Playoff speculation always rears its head when inter-league competition starts to yield each region's playoff seedings. In a few short weeks, the playoff brackets will begin to fill, and at this point -- midway through October -- it would be nice if someone ran the playoff bracket through 1,000,000 simulations and gave us a crystal-ball look at how things will play out.
Oh wait, Loren Maxwell, the founder of the Maxwell Ratings, did just that.
To save the reader trouble, here is Maxwell’s explanation of his "Maxwell Ratings Playoff Projection" system that is used predict the high school football future, so to speak.
“The Maxwell Ratings playoff projections are based on a Monte Carlo simulation of the 2018 season. The simulation completed 1,000,000 seasons. While the Maxwell Ratings reflect each team’s strength, the simulation highlights the impact of the season’s structure as defined by the games, region alignments, and playoff brackets. All out-of-state opponents were considered equal to the average of the GHSA team’s classification (i.e., out-of-state opponents of Class AAAAAAA GHSA teams were treated as an average Class AAAAAAA team). Although regions may use different criteria, in the simulation all standings were determined by 1) region record, 2) head to head, 3) point differential, 4) classification record, and 5) random tie-breaker.”
Let’s look through the results to break down this week’s Class AAA rankings. Each number below signifies how many times the team made the respective round in the simulations – playoffs in general, quarterfinals, semifinals, championship game and a state-championship victory.
Of the top-10 teams, six made the playoffs in each of the 1,000,000 simulations (listed below). The top-four teams – Calhoun, Cedar Grove, Monroe Area and Peach County – won 863,661 championships out of 1,000,000 simulations. Peach County, however, was one of the top-10 teams to not make the playoffs in all of the 1,000,000 simulations, missing the playoffs 33 times. No. 5 Westminster, No. 9 Dawson County and No. 10 Pace Academy were the other ranked teams to miss the playoffs a number of times during the simulations.
It really is fairly simple: If you look under ‘finals’ and your team has a greater number than another teams, it means that your team is most-likely to make it to the finals than the other team. Again, this is all speculation. In the semifinals, look for the top-four teams listed below, and you can speculate which four teams might make it through the first three rounds of the playoffs.
- (1) Calhoun (7-0)
Playoffs -- 1,000,000
Quarterfinals -- 823,045
Semifinals -- 730,779
Finals -- 526,671
Champion -- 296,087
(2) Cedar Grove (7-1)
Playoffs -- 1,000,000
Quarterfinals -- 907,641
Semifinals -- 683,319
Finals -- 554,609
Champion -- 361,293
(3) Monroe Area (8-0)
Playoffs -- 1,000,000
Quarterfinals -- 708,147
Semifinals -- 586,521
Finals -- 218,183
Champion -- 94,264
(4) Peach County (5-2)
Playoffs -- 999,967
Quarterfinals -- 847,219
Semifinals -- 565,368
Finals -- 260,387
Champion -- 112,017
(5) Westminster-Atlanta (4-3)
Playoffs -- 999,831
Quarterfinals -- 200,855
Semifinals -- 124,786
Finals -- 45,864
Champion -- 12,566
(6) Greater Atlanta Christian (6-2)
Playoffs -- 1,000,000
Quarterfinals -- 646,740
Semifinals -- 283,387
Finals -- 91,387
Champion -- 25,870
(7) Benedictine (6-1)
Playoffs -- 1,000,000
Quarterfinals -- 813,763
Semifinals -- 284,849
Finals -- 183,807
Champion -- 78,102
(8) Jefferson (7-1)
Playoffs -- 1,000,000
Quarterfinals -- 169,311
Semifinals -- 67,483
Finals -- 8,997
Champion -- 1,317
(9) Dawson County (6-1)
Playoffs -- 999,992
Quarterfinals -- 177,323
Semifinals -- 94,781
Finals -- 13,173
Champion -- 2,205
(10) Pace Academy (5-3)
Playoffs -- 999,986
Quarterfinals -- 152,148
Semifinals -- 49,250
Finals -- 9,601
Champion -- 1,602
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