A tidbit to share.
I was at a social event last nite and the conversation turned to football. A colleague introduced me as a Pats fan, the only one there. I didn't really care, but others pressed on talking about the Pats.
- A few thought that the Pats have been figured out and on the rough road ahead.
Others pointed to Pats' luck winning the last 2 games.
I said that any explanation was plausible and nobody knew. But I also made the point that such variation should be expected. Luck is a subjective concept. One can argue that it was bad luck that the Pats had such an off-key performance (2 dropped TDs that could have made the score 35 instead of 27). Also, the Ravens might have been lucky as well to play like that (when was the last time K. Boller had rating like that?). One should not expect blow-outs all the time.
- Then, the conversation turned to blow-outs (general interest)
My point was that it was unrealistic to expect blow-outs days in and days out. People agreed somewhat (the media said they are rare), but many had anecdotal recollection of their teams with blow-out wins also. After back and forth, people agreed to define blow-out as a scoring 45 or more (a compromise between those for 40 and those for 50) and winning by 21 or more. I argued that it would be very rare to have 4 like the Pats. But all others weren't sure what rare means and we left it at that.
I thought about it for a moment this morning.
Take an average NFL team, what is the chance for them to have 4 blow-outs in 12 games?.
Given that it happens only 2.3% 2001-2006, it will take that team 10,000 years of 12-game series to have a series like the Pats'. If the Pats had had one more blow-out like that in the last 2 games, it would take 250,000 yrs to have a 5-blow-out series.
So, it's rare.
I was at a social event last nite and the conversation turned to football. A colleague introduced me as a Pats fan, the only one there. I didn't really care, but others pressed on talking about the Pats.
- A few thought that the Pats have been figured out and on the rough road ahead.
Others pointed to Pats' luck winning the last 2 games.
I said that any explanation was plausible and nobody knew. But I also made the point that such variation should be expected. Luck is a subjective concept. One can argue that it was bad luck that the Pats had such an off-key performance (2 dropped TDs that could have made the score 35 instead of 27). Also, the Ravens might have been lucky as well to play like that (when was the last time K. Boller had rating like that?). One should not expect blow-outs all the time.
- Then, the conversation turned to blow-outs (general interest)
My point was that it was unrealistic to expect blow-outs days in and days out. People agreed somewhat (the media said they are rare), but many had anecdotal recollection of their teams with blow-out wins also. After back and forth, people agreed to define blow-out as a scoring 45 or more (a compromise between those for 40 and those for 50) and winning by 21 or more. I argued that it would be very rare to have 4 like the Pats. But all others weren't sure what rare means and we left it at that.
I thought about it for a moment this morning.
Take an average NFL team, what is the chance for them to have 4 blow-outs in 12 games?.
Given that it happens only 2.3% 2001-2006, it will take that team 10,000 years of 12-game series to have a series like the Pats'. If the Pats had had one more blow-out like that in the last 2 games, it would take 250,000 yrs to have a 5-blow-out series.
So, it's rare.
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