You gotta finish strong and head into the playoffs with momentum

[dhamz]

I think the whole momentum stuff is just talk. You want to be healthy and sharp when the playoffs start. Taking too much time away from playing real football hurts your execution in particular on offense. That is where shutting it down for weeks like the Colts are doing is a risky strategy especially for a team that relies so much on a precision passing game. Teams are used to 1 week off for byes, they aren't used to taking a month off and then trying to play their best football.

The Pats will be playing the weekend of January 9/10 so if they rest guys this week to stay healthy it is 1 week off which is a very normal thing for a football team.

 

[micronin127]

I am OK with resting injured players, like Wilfork (ankle) and others who are truly injured and need the time.

But to sit out healthy players to avoid potential injuries... you might as well just hide under your bed.

 

[mgteich]

Intentially risking injury to Brady and Welker for a game that makes no difference whatsoever doesn't make sense to me. This is a preseason game.

Howver, if Belichick and Brady think that Brady needs to be hit a few times to stay sharp, then I bow to their judgement. After all, Brady plays better being dinged up??????????????????????????

 

[emoney_33]

Intentially risking injury to Brady and Welker for a game that makes no difference whatsoever doesn't make sense to me. This is a preseason game.

The meaning of this game depends on how much the team needs to work on. The coaches are better judges of that than us obviously, so I'll trust their judgement in this area. It's a preseason game only if you ignore everything except for playoff seeding/implications. If the team has a whole has things they should work on one last time in a real game before the playoffs, then I'm all for playing all the starters as much as required to get that work in.

 

[RayClay]

you completely missed the point

you also didn't respond to the momentum studies I linked

I listed every Super Bowl team this decade.

Are you sure you had a point?

 

[RayClay]

By the way, your source used a sample of 3 SB teams and said it proved something. I used a sample of ten, didn't say it proved anything, but it's obviously better than three.

Using a sample of three and saying it proves your point, when you're supposed to be an expert on statistics, is ridiculous. The only thing more ridiculous is having an audience while doing so.

What recent results have showed, though, is that the idea of momentum -- of teams "peaking at the right time" -- is a crock. The past three years provide enough fodder to kill the idea.

Wow. I guess some people will buy anything.

 

[makewayhomer]

By the way, your source used a sample of 3 SB teams and said it proved something. I used a sample of ten, didn't say it proved anything, but it's obviously better than three.

Using a sample of three and saying it proves your point, when you're supposed to be an expert on statistics, is ridiculous. The only thing more ridiculous is having an audience while doing so.

Hi RayClay,

You must have missed the studies I linked which use much, much bigger samples than 3 or 10 games. I will be helpful and link them again.

this isn't hard to understand

here is an extract of a rigorous study

 

[BradyMossWelker]

The only thing that matters in the playoffs is knowing how to win in clutch situations, and that, the patriots use to do it better than anyone

 

[makewayhomer]

The only thing that matters in the playoffs is knowing how to win in clutch situations, and that, the patriots use to do it better than anyone

the Patriots obviously knew how to be clutch in 2001, 2003, and 2004, but forgot how to be clutch in 2005, 2006, and 2007. I hope they remember how to be clutch this year!!!!

 

[RayClay]

Hi RayClay,

You must have missed the studies I linked which use much, much bigger samples than 3 or 10 games. I will be helpful and link them again.

I looked for every single game in the last 50 that a home team came back from at least five runs down to tie the game and end the inning. This means that, starting the top half of the following inning, we've got two teams tied, each with an equal number of outs to go, except the home team now has the momentum. What happened? How often did the team with the momentum win the game?

This relates to resting people for the playoffs?

#2

another article about winning streaks in baseball, a much less physical sport, with 162 games, mostly depending on healthy pitching

Are you impressed with these people because they have web sites or something? I have no idea about baseball or winning streaks, neither of which are related to resting football players.

Why not, given that I posted and briefly analyzed the actual SB teams of this decade, discuss the actual issue?

 

[makewayhomer]

This relates to resting people for the playoffs?

it relates to momentum. the title of this thread is:

"You gotta finish strong and head into the playoffs with momentum"

Are you impressed with these people because they have web sites or something?

I'm impressed with smart people who do strong original work in the search for truth and knowledge. I have no respect for people who simply blindly believe media cliches and willfully ignore quantitative evidence. this is ignorance. I don't pity stupid people, but I do pity ignorant people.

I have no idea about baseball or winning streaks

well now you do. you're welcome.

neither of which are related to resting football players.

they are both related to the idea of "momentum". again, the title of this thread is

"You gotta finish strong and head into the playoffs with momentum". this is what we are talking about. momentum.

Why not, given that I posted and briefly analyzed the actual SB teams of this decade, discuss the actual issue?

you completely ignored what I already brought up: the baseline. simply posting the December win/loss records of teams like you did is useless information, b/c you need to compare it how they played throughout the year. just b/c a team went 3-1 in December doesn't mean they had momentum if the 4 teams they played were bad and they squeeked out 4 close wins while playing bad. especially if they played in a great fashion over the previous 12 games.

much more rigorous studies, like the 2 I linked, do a far, far, far better job of analyzing if momentum if real. you didn't do anything of the sort, you just posted the December records of a bunch of great teams.

 

[PatsFanSince74]

Hi RayClay,

You must have missed the studies I linked which use much, much bigger samples than 3 or 10 games. I will be helpful and link them again.

As someone who does his own analysis and presents it out here often, I know I'd appreciate if you could summarize the main points and give examples of analysis without just linking us to long articles that may or may not be relevant. We're all trying to learn and links really don't help that much unless accompanied by detailed and thoughtful commentary.

I'm interested in your assessment of what the links say (specifically) and in your own view on the quality of the analysis. Like I'm sure is the case for you, I don't buy everything that people managed to get published on the web.

 

[makewayhomer]

As someone who does his own analysis and presents it out here often, I know I'd appreciate if you could summarize the main points and give examples of analysis without just linking us to long articles that may or may not be relevant. We're all trying to learn and links really don't help that much unless accompanied by detailed and thoughtful commentary.

I'm interested in your assessment of what the links say (specifically) and in your own view on the quality of the analysis. Like I'm sure is the case for you, I don't buy everything that people managed to get published on the web.

Tom Tango's piece isn't really that long. but basically, he looks at in game momentum in baseball. he find a bunch of games to answer 2 questions

1. "I looked for every single game in the last 50 (years I think) that a home team came back from at least five runs down to tie the game and end the inning. This means that, starting the top half of the following inning, we've got two teams tied, each with an equal number of outs to go, except the home team now has the momentum. What happened? How often did the team with the momentum win the game?"

2. "Let's repeat, but this time with the road team having the momentum. Note that entering the bottom half of the inning means that the home team has three extra outs for the game. So, we should expect to see lower win numbers for the road team"

he finds that the effect of having the momentum is statistically insignificant...but there is a tiny lift. but people vastly, vastly, overrate it.

"Momentum exists. But we'll be hard-pressed to find it in anything other than in-game scenarios. We can barely find it with the numbers in even the most dramatic come-from-behind games."

btw, this is Tom Tango

the 2nd link was just an extract from an academic study in the Journal of Sport Behavior

"Actual winning and losing streaks for the 28 major league baseball teams and the 29 National Basketball Association teams were compared to streaks that would have occurred under the assumption that game outcome is independent of the outcome of the most recent previous games."

basically, they are trying to validate the assumption that whether or not you win or lost the previous game has no bearing on if you win or lose the next game.

their result is the same as Tango's

"The results suggest that sports participants and observers place an unjustified importance on momentum as a causal factor in outcomes of sport contests."

the extract suggests that what you do next game is independent of what you did last game

a 3rd example:

this Wall Street Journal article finds that "there was no affect on postseason play coming from team momentum at the end of the (baseball) regular season. "

 

[PatsFanSince74]

Tom Tango's piece isn't really that long. but basically, he looks at in game momentum in baseball. he find a bunch of games to answer 2 questions

1. "I looked for every single game in the last 50 (years I think) that a home team came back from at least five runs down to tie the game and end the inning. This means that, starting the top half of the following inning, we've got two teams tied, each with an equal number of outs to go, except the home team now has the momentum. What happened? How often did the team with the momentum win the game?"

2. "Let's repeat, but this time with the road team having the momentum. Note that entering the bottom half of the inning means that the home team has three extra outs for the game. So, we should expect to see lower win numbers for the road team"

he finds that the effect of having the momentum is statistically insignificant...but there is a tiny lift. but people vastly, vastly, overrate it.

"Momentum exists. But we'll be hard-pressed to find it in anything other than in-game scenarios. We can barely find it with the numbers in even the most dramatic come-from-behind games."

btw, this is Tom Tango

the 2nd link was just an extract from an academic study in the Journal of Sport Behavior

"Actual winning and losing streaks for the 28 major league baseball teams and the 29 National Basketball Association teams were compared to streaks that would have occurred under the assumption that game outcome is independent of the outcome of the most recent previous games."

basically, they are trying to validate the assumption that whether or not you win or lost the previous game has no bearing on if you win or lose the next game.

their result is the same as Tango's

"The results suggest that sports participants and observers place an unjustified importance on momentum as a causal factor in outcomes of sport contests."

the extract suggests that what you do next game is independent of what you did last game

a 3rd example:

this Wall Street Journal article finds that "there was no affect on postseason play coming from team momentum at the end of the (baseball) regular season. "

thanks. I appreciate your taking the time to digest those articles and, as a baseball and hoops fan, I enjoyed reading them.

I enjoyed reading them to the extent that I wouldn't even try to dispute the authors' findings for baseball and, it seems, basketball. i don't consider myself as knowledgeable of those sports as i am for the nfl, though I follow both eagerly as a fan. so, i am willing to grant their points, prima facie.

but, absent compelling evidence to the contrary, i am inclined to "deny the premise" of your position and would argue that football in the NFL is very different than baseball in MLB and basketball in the NBA.

so, what is your view on the relevance of these "momentfum" statistics (the validity of which i do not question) for baseball, with a 162 game season and daily play, and basketball, with an 82 game season and play occasionally every day, but most often ever two or three days, and the NFL where there is a 16 game season and weekly play? my view is that there are very different dynamics.

in baseball, a four game winning streak is nice but not unusual. in basketball, the same. in football, it means you've covered 25% of your season; an eight game winning streak and you've aced half your season. so, it seems to me that the momentum a team builds in those last four weeks is indeed very important and differentially so in a meaningful way than in baseball or football.

more importantly, football differs from both in that every play is a carefully choreographed entity requiring 11 athletes to work in near perfect cohesion for success at the highest levels.

baseball and basketball both require teamwork, without a doubt, but in football i would argue that the ability of all 11 players on a team (two groups of 11 actually, plus ST) at any one time to work together is something that is quite fragile and that comes together and holds together in a very different way than in baseball or basketball. In the NFL, the same groups of 11 players can look very, very different during one eight week stretch and another eight week stretch. Witness the examples of the Giants, Chargers and Vikings this season.

So, I would argue that teams for which things do come together in that very special and fragile way as they head into the playoffs in the NFL are far more likely to be successful and that the experience of a sport with 16 games is very different from the experience of a sport that has 162 opportunities to play a year. The data points I studied and presented in an earlier post in this thread would tend to support that. In that sense, then, "momentum" is important.

What do you think?

 

[makewayhomer]

So, I would argue that teams for which things do come together in that very special and fragile way as they head into the playoffs in the NFL are far more likely to be successful

again, the data doesn't really support that POV

from a post I just found, which unfortunately is a small sample:

The hottest team (most consecutive wins) going into the playoffs each of the past 10 years and their final record in the playoffs:

2008: Colts (0-1)

2007: Patriots (2-1, lost SB)

2006: San Diego (0-1)

2005: Washington (1-1)

2004: Pittsburgh (1-1)

2003: Patriots (3-0, won SB)

2002: Titans (1-1)

2001: Patriots and Rams (Met in SB, 6-1 combined)

2000: Ravens (4-0 won SB)

1999: Titans 3-1(lost SB)

Sometimes the hot team wins. Usually they don't. Teams with a 1 game or zero game winning streak are as likely to win a Super Bowl in the past decade as teams with a longer winning streak.

 

[RayClay]

it relates to momentum. the title of this thread is:

"You gotta finish strong and head into the playoffs with momentum"





I'm impressed with smart people who do strong original work in the search for truth and knowledge. I have no respect for people who simply blindly believe media cliches and willfully ignore quantitative evidence. this is ignorance. I don't pity stupid people, but I do pity ignorant people.



well now you do. you're welcome.



they are both related to the idea of "momentum". again, the title of this thread is

"You gotta finish strong and head into the playoffs with momentum". this is what we are talking about. momentum.



you completely ignored what I already brought up: the baseline. simply posting the December win/loss records of teams like you did is useless information, b/c you need to compare it how they played throughout the year. just b/c a team went 3-1 in December doesn't mean they had momentum if the 4 teams they played were bad and they squeeked out 4 close wins while playing bad. especially if they played in a great fashion over the previous 12 games.

much more rigorous studies, like the 2 I linked, do a far, far, far better job of analyzing if momentum if real. you didn't do anything of the sort, you just posted the December records of a bunch of great teams.

So you're saying that the concept of momentum itself is meaningless and the word should be removed from the dictionary?

 

[makewayhomer]

So you're saying that the concept of momentum itself is meaningless and the word should be removed from the dictionary?

no. read my reply to Patsfansince 74 - the one he just quoted

 

[RayClay]

Tom Tango's piece isn't really that long. but basically, he looks at in game momentum in baseball. he find a bunch of games to answer 2 questions

1. "I looked for every single game in the last 50 (years I think) that a home team came back from at least five runs down to tie the game and end the inning. This means that, starting the top half of the following inning, we've got two teams tied, each with an equal number of outs to go, except the home team now has the momentum. What happened? How often did the team with the momentum win the game?"

2. "Let's repeat, but this time with the road team having the momentum. Note that entering the bottom half of the inning means that the home team has three extra outs for the game. So, we should expect to see lower win numbers for the road team"

he finds that the effect of having the momentum is statistically insignificant...but there is a tiny lift. but people vastly, vastly, overrate it.

"Momentum exists. But we'll be hard-pressed to find it in anything other than in-game scenarios. We can barely find it with the numbers in even the most dramatic come-from-behind games."

btw, this is Tom Tango

the 2nd link was just an extract from an academic study in the Journal of Sport Behavior

"Actual winning and losing streaks for the 28 major league baseball teams and the 29 National Basketball Association teams were compared to streaks that would have occurred under the assumption that game outcome is independent of the outcome of the most recent previous games."

basically, they are trying to validate the assumption that whether or not you win or lost the previous game has no bearing on if you win or lose the next game.

their result is the same as Tango's

"The results suggest that sports participants and observers place an unjustified importance on momentum as a causal factor in outcomes of sport contests."

the extract suggests that what you do next game is independent of what you did last game

a 3rd example:

this Wall Street Journal article finds that "there was no affect on postseason play coming from team momentum at the end of the (baseball) regular season. "

Did they measure the tendency of regression to the mean?

Often, one team expends a lot of energy and the likelihood is that the opposing team would more likely score next, if bot tewams were deemed evenly matched.

The five run inning, rather than presaging further scoring, could be seen as an outlier in a normal distribution and the tendency be for the other team to score, thereby evening things.

 

[RayClay]

By the way, those studies are ridiculous. Who are they arguing against? If there was such a thing as run momentum from previous innings (again, who argues this?) Most games would be either 50 to nothing or 0-0 in extra innings

 

[RayClay]

again, the data doesn't really support that POV

from a post I just found, which unfortunately is a small sample:

So I guess you just ignore my post listing all SB winners of this decade because it doesn't support your position?

Cherry picking winners and losers that fit your model is introducing much bias.

Wait. you're seriously going to compare every team on "hotness" on an equal basis?

Teams with a 1 game or zero game winning streak are as likely to win a Super Bowl in the past decade as teams with a longer winning streak.

So The worst team in the league that wins 2 games at the end is equal to the best team who wins 2?

For shame! Turn in your slide rule.