Yes these are different teams but I am not sure that is a sound argument. Since it is always different teams each year, can't it be argued there is a losing trend in Miami due to issues other than the personnel? If the teams were the same for the 5 years and we lost 4 times in Miami, wouldn't we look at the team's makeup? Are you arguing that each event is independent and there are no common issues affecting the game? That does not seem plausible as there are common outside influences. With the same personnel variables, in Buffalo the NEP are dominant and in Miami the NEP are not dominant. So can't there be other variables outside of team makeup influencing the outcome? Those who can not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.
Sure. "Outside" (non-football) factors
can have an influence on the game - noise (Seattle, KC), elevation (Denver), temperature differences, travel time. But there are so many in-game, football-related variables that can have a much bigger influence (personnel health for both teams being a huge one), that believing that the outside factor is the determining factor in a series of losses just because it's an
easily identifiable common factor, simply isn't logical. It certainly isn't truly a testable hypothesis because there's no way to isolate it as a variable.
Plus, there's one other common factor to the Pats' December and January losses in Miami, other than location. It's always the second time the two teams have met that season, which actually is a football-related factor. It makes just as much sense (perhaps more sense) to hypothesize that the Pats lose in their second meetings with Miami.
So, yeah, you really
do need to evaluate each game as an independent event, and each within its own context and sets of football-related circumstances.
WRT to your example with the Bills, the common factor there is also football-related: they always seem to suck at football.
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