Comparing ESPN's power rankings with my computer

ESPN publishes their NFL Power Rankings each week and I thought it would be interesting to compare them with my computers rankings.

Team	ESPN	Schmidt Computer
Indianapolis	1	2
NY Giants	2	11
Minnesota	3	4
New Orleans	4	1
Denver	5	3
Cincinnati	6	6
Philadelphia	7	14
Atlanta	8	7
NY Jets	9	8
New England	10	5
Baltimore	11	10
Chicago	12	9
Pittsburgh	13	13
Green Bay	14	15
San Francisco	15	12
San Diego	16	20
Dallas	17	18
Miami	18	16
Arizona	19	17
Seattle	20	19
Jacksonville	21	21
Houston	22	22
Carolina	23	27
Washington	24	28
Buffalo	25	24
Detroit	26	25
Tennessee	27	26
Cleveland	28	23
Oakland	29	29
Kansas City	30	30
Tampa Bay	31	32
St. Louis	32	31

All in all, things aren't terribly out of whack, but a few things stand out.

ESPN likes the Giants and Philly a lot more than my computer ranking them 2 and 7 versus 11 and 14 for the computer.  Perhaps the Giants are indeed a top team, but it is difficult to rank them there when they've played two winless teams, one 1 win team (and that win over a winless team), and only one team with a winning record and that teams wins are over teams with a combined 1-13 record.  Philadelphia also suffers from playing a similar weak schedule.

On the other side of the coin, ESPN only ranks New England 10 but the computer has them 5.  Yes, they have two losses but two of their wins are over 3 win teams.

So, which is more accurate?  Just for fun, I went back through each week to see how well the ESPN rankings did in predicting winners and for the year they are 51-25.  For comparison, my computer is 53-23 and the last 2 weeks when both ESPN and my computer should have better data, my computer is 21-7 versus ESPNs 18-10.  So I'm liking that my rankings are at this point more accurate than the ESPN analysts!

I'll continue to monitor this through the year and report back.