outsiders' DVOA and the market rankings (Spearman correlation of 66%).

Check back at the end of the regular season for the results.