Ratings
“Who's actually good?”
Every team gets a rating built from who it played and how it did — with an all-margin version that counts every point and a no-margin version that only cares whether you won.
// ratings · stats · projections
Where the box score meets the bell curve.
Stats Orb turns every final score into team ratings, strength of schedule, game-by-game odds and full-season projections — for the NFL, college football, men's college basketball, the NBA and the NHL.
01 / what we do
Three questions, answered with math.
Stats
“Who did they beat?”
Strength of schedule, records against the top tier, week-over-week rank movement. The context a win–loss record leaves out.
Projections
“What's likely next?”
Win probabilities for every upcoming game, rolled up into the full range of final records — and how likely each one is.
02 / probability, not prophecy
A 57% favorite loses 43 times out of 100.
That's not a bad prediction — that's what 57% means. Play the same game a hundred times and the underdog takes its share. Upsets aren't proof the numbers are wrong; they're the numbers working.
That's why Stats Orb shows odds, not guarantees: the chance a team wins a game, the chance it finishes within one game of its projected record, the chance it wins out.
- favorite wins
- underdog wins
Team A 5–0
tough schedule
Team B 5–0
soft schedule
03 / context is everything
Not all 5–0 starts are created equal.
Two teams can share a record and have almost nothing else in common. Strength of schedule (SOS) measures how good a team's opponents are, so a 5–0 run through contenders counts for more than a 5–0 run through the bottom of the league.
Our ratings bake that in — and you can sort any league by SOS rank to see who's had the hardest road.
04 / two ratings, one argument settled
Does a blowout mean more than a squeaker?
Fans have argued about it forever. We publish both answers side by side.
W 45–3vsW 24–21
All-margin rating
Counts every point. A 42-point win says more than a 3-point win, so dominant teams rise faster. Built for forecasting what comes next.
W=W
No-margin rating
A win is a win. Only who you beat matters, not by how much — the measure of a résumé, and immune to running up the score.
05 / how a projection is born
From final score to full season, in four steps.
- 01
Results in
Every final score, home or away or neutral site, regular season and playoffs.
- 02
Ratings update
Each team's rating is recalculated from everyone it has played, so one upset ripples through the whole league.
- 03
Every game gets odds
Ratings become an expected margin and a win probability for each game still on the schedule.
- 04
Seasons take shape
Those odds combine into the likelihood of every possible final record, plus projected standings.
06 / pick your league
Five leagues. One way of thinking.
Got a question, a correction, or a hot take backed by data?
We'd love to hear it.