Slagathor said:
When you have to punt a lot, field lots of kickoffs and settle for numerous field goals......your ST production gets greatly inflated.
Hence the top 5 you see above.
Wow...thats flawed.
If that was true then the teams that punted the most would be in the top eleven ...San fran, philly, chicago, tampa, miami, washington, baltimore, detroit, oakland, jax, and dallas... but only 3 of these eleven are rated as such... Hmmm...sounds like he's evaluating personel!
With your same reasoning the 9 teams that punted the least in 2006 should be the lowest rated. Colts, bengals, chiefs, steelers, greenbay, buffalo, San diego, new orleans and denver...
But only 2 of them are in the bottom 9...Hmmm still sounds like he's evaluating personel...
Lets go to kick returns..teaks w/ most KR's in 2006 were Houston, san fran, oakland, arizona, green bay, buffalo, new orleans, st. louis, and detroit...
And the number of them in the top 9 of these rankings are: 3. I'm still not seeing a correlation here...
Lets try one more... Punt return att...
Top 9 teams in punt return att were: jax, Tampa, arizona, giants, pitt, chicago, and New orleans.
Number of these teams in the top 9 of these rankings: 4
In each stat category we have shown less than a 50% correlation. Now instead of just trying to say another team gets more att therfore they are better i am prepared to state the following: "Good ST's are made of Good ST players"...kind of rolls off the tongue.
SO...Why are the patriots ranked so low?
1.In 2006 NE allowed 21.9 yards per kick return good for 19th in the league.
2. In 2006 NE allowed 9.6 yards per punt return good for 27th in the league.
So the stats show that the patriots have a below average ST's Coverage.
3. Rookie kicker- Rookies are rookies. I'm not saying he'll be bad, but he is an unknown quantity...
4. Excellent punter- Miller is one of the best in the league. 4th in the lague in gross avg(45.1 yds). 10th in the league Net punting (39.8)
5. Kick returns. NE was slightly better than average 15th in the league w/ a 22.2 yd avg. New rookie is an unknown.
6. Punt returns- Slightly below average. 16th in the league with a 7.9 yd average. New guy is an unknown.
So if we sum it all up in ST's play NE was in the top ten in only one category (punting)...But was in the below average in kick coverage(19th) and bad in punt coverage (27th)... Add in a rookie kicker, and new returners and you get a FAIR ranking of 27th in the league in ST's to open the season.
FURTHMORE: Statistical science shows that stats are more accurate with more results. This is because smallers collections of results are easily influenced by extreme outliars...Therefore teams with more attempts generally will have more accurate stats that show their ability...
Have a nice day!