We at Central Jersey Sports Radio so this every year.
It means the high school football season is upon us.
With the advent of the Opponent Strength Index (see one of our previous stories here for an explanation) we have a great tool to be able to predict how many wins each team will need to make the playoffs. The only minimum set by the NJSIAA is that a team must have at least two wins against NJSIAA members schools.
How great a tool is it?
We’ve been doing these projections since 2021, and up until last season, our projections held true for 220 of 228 teams – a 96.4 percent average success rate! (Non-publics St. Joseph of Metuchen and St. Thomas Aquinas are not included, since they are seeded by a committee, and all non-publics make the playoffs unless they otherwise opt-out or are disqualified.)
Looking back year-by-year, here’s how many teams were true to our recommendations. That means, if they met the minimum number of wins to make the playoffs and made it, or if they didn’t reach the minimum and failed to make the playoffs. If a team made it with fewer wins or missed while reaching our minimum projection, we got it wrong.
- 2021: 55 of 57 (96.4%)
- 2022: 55 of 57 (96.4%)
- 2023: 54 of 57 (94.7%)
- 2024: 56 of 57 (98.2%)
Are we just that good? Well, we got brought back down to Earth a little last year.
For the teams that made it, we were spot on. All 24 teams that made it didn’t need any magic or voodoo, they all reached at least the minimum wins we projected they would need.
That leaves the 33 teams that didn’t and that’s where it went off the rails.
Of those that missed the postseason, 17 failed to reach even our minimum win total. Another six met the minimum, but did not earn the one additional win we consider would have made them a “lock.” So, we consider we got those right.
But that leaves ten others who missed the playoffs, all of whom at least reached our “lock” number. Seven reached it exactly, two beat it by one win, and one last team Voorhees, went 8-2 – four more than our projected minimum and three more than our “lock” – and still missed the playoffs.
That means we went 47-for-57, or 82.5%. It’s a B, and we’ll take it.
Plus, overall, in five seasons, we’re still a total of 267-for-286 and a 93.7% success rate. We’re still on the Dean’s List.
Here’s how we figure it out:
One of the best things about the Opponent Strength Index – which is 60 percent of the NJSIAA’s UPR formula for playoff qualification – is that we can have an idea going into a season how challenging a team’s schedule is. Unlike power points, it carries over from year to year.
We look at the maximum OSI a team could get, assuming the won all their games, and the lowest they could get, assuming they go winless. We divide that by the number of games on the schedule to find out an average of how many points each game is worth.
Using round numbers, here’s an example: Team A plays eight games against teams that have an average SI value of 80 points.
If Team A goes 8-0, they would have an OSI of 80 (assuming for simplicity the SI values all stayed the same), getting 100 percent of the SI value of each team they beat. If Team A goes 0-8, they would have an OSI of 40, getting 50 percent of the SI value of each team they lost to. (Let’s not get into mutlipliers.)
That gives us a range of 40 points (40 to 80), and over eight games, each would be worth an average of five points. A one-win season would mean an OSI of 45, a two-win season would be 50, and so on.
Then, we look at the minimum OSI to make the playoffs. Again, it’s not a set number, but it varies by supersection. We look at the highest OSI team to miss the top 16 cutoff, then find the next team higher than that which qualified.
Since these numbers can vary from year to year, we’ve been using an average over time, dating back to 2021.
So how did we get it so wrong?
It’s tough to do a deep dive for so many teams, but there are some easily explainable reasons:
First, as we’ve stressed, the SI values change over time. If an 0-8 team all of a sudden goes 8-0, their SI will skyrocket, and that will help a team. If the reverse happens, it could hurt the teams they play.
Where it gets worse is with one-off crossovers. If you play a one-off crossover, like Old Bridge will this Saturday against Shawnee in the Battle at the Beach in Ocean City, and if Shawnee tanks, Old Bridge can’t do much to get those points back. Whereas in divisional play, the Knights have Edison, Monroe, Piscatway and South Brunswick. If Piscataway tanks this year, the other teams in the division that beat them will increase, and Old Bridge can still get the benefit. But if Shawnee does, they can’t.
A good example this year is Hunterdon Central, which moved to a new division, but will play crossovers against Ridge, Phillipsburg, Bridgewater-Raritan and Hillsborough, their old division mates in the American Silver. If Phillipsburg all of a sudden went winless, Ridge, Bridgewater and Hillsborough’s SI’s would increase off that, and Hunterdon Central could “make up” the fewer points they got by beating the Stateliners with the extra points they could get from beating the other three.
And sometimes it’s just out of your control. Maybe some other teams in some other league had a really good, surprising year. It happens.
What are this year’s targets?
We’re basing our targets for 2026 on a continuous average since 2021, the first true year of the current OSI system. (The initial year was 2019, and those numbers were derived from the Born Power Index in 2018, then 2020 had no playoffs.)
- North 5: 40.32
- South 5: 43.09
- North 4: 43.13
- South 4: 42.74
- North 3: 43.04
- South 3: 42.59
- North 2: 41.97
- South 2: 41.95
- North 1: 38.26
- South 1: 36.65
With that data in hand, we can reasonably predict how many wins it would take a team to get into the playoffs. We call them “steps,” and we assign all Big Central teams two numbers: the first is to just get over the minimum, and the second is a “full step” over.
For example, if the minimum OSI is 42, and four wins gets a team a 43 OSI, we would say they need four wins to get in, and going one full step over, five should make them a lock.
That being said, Here’s the list of all 57 Big Central Conference public schools (the non-publics are seeded differently, by committee) along with their playoff supersection, target OSI, and their minimum wins needed, plus one step over to make them a “lock.”
The list below is based on the NJSIAA official football classifications for the 2026 and 2027 seasons:
Looking at the chart, you might wonder why JP Stevens and Bridgewater-Raritan, for example – both in the North 5 playoff supersection – have different win requirements. Wouldn’t the target be the same?
Not necessarily. That’s because they have different schedules, and based on SI values, Bridgewater-Raritan’s schedule is more challenging that that of the Hawks. If the SI values of their opponents stayed exactly the same, the average SI of the Stevens’ opponents would be 43.11, and they need about a 40.32 to get in. Meanwhile, the Panthers could get as high as 63.18, meaning they can absorb a few losses and still get in, because their schedule is more challenging.
Overall, our projections indicate that 44 of the 57 public schools in the Big Central would need between three and five wins to make the playoffs. One area of concern is that’s down from 50 last year, when we projected 13 needed at least five wins and four needed at least six. None needed more than that, although in the end it turns out they did: Spotswood and Voorhees both missed, at 8-1, and 8-2 respectively, at the Cutoff.
Additionally, last year, we projected only four teams needed six wins to get in, none needed seven or eight. This year, we project ten to need six wins, two would have to win seven (South River and Metuchen) and one would need eight (JP Stevens). But that doesn’t necessarily mean the schedule-makers got it wrong.
Stevens would be a longshot to make the playoffs anyway, with just two total wins for the program since the start of the 2019 season, and both came in 2024. South Hunterdon and South River – who are projected to need six – are in the same boat. In this case, and for other similar programs, the Big Central got it right.
This type of scheduling is a win-win: JP Stevens gets some schedule relief to try and rejuvenate the program, and top schools can play more challenging competition that will help them improve their playoff standing, should they qualify.
But as far as the playoffs, in the end, is needing six wins to get in the playoffs a bad thing? We don’t think so.
Come back in November, and we’ll see how we did!
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