What makes TRACR (Team Rating Adjusted for Competition and Roster) equally important in college football, college basketball, NBA, MLB, NFL and NHL?
Because it normalizes a team’s performance (for any sport) from league environmental factors that can either inflate or deflate its numbers.
That’s done with a model that uses advanced metrics and other factors to calculate how many points per 100 possessions (**for basketball**) or how many runs per nine innings (**for baseball**) or how many points per 10 drives (**for college football**) or how goals teams score/allow per game (**for hockey**) better or worse teams are or were compared to the league-average club during a given season.
Our NFL TRACR rankings are calculated a little differently. We use our player ratings to rank which teams have the most formidable units in six categories: pass catching, pass defending, pass rushing, pass protecting, run blocking and run stopping. From there, we’re able to create TRACR or team ratings for each squad.
We can also take it one step further and rate teams by offensive TRACR (O-TRACR) and defensive TRACR (D-TRACR) in addition to overall TRACR. Note that lower is better for defensive ratings in each sport.
As an example, the [1995-96 Chicago Bulls](https://www.basketball-reference.com/teams/CHI/1996.html), who set a league record at the time by going 72-10 before winning it all behind Michael Jordan, Scottie Pippen and Dennis Rodman, have the top adjusted team ratings we’ve recorded in the NBA since the 1986-87 season at 14.14.
Here’s what the final 2023-24 NBA regular season TRACR standings looked like:
So the Celtics, who finished 64-18 to earn the No. 1 seed in the Eastern Conference, ended up 11.39 points per 100 possessions better than the league-average club during the 2023-24 season. That was far ahead of the West-best Thunder at 7.84.
Keep in mind that the model is backward-facing, so it’s based on how well a team has played and not necessarily how well a team will play.