Have to be at least a little bit careful when comparing opponents win percentages. By definition, teams with winning records face lower win %s because they beat those teams. It's not a bad place to start, but it certainly isn't a perfect indicator. It's no coincidence that playoff teams tend to be lower on a list like this, and NOT just because they face a softer schedule, but because they drive the win rate down for each opponent they beat, and the more teams they beat, the bigger difference it makes.
For example, winning 5 extra games against teams that would otherwise have been a perfect .500 (IE average opponents) drops them all the way to .482. From that perspective, the Vikings didn't face a soft schedule, but pretty close to an average one. And the Dolphins were even worse then the number here suggests.
Agreed.
Yes, you don't penalize a team for beating a team on their schedule. Probably best to subtract those games before figuring out their actual SOS.
Perhaps, but it's already a fairly limited data set and those games do in fact have meaning. Taking them out reduces the impact but doesn't eliminate it. How about when a team faces a really bad divisional foe twice? The opposite is true too, a team that won just 2 games depresses this opponent win % number a LOT when you play them twice, an effect that's outsized when looked at fairly. What about when you played what WAS a playoff caliber team on a five game win streak in week 10, but they lost their QB in week 11 and struggled to win 1 more game rest of the year?
I think it's more fair to look at how many playoff caliber teams a team has played and the record against those teams. Played 4 teams? Seems soft, but if you beat all four you must be good. Played EIGHT games against playoff teams? Then IDGAF what you supposed SOS is, go 6-2 in those games and we know you not only played a fair schedule but did well with it. Not to mention that with parity and the whole any given Sunday philosophy even very good teams can drop a game or two in a given year to a bad team. Philly is fairly low on this list, but played 7 games against playoff teams. They didn't face a particularly soft schedule either. It was on the whole a pretty average one.
Face it, comparing schedules is inexact and inherently unreliable. No matter how you try to fix the comparison you run into problems. The data size is too small and the variables too numerous. But at least it gives us something to talk about.
