Any college football coach will tell you that he wants his team to get better every week of the season. Achieving that goal isn’t so simple. It is rare for any team to consistently improve week in and week out, but we can compare performances from the beginning of the year with those at the end to see which teams improved and which ones regressed.
The opponent-adjusted efficiency ratings used to produce overall FEI ratings measure single game performances adjusted for home field advantage and the strength of the opposition faced. Each game for each team is ranked on a percentile scale for the season – elite performances are in the 90th percentile or above, average performance rank in the 50th percentile, etc.