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Interesting article

For those of you with the patience to read a rather long, heavily math related article, football outsiders has a very good piece on regular season successes and how they correlate with postseason championships. A Pats related paragraph at the end should give all of us hope:

Quote:

Let’s look at the top seeds in each conference, along with that defensive juggernaut in Baltimore, and one mystery team:

{chart that I can't get cleaned up enough to make sense here}

The team whose **** might, in fact, work in the playoffs? The New England Patriots. They do extremely well in each of these categories except for rushing DVOA over the second half of the year.

Does this mean the Patriots are the favorites? No. They’re still most likely going to have to play a playoff game at either San Diego or Baltimore, and that could very well be too much for them to overcome. But if they do make it through the AFC minefield and are hoisting up the Vince Lombardi Trophy on February 4th, well, you can tone down the platitudes about respect from Rodney Harrison and Tom Brady’s clutch gritty manly leaderness by the media and tell your friends that the Patriots are a team just built for the playoffs — and that you knew all along they wouldn’t be facing Dallas.

Re: Interesting article

Entertaining read Os, thanks.

Re: Interesting article

This is excellent stuff. Thanks very much. As someone who bought into The Hidden Game of Football a while ago, this website takes things to a whole new level.

I went to the website and found the overall ranking of each of the 12 Playoff Teams for Offense and for Defense for "All Plays" using their DVOA system and then added them together to get a "Score" for each team, the lower the better. Here is what it shows:

Eagles: 14 ("3" rank for Offense plus "11" rank for Defense)
Patriots: 15 (7 plus 8)
Ravens: 15 (14 plus 1)
Chargers: 16: (2 plus 14)
Bears 20: (18 plus 2)
Giants: 22 (9 plus 13)
Cowboys: 24 (8 plus 16)
Saints: 24 (5 plus 19)
Chiefs: 28 (10 plus 18)
Colts: 28 (1 plus 27)
Jets: 41 (15 plus 26)
Seahawks: 47 (27 plus 20)

It's difficult and risky to read too much into anything like this, but it does suggest that there are four Playoff Teams (Eagles, Patriots, Ravens and Chargers) who are in a class by themselves; and that all of the other teams are either very unbalanced or have significant flaws on both sides of the ball. Interestingly, of all the teams in the Playoffs, on this system the Patriots are the most balanced between Offense and Defense. It also validates my pick of the Eagles to represent the NFC. Very interesting stuff.

Re: Interesting article

Quote:

Originally Posted by PatsFanSince74 (Post 280321)

The Patriots are the only team in the league that is in the top ten in offense, defense and special teams. Doing your ranking with special teams considered the top 4 are

Balt - 19
SD - 19
Chi - 21
NE - 23

No other team even cracks 30

Re: Interesting article

Quote:

Originally Posted by PatsFanSince74 (Post 280321)

When you add the rankings like that, you end up blunting the system unnecessarily. The difference between the 1st and 2nd ranked offense team isn't necessarily the same as the difference between the 2nd and 3rd.

Footballoutsider's already computes a ranking that combines a team's offense, defense, and special teams, in proportion, and comes up with an overall team score and ranking. You can find it here.

(The Pats rank 5th in overall DVOA, and #2 in "weighted DVOA," which counts the first half of the season less than the 2nd.)

Re: Interesting article

Quote:

Originally Posted by Pat_Nasty (Post 280334)

thx for the guidance, i'm still learning my way around the website. bottom line tho is good any way we cut it. thx again. now, if only the game was played on paper...

Re: Interesting article

But you forgot to mention that it has one of the best football-related titles ever!

Why Doesn’t Bill Polian’s S–t Work in the Playoffs?

http://www.patsfans.com/new-england-...ies/happy2.gif