Part I
What are you rambling on about here? You posted the offensive rankings of all the teams, which I already knew, and then told me that I was counting the amount of points "they" scored against us. Who is "they"? The Texans?
You need to read all of the post.
The link shows DSRS, which is COMPETITION ADJUSTED points allowed. The Patriots allowed 4.5 less than their opponents scored in all of their other games, That is tied for 4th best.
This is the statistically relevant adjustment to points allowed.
Counting the points they scored against us is very simple.
If you are comparing competition, you must exclude the game played agaisnt you, because it skews the number.
[/quote]First of all, are you serious? 16.5 rounds out to 17. There are 32 teams in the NFL right now. If our average opponent ranked 17th in team offense, then that is a below average offensive schedule.[/quote]
16.5 is the actual midpoint of 32 teams.
An average of 16th would be right around "average" and anything above 16th is considered above average. I would think that this point would be really simple to understand.
It is easy. How do you not understand 16.5 is the midpoint of 1-32?
And secondly, if my point about the fifth place ranking is that it is skewed, we absolutely need to look at the competition. I did the math, we faced a below average schedule, and the end result is that our ranking was skewed. The math agrees here. Sorry if it's upsetting to the point you're trying to make.
This is where you just make no sense.
If the average team we faced ranked exactly in between the 16th and 17th, that is 16 were better and 16 were worse, we faced exacty an average schedule. That means our results are competition neutral.
Please don't tell me you think 16.5 is a weak schedule, because thats just ignorant.
By the way you seem to be implying that we would only justify being 5th ranked if we compiled those #s against the 5th rank offense on average.
Well, its impossible for the average competition to be 5th in a 16 game schedule.
Andy, when you defend the way the passing offense was last year and defend the minimal need for a third option, you're defending what we had in place, which was Sam Aiken.
No I am not. I am saying 3rd WR was not a critical position. If I said backup ILB was not a big need even if the guy sucked I am not defending the guy, I am stating that his role is not critical.
You know as well as I do that I was not defending Aiken. You chose in the middle of an argument about something else to make that up and used it as a reason to state that you think I am a moron. Dont apologize if you feel low class shots based on lying are your way to be.
If the WR3 position was not a major problem, how come we were able to but shut down by a decent defense like the Saints when they doubled up on Welker and Moss? The third, fourth, fifth, and so on options were absolutely a problem last year. The fact that two guys caught 200 passes actually shows how easily teams would be able to effectively close up shop on our offense. Furthermore, the drafting of Taylor Price, the pick-up of Torry Holt, and the drafting of two pass catching options at TE and H-Back shows your point to be what it was: horribly wrong.
None of that has anything to do with your scummy comment. I am not rehashing the importance of the 3rd WR on a team that has 2 allpros. I am saying your comment was wrong, and you know it, and you used it to try to deflect the argumjet, and make me look stupid by attributing an ignorant opinion to me that I never had.
It was a scumbag move. Accept it or don;t, I on't care.
Actually, I only said that about one game. That was the Falcons game. I then went on to say that if you were going to throw out the Houston game, which I didn't think you should, you should then throw out the Tennessee game because that was the team that really didn't show up. Who's memory blows again?
The reason to not count the Houston game is that they scored 13 points in the first 3 quarters then 21 in the 4th when all our top players were out. If you really think that those 21 points reflect well on our #1 units, good for you. Tennessee played all their players. I'm discounting a game because we removed players, you are discounting game because we did well, so the other team must not have tried. Big difference. And Houston was included in everything I have said and calculated other than that one comment.
Sure it was. Look what having to play Green Bay twice did to the Minnesota defense. The average competition absolutely helps to skew results in either direction. This is elementary statistics we're talking about here. Really simple stuff.
It is elementary statistics that our competition was tougher than Minnesotas. You are arguing as if its the opposite.
You do realize that you're once again directly contradicting yourself here, right? First you don't want to say that the average offensive competition skews the results for our defensive ranking either way... then you go on to say that we have to look at other teams when making decisions because it agrees with your point. That's convenient, to say the least. Not a really solid approach to this debate, but convenient nonetheless.
Wow, jut wow.
Average competition does not skew our results because they were against AVERAGE competition. If they were against less than average, it would skew them, if they were against better than average it would skew them.
In other words, the net adjustment for the competition we faced was ZERO.
You have to look at the other teams and see if their competition warrants an adjustment. Luckily Profootballreference did that for us, but you dont seem to want to look at that. DSRS adjust points allowed to the competition and the points they scored against everyone else.
Actually, that's not the case. If the results weren't skewed and if we were actually looking at a Top 5 defense last year, my opinion would be that this defense was Top 5.
Then what are they skewed by? IT wasn't competition.
The only argument you seem to want to make is that some games were worse than others and that you are valuing yards more than points.
Every team ranked 1-32 has good games and bad games. Pretty much they all do worse against good teams. Yards are not as important as points.
Unfortunately, it wasn't. I showed the statistics to prove it, I've weighed other defensive statistics prove it, I've weighed our offensive competition to prove it,
No, you didn't, I showed you weighted for competition, and you dismiss it.
Listing every game and giving your opinion is not weighting for competition.
[quoteand I weighed our results against the run and against the pass against particular teams last year. They did good in some games, they did piss poor in others. They allowed more 100 yard rushing games than they didn't last year. They got torched by Matt Schaub, Drew Brees, Peyton Manning, and allowed the likes of Chad Henne and Kyle Orton to post career days against them. They directly blew four leads going into the fourth quarter, something this team simply didn't do before last year. And at the end of the day, they limped into the playoffs only to get their asses completely handed to them by a team that couldn't use it's quarterback and still buried us on the ground to the tune of the worst blowout suffered at home by the Patriots in quite some time. Yes, I've weighed all of these factors and my opinion reflects that. [/qutoe]
Kontra, you seem like a pretty smart guy, so I think you are purposely doing this.
We are talking about RANKING. You cannot claim that a ranking is skewed by describing what the team did. Thats all you did. Your argument amounts to it cant be fifth because I can name reasons that I dont think a 5th ranked team would do. You would have to look at the other teams and see they didnt do any of those things either. Its really simple.
So wait, Kyle Orton and Chad Henne posted career days, that's career days against other defenses last year? Please show me who they did that against.
All of the defesnes that allowed more points than us allowed players to succeed as well.
Absolutely not. What I'm saying is that I would expect a Top 5 defense to show up against the Little Sisters of the Poor as well as against the better offensive competition too. This defense did exactly one half of that last year.
Every defene does better against good teams than bad. Over our entire schedule we allowed 4.5 fewer points to our opponents than they scored in their other games. If you think we were exceptionally good against bad team and poor against good teams, then what does that mean about teams who allowed more points, and more compared to their competition.
You are pigheadedly sticking to the idea our competition was weak when the evidence contradicts that.