2023 CFL Power Ratings
In-season power ratings adjustments are current as of Saturday, July 29, 2023.
What Is a Power Rating System?
Power ratings in sports are numbers that assign a value to each team based on a number of factors. Much like stocks, it can be advantageous to buy when a team’s value is low and sell when it’s high.
There are different types of power ratings systems, such as market-based, results-based and Bayesian. Market-based power ratings use actual betting market data to determine the relative strength of each team. Results-based power ratings rely on margin of victory and strength of schedule. Bayesian power ratings use statistical methods to compute and update ratings after obtaining new data.
All three systems have their advantages and disadvantages. Results-based ratings systems tend to do an accurate job of assessing a team’s resume — i.e., what it has accomplished to date.
Market-based and Bayesian systems tend to have more predictive power. Market-based ratings reflect highly liquid and efficient betting markets, while Bayesian systems are less prone to overreacting to (or being skewed by) a single data point than results-based power ratings systems.
While market-based power ratings systems are Bayesian in nature, they rely on betting market data, whereas Bayesian power ratings systems can be built with a variety of statistics but don’t necessarily need betting data.
CFL Power Ratings Methodology
Our Canadian Football League power ratings system is market-based and estimates how much each CFL team is worth against the spread on a neutral field.
We use simple linear regression techniques on widely available CFL betting market data, with more weight given to recent games as opposed to games played further in the rear-view mirror.
While similar ratings systems are widely available for the NFL, college football and myriad other sports, we aren’t aware of anything that presently exists for the CFL.
How to Use Our CFL Power Ratings
These projections can be used as a baseline before factoring in home-field advantage, travel, rest, weather, motivation, QB upgrades or downgrades, matchup-based adjustments and any injury-related news.
The ratings are standardized to be on the same scale as the point spread — with zero representing a league-average team — so that you can simply subtract one team’s rating from another to get the projected point spread on a neutral field, then add in a home-field advantage adjustment.
One of the primary goals of these market-based power ratings is to find discrepancies between public perception (based on a team’s win-loss record or recent performance) and how a team may be benefiting from factors that could be driven by luck, such as turnover margin or record in one-score games.