Glossary

The terms In The Rafters uses across the site, all in one place. If a metric name on a team page or a Rafty take is unfamiliar, this is where it lives.

Scoring profile

A private Rafty read of how a team’s scoring and prevention have held up against its schedule. The public page may describe the direction of that signal, but it does not publish formulas, coefficients, or tuning rules.

Strength of schedule (SOS)

An adjustment that compares each team’s per-game scoring margin to the average margin of their opponents to that point. Beating bad teams by 20 is worth less than beating good teams by 5; SOS-adjusted margin captures that distinction.

Recent form

A short-window read of how each team has looked lately. It can nudge a matchup note, but the exact windowing and weight stay private.

Confidence

A reader-facing strength label for the call. It is useful for context, not a promise, betting edge, or public dump of the internal scoring layer.

Confidence checks

Whether Rafty’s stated confidence is staying honest against actual outcomes. The records page keeps the reader-facing receipts without publishing the private tuning layer.

Record context

How the standings compare with the broader scoring profile. Sometimes a team’s record and underlying form point in different directions, so Rafty keeps the public explanation qualitative.

Pre-game pick

Rafty’s prediction filed BEFORE a game is played, using only data available up to that point. Once the game ends, the pre-game pick is compared to the actual outcome to grade the call.

Story bucket

How news stories are classified — injury, transaction, milestone, game-result, quote, feature. Buckets drive duplicate detection: a quote-about-an-injury and the injury itself collapse to one story.

Game of the Day

The single highest-confidence Rafty prediction on the daily slate, highlighted at the top of the morning digest. Not a betting recommendation.

See also Rafty FAQ and Rafty’s Records.