2017 Patriots Defense

[farn]

I am curious to see the 3rd down numbers through 3 games. It seems like they give up a lot of those first downs.

And I seem to remember those 2009-2011 ish teams being infuriating in that category.

 

[MainePatsFan26]

I commend your effort, but 0-1 only leads to lower success when you add in Brady's lost season. If you remove 2008 (which you should, given such an important variable), then it grades out a a 4 in your system.



I know you were just playing around but, fwiw, your exercise shows that records can have a varying relationship to playoff success, not that there is a positive correlation. To the contrary, your results indicate either no correlation or, if we restrict the data to only Brady years, a negative correlation.

Not to take a silly exercise too seriously (too late!), but I'm not fond of basing everything on playoff success, either. The sample is already stretched perilously thin.... and then it hinges upon a set with even worse sample size issues.

Your serve.

You're right that there are some problems with my model. Honestly, what I find surprising from it and the USA Today is that the 2-2 teams actually have greater success. With the Patriots, if we just look at Super Bowl wins, it seems when they thrive in the preseason, they are the most likely to have a championship year.

Overall, if we subtract 2008 from the sample, it becomes even rarer for a Patriots team to go 1-3 in the preseason. That makes this preseason all the more of an anomaly. Let's hope they add another Super Bowl to the sample.

 

[Uptown]

Is Devin McCourty replacing Patrick Chung?