Excel LADZ

NFL - 538 ELO Model

Added 2023-10-06 12:00:41 +0000 UTC

G'day lads,

Attached below is a basic NFL ELO Model. It is exactly based off of the 538 NFL Model, which is no longer available to view on their website (so I decided to recreate it). Here's a link to the complete explanation of 538's NFL Model: https://fivethirtyeight.com/methodology/how-our-nfl-predictions-work/

The link to the Excel LADZ YouTube video explaining how to build the model is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AzsfM9xsQEY&t=642s

In this file the home-field adjustment, rest adjustment and playoff adjustment have been taken into account. The quarterback adjustment hasn't been added yet, so there will be a decrease in the accuracy of the model when there is a significant change in the quality of a team's quarterback.

The ELO Ratings themselves aren't calculated in this spreadsheet, but have to be updated after every Week from the following website: https://www.aussportstipping.com/sports/nfl/elo_ratings/

On the left of the site will be a sidebar. Change the settings so that 'Home Advantage' is 65 and 'Previous Season Weighting' is 0.67. Press 'Recalculate ELO Ratings', and the website will update.

To update the ratings in the model, only consider the FiveThirtyEight ratings shown by the website. In the following example, Kansas City will have a ELO Rating of 1679.12 in our model.

To actually update the ratings, Go into the 'ELO Ratings' worksheet. In Column B is the '538 ELO' header, where under it are the ELO Ratings for each team. Fill them out manually and the results in the 'Individual Match' worksheet will change accordingly.

This whole process will be covered in the YouTube video I'll be uploading in the following days on the topic. The next model will be using these ratings to simulate the rest of the season, and calculate each team's probability of winning the Super Bowl.

If you have any questions comment down below! 🔥