Yesterday, we examined a means to determine of many games a team will win in a given season. We found that by using the Pythagorean Method or a team's point differential we could tell a team's record with an accuracy of about plus or minus one win. Both of those methods simply required finding how many points a team scored in a given season and how many points they gave, then performing a quick calculation with that information. Today, we are going to look a little deeper into the numbers that were found in the process of developing yesterday's article and see if we can find any other interesting nuggets from them. So without further, ado, lets get moving with a top 10 fact find:1. Over the course of the last 10 years, 5 teams (04 New England Patriots, 02 Tampa Bay Buccaneers, 99 St. Louis Rams, 98 Denver Broncos, 97 Denver Broncos) have the Super Bowl during the year where the posted the highest point differential in the league. This means that by the recent past data on the NFL, simply picking the team with the largest point differential to win the Super Bowl next year should give you a 50/50 chance at being correct.
2. The only team to average over 400 points scored over the last 10 seasons is the Indianapolis Colts making them the best offensive by that measure over the last decade. There average score of 407.2 points per season was substantially higher than their next closest competitor, the St. Louis Rams, who came in with an average of 396.5 points per season.
3. There were 3 teams over the course of the last 10 years who were able on average to give up less than 300 points for a season: the Miami Dolphins (296) , the Baltimore Ravens (279), and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers (273.3). Tampa Bay, despite having only one winning season in the last four still played well enough on defense to be the best overall of the decade by this measure.4. Only two teams in the last 10 years have won the Super Bowl while leading the league in scoring: the 97 Denver Broncos and the 99 St. Louis Rams. Both of these teams also played excellent defense as shown by the fact they both surrendered under 290 points for their championship season.
5. Only three teams in the last 10 years have won the Super Bowl while leading the league in defensive points allowed: the 00 Baltimore Ravens, the 02 Tampa Bay Buccaneers 03, and the New England Patriots. None of these teams had a top five offense in the season they won their championship, and none of them scored over 350 points during the season on offense.6. During the course of the last 10 years, there has overall never been a large shift in the number of points scored total by the league. While there have been a few anomaly years (in 02 and 04 scoring suddenly jumped into the 340 range per team), the total average amount of points scored per team has hung around 330 points per season over the course of the last 10 years.
7. If you take the equation used in part #1 of this series, a team should win 0 games in a season if they can manage to be outscored for the year by 285 points or approximately 18 points per game. On the other hand, a team should be win their complete schedule if they can outscore their competition for the year by 285 points or approximately 18 points per game. To be that bad would require something worse than the NFL has ever seen as no one has approached being that horrible in the last 10 years. To be that good would make a team the 99 St. Louis Rams, who won 13 games despite have a point differential of 284 points for the season (no one else came close to them in that respect).
8. The team which managed to post the worst average point differential over the last 10 years was the Arizona Cardinals at -113.8 points per season. The only competitors for their crown at over 100 points less than their opponents were the two expansion teams that did not play the whole decade (Cleveland Browns, Houston Texans). The team with the best point differential over the last team years is the Denver Broncos at an average of 84.6 point per season. There next closest competitor is barely even close with the New England Patriots finishing at 65.1 points per season.
9. When associating offense with the number of wins a team has per season there is a resulting R^2 value of .5448. When association defense with the number of wins a team has per season there is a resulting R^2 value of .489. This means that according to the last 10 years of data, there is more of an association between winning game and offense than there is winning games and defense; however, neither of the associations are very large meaning that neither offense nor defense alone is an effective predictor of team success.10. Going by the equations generated when comparing offense to wins, a team would need to score 579 points (36.2 per game) in order to win 16 games in a season. To lose 16 games it would need to score only 89 points (5.6 per game) for the year. Going by the defensive equation, a team would need to give up only 116 points (7.2 per game) in order to go undefeated. To lose every single game they would need to surrender 552 points per game. None of those values calculated high or low have been reached in the last 10 years.
So there we have it, ten interesting tidbits we can pull out of the big hunk of data that was gathered. There are many more which can be found, but those will have to be saved for another time (If I do them all now, I'll be out of a job and quiet tired). If any reader has an interesting fact related to this type of subject feel free to e-mail me at tmx117@gmail.com and if its up to par I can report it here and give you all the beautiful credit. Until then, remember when your doing synthetic division to place in zero values when the exponents are not decreasing in order by one (Yes! I managed to make my "I'm out" statement more obscure).
A cryptic preview of Monday's likely article
