Offseason Changes

There’s been a few big changes to this league, most notably some changes in teams. The LA and Austin teams were removed for violation of league rules, and the Chicago Hounds have been added as an expansion club. This puts the league at twelve teams: Atlanta, Toronto New England, New Orleans, New York, and Washington in the East; Chicago, Dallas, Houston, San Diego, Seattle, and Utah in the West. Though this is all likely to change again next year with the addition of the Miami Sharks - and maybe the return of LA and/or Austin under new ownership and better different branding. I still have my fingers crossed for the Herd - Austin has a great club rugby setup and should be able to support a team, especially one that works with the Huns and Blacks.

There have also been a couple of rebrands. Rugby New York have added the nickname of the Ironworkers, but seem to be keeping the color theme of navy blue, light blue, and burnt orange accents. Atlanta has rebranded as well, changing their colors and logo, moving away from the grey, red, and black theming that played into the fan nickname of Rattlesnakes (from RATL). The team name remains Rugby ATL, but the new logo is a round, green emblem with a light blue script A and a few blue stars - very similar to the Hound’s round green emblem with blue stars that was announced a few months earlier. Maybe it’s a better move for their own brand, but it’s weird to have two clubs with basically the same colors in a league of only 12 teams.

With the Hounds being a brand new club, we have no historical performances and need to create some estimate of their ranking. We could start with the same score as all clubs, at 1500, but we have a couple pieces of information that could form a more informed prior. We know that they have a lot of talent that was playing or coaching with LA or Austin last year, so could expect them to perform a bit like those teams. They also played a 40-minute match against RATL, where they lost 28-7. That’s not a great showing, but the kit clash was worse - Chicago wore black to RATL’s very dark green, which made me very confused which team is which. The refs look great in pink though.

Anyways. That gives us three data points for Chicago’s potential rating. LA finished last year with a rating of 1676, and Austin finished last year with a rating of 1748. Losing to RATL by 21 in 40 minutes might roughly translate to losing by 42 in a full match, which would be a performance of around 858. Any rating we assign should encompass all of these potential ratings, so we’re starting Chicago with a 1300 rating and a very high uncertainty. This is below the default starting rating of 1500, but still above Dallas’ rating of 1029. The high uncertainty means that clubs playing against Chicago should not see much change in their ratings from those matches, while Chicago will see some pretty big changes in the early weeks. But this may be the best we can do at a club level. Player level rankings may be a good deal more accurate, as many players on the Chicago roster have played in our database before.

Starting Rankings

Overall Projections

Averaging the results for each of my 10,000 tournaments, here’s my projected table.

New York, Atlanta, and New England seem likely to be the top teams in the East, while in the West it looks like Seattle should pull ahead with Utah, San Diego, and Houston fighting for second. The Jackals probably won’t have as bad a year as this table implies, as they’ve made a lot of changes and will likely improve. Chicago is definitely a wild card, and if they start the season strong don’t be surprised if they end up in the running for the championship. We’ll learn a lot more about them as soon as they release a few lineups and play a couple matches.

Playoff Projections

This season, the top three teams in each conference will reach the playoffs. The second and third ranked teams will play, with the winner playing the first ranked team. The resulting conference winners will face off in the championship. The East has some heavy favorites, while the West has just one frontrunner.

Eastern Conference

Likelihood to Reach Eastern Playoff

Likelihood to reach Eastern Conference Championship

Likelihood to Win Eastern Conference

Western Conference

Likelihood to Reach Western Playoff

Likelihood to reach Western Conference Championship

Likelihood to Win Western Conference

Chance to Win Championship

From these forecasts, it looks like its the East’s year. Which makes sense given that two of the strongest teams in the West are gone. The East has about a 71.1% chance of winning the championship, most likely via a New York repeat or a newly green Atlanta. Only Old Glory and Dallas fail to win the league in any of our simulations, but both have made some big changes and could throw off all these simulations. We’ll see how things start this weekend.