Out of the box, SB winners analysis is a waste of your time...

[NBP81]

"X elite QB has only won 1 SB in the last X years" , "X teams who won a SB in the last X years had a top 5 {whatever}"

If you find yourself using those types of arguments regularly, this post is for you. Its a boring one but I think it might save you a shitload amount of time barking up the wrong tree. While there's no doubt SB winners will almost always be strong overall teams, reality is they are not a formula to try and replicate on their own.

Whether this year's winner is the Running game + Defense juggernaut or the strong passing game, the winner of this game shouldnt mean anything to your strategy for building an NFL team.

There's simply to much noise as to who wins a Super Bowl in any given year that limiting your data to SB winners will just lead you to an inevitable rudderless conclusion. Not only will you gain no real insights into what goes into building a great football team, you will do so on such a tiny amount of data that it'll be meaningless.

Lets ignore the game related luck for a second and just use common sense. 32 teams fight for a Championship, in a perfect parity environment, each team would have a tad above 3% shot at winning a SB every year. Of course, this isnt realistic so I just took the pre season future odds to win the super bowl to get somewhat realistic numbers for the sake of this argument.

Dont go all nuts here, those numbers only serve as an example and a couple ticks up or down wont change the argument Im trying to make.

The experiment goes like this, assume you've got this great team who's odds to win the SB year in and year out are around 16%. No down season, no injuries, you've just flat out figured out the league and you're always at the top for 10 years straight. How many SBs do you expect to win during that window?

Lets flip the coin a 1000 times and see what we get...

• 33% of the time you win 1 SB during that 10 year window
• 27.9% you win 2
• 17.7% you win 0... *zero*
• 14% you win 3
• 5.8% you win 4
• 1% you win 5
• 0.1% you win 6

And this is just taking into account natural laws of probability, we're not talking about your QB getting injured or that blatant missed call in the conference champ. game that screwed you... This is just madden on easy mode with injuries turned off. 9 times out of 10, you are not even looking at the best team, you're looking at the team that flipped 3 heads in a row.

You need more data

Lets say instead you decide to go after points for and points against as the core of your analysis. If you build a great team thats a 7 point favorite on average(which pretty much amounts to a team thats got 16% odds to win the SB), you'll be more likely to get results that matter. 7 points favorites win around 75% of their games. So again running with common sense probability, if we run a 16 games season with those settings we get this:

• 21% of the time you win 12 games
• 21% 13 games
• 17% 11 games
• 15% 14 games
• 12% 10 games

Im stopping at 10 here because this is where you should make the playoffs in theory.

The real takeaway here is. The amount of data that goes into your analysis matters. SB winners give you 1 data point per year and most of the time that data point just got lucky. Notice how 60% of your points differential analysis yields 11 wins or more and close to 90% go to the playoffs. And instead of having 1 data point per year you have over 500 data points to play with.

Reality is this is just the tip, play by play is where you find the real gems but you can still get alot from game stats.

 

[Fins1971]

Good stuff. Yep, everything needs to fall in place.

 

[nick1]

Nbp is on a roll and I agree with the premise if you try to copy whatever the winner did to build their team you won’t get there. Everybody can do it differently

personally I think you need a great to elite QB and then good lines on both sides. That goes a long ways of course it’s hard to find that QB there’s only very few elites

 

[NBP81]

Nbp is on a roll and I agree with the premise if you try to copy whatever the winner did to build their team you won’t get there. Everybody can do it differently

personally I think you need a great to elite QB and then good lines on both sides. That goes a long ways of course it’s hard to find that QB there’s only very few elites

I've argued what I found about this to death, like scoring points is more important for winning than keeping your opponents from scoring points. Within the offense, passing is far ahead of running when comes to scoring points and those sort of things. Those are my views.

With this post Im trying to steer people in the right direction with their analysis. Maybe they'll come out of it with different conclusions than mine, that's actually good for conversations sake. Im guessing some are taking alot of time to go out and get stats from SB winners and might not realize how much noise they encounter doing so.

TBH this not only relevant for forum posters, the mainstream media publish these kinds of articles all the time, my guess is that they are looking for clicks, but I wouldnt be surprised if they were just flat out clueless...

 

[fansinceGWilson]

"X elite QB has only won 1 SB in the last X years" , "X teams who won a SB in the last X years had a top 5 {whatever}"

If you find yourself using those types of arguments regularly, this post is for you. Its a boring one but I think it might save you a ****load amount of time barking up the wrong tree. While there's no doubt SB winners will almost always be strong overall teams, reality is they are not a formula to try and replicate on their own.

Whether this year's winner is the Running game + Defense juggernaut or the strong passing game, the winner of this game shouldnt mean anything to your strategy for building an NFL team.

There's simply to much noise as to who wins a Super Bowl in any given year that limiting your data to SB winners will just lead you to an inevitable rudderless conclusion. Not only will you gain no real insights into what goes into building a great football team, you will do so on such a tiny amount of data that it'll be meaningless.

Lets ignore the game related luck for a second and just use common sense. 32 teams fight for a Championship, in a perfect parity environment, each team would have a tad above 3% shot at winning a SB every year. Of course, this isnt realistic so I just took the pre season future odds to win the super bowl to get somewhat realistic numbers for the sake of this argument.

Dont go all nuts here, those numbers only serve as an example and a couple ticks up or down wont change the argument Im trying to make.

The experiment goes like this, assume you've got this great team who's odds to win the SB year in and year out are around 16%. No down season, no injuries, you've just flat out figured out the league and you're always at the top for 10 years straight. How many SBs do you expect to win during that window?

Lets flip the coin a 1000 times and see what we get...

• 33% of the time you win 1 SB during that 10 year window
• 27.9% you win 2
• 17.7% you win 0... *zero*
• 14% you win 3
• 5.8% you win 4
• 1% you win 5
• 0.1% you win 6

And this is just taking into account natural laws of probability, we're not talking about your QB getting injured or that blatant missed call in the conference champ. game that screwed you... This is just madden on easy mode with injuries turned off. 9 times out of 10, you are not even looking at the best team, you're looking at the team that flipped 3 heads in a row.

You need more data

Lets say instead you decide to go after points for and points against as the core of your analysis. If you build a great team thats a 7 point favorite on average(which pretty much amounts to a team thats got 16% odds to win the SB), you'll be more likely to get results that matter. 7 points favorites win around 75% of their games. So again running with common sense probability, if we run a 16 games season with those settings we get this:

• 21% of the time you win 12 games
• 21% 13 games
• 17% 11 games
• 15% 14 games
• 12% 10 games

Im stopping at 10 here because this is where you should make the playoffs in theory.

The real takeaway here is. The amount of data that goes into your analysis matters. SB winners give you 1 data point per year and most of the time that data point just got lucky. Notice how 60% of your points differential analysis yields 11 wins or more and close to 90% go to the playoffs. And instead of having 1 data point per year you have over 500 data points to play with.

Reality is this is just the tip, play by play is where you find the real gems but you can still get alot for game stats.

Certainly not referring to me since I don't use SB winners - I use SB winners and losers. And my goal was not to find a winning strategy, but to refute those who claim 'get an elite QB and get frequent SB appearances.' Doesn't happen very often.

Now, since the discussion is SB appearances, the universe is small - two teams a year. Thus, the number of appearances by, say, Rodgers is necessary to refute 'frequent appearances. '

We agree - there are a number of factors. My goal is not to determine those 'magic' factors. In fact, my goal is to support your premise . . . There are many factors. I used 3 as examples- top 10 D, top 10 OL, top 10 scoring. None are required, but having 1 or more is approximately as common (important) as an elite QB.

And remember, the data I use to rate a D, for example, is 16 games. Hardly a single data point and more than enough to overcome luck or randomness.

I'm a little confused on the coin toss. I think teams IN the SB pass the eyeball test of top teams and, frequently the winning team. Thus, IMO, SB winners have little to do with randomness and more to do with talent. Team talent.

Once more, my goal is not to come up with a "formula," but to emphasize the need for overall team talent

 

[NBP81]

First I want to apologize if this post came off as a direct response to any of your postings. I actually like to read what you have to say, you encourage people to think about what they imply when posting and I think that's beneficial to people who have an open mind. You more than once made me question my own logic and pushed me to make sure I double check everything before making blanket statements.

but to refute those who claim 'get an elite QB and get frequent SB appearances.' Doesn't happen very often.

Getting a SB appearance is a rare occurence even for great teams, so to expect great QBs alone to have frequent appearances is unreasonable.

And remember, the data I use to rate a D, for example, is 16 games. Hardly a single data point and more than enough to overcome luck or randomness.

This is not how it works. the data point is the appearance of a team in a SB, which is the result of 2 football games, in which the actual odds of those outcomes were really close to 50/50...

I'm a little confused on the coin toss. I think teams IN the SB pass the eyeball test of top teams and, frequently the winning team. Thus, IMO, SB winners have little to do with randomness and more to do with talent. Team talent.

What happens if, in a given year, the 2 best teams in the NFL are in the AFC?
The 2nd best team in the NFL is excluded from your sample for no logical reason.

What happens if the 2 best teams in the NFL are in the same division?
Same as above and on top of that, the division winner had to win 2 games in a row to get there while the wildcard had to win 3? Your analysis wouldnt account for that.

What happens if a teams QB gets injured in the conf. final and they lose, but otherwise would have been clear favorites to win the SB?

I could go on and on like that, but I think you get the point, there's just to much noise into who makes it to a SB. You would be much better off analysing division winners, but then you would be much better off analysing all playoffs participants... Reality is, your time would be much better spent analysing what wins football games... Because in the end thats what matters the most....

What you're doing is analysing winning hands in poker and came to the conclusion that stronger hands tend to win more often at showdown... Im sorry but thats of no practical use for building a winning strategy...

 

[meatpardle]

Any kind of conclusion or inssistence on what brings success based on a single team or event is daft. There are far too many intricacies in what makes any particular team or style successful to simply say "if KC win that proves we need to focus on the passing game" or "SF winning hows that defense is that way to build success". There is never one specific key to success, rather a blend and balance of different factors, and that blend and balance will be different for every team and constantly change over time. Unlock that at the right time and a team will be successful, but finding the key is no way near as simple as trying to copy what another team has previously done.

 

[meatpardle]

TBH this not only relevant for forum posters, the mainstream media publish these kinds of articles all the time, my guess is that they are looking for clicks, but I wouldnt be surprised if they were just flat out clueless...

A little bit of column A, a little bit of column B, and a large helping of laziness.

 

[fansinceGWilson]

First I want to apologize if this post came off as a direct response to any of your postings. I actually like to read what you have to say, you encourage people to think about what they imply when posting and I think that's beneficial to people who have an open mind. You more than once made me question my own logic and pushed me to make sure I double check everything before making blanket statements.


Getting a SB appearance is a rare occurence even for great teams, so to expect great QBs alone to have frequent appearances is unreasonable.


This is not how it works. the data point is the appearance of a team in a SB, which is the result of 2 football games, in which the actual odds of those outcomes were really close to 50/50...

What happens if, in a given year, the 2 best teams in the NFL are in the AFC?
The 2nd best team in the NFL is excluded from your sample for no logical reason.

What happens if the 2 best teams in the NFL are in the same division?
Same as above and on top of that, the division winner had to win 2 games in a row to get there while the wildcard had to win 3? Your analysis wouldnt account for that.

What happens if a teams QB gets injured in the conf. final and they lose, but otherwise would have been clear favorites to win the SB?

I could go on and on like that, but I think you get the point, there's just to much noise into who makes it to a SB. You would be much better off analysing division winners, but then you would be much better off analysing all playoffs participants... Reality is, your time would be much better spent analysing what wins football games... Because in the end thats what matters the most....

What you're doing is analysing winning hands in poker and came to the conclusion that stronger hands tend to win more often at showdown... Im sorry but thats of no practical use for building a winning strategy...

The data I use is team stats over 16 games, showing a team's attributes over the season. What are common characteristics of SB teams (remember, I'm not the one limiting data to teams in the SB).
You are right, there are uncontrollable factors in any endeavor involving humans. For example, I know no way to enumerate HCs, OCs, and DCs, though we know they are important.
And, again, my goal is to offer evidence (there is no proof) SB teams excel in a number of areas AND to provide evidence an elite QB, by himself, can't guarantee FREQUENT SB appearances.
You're right again. Analyzing winning hands proves nothing. QTOH, analyzing attributes of winning players can be of value

 

[NBP81]

The data I use is team stats over 16 games, showing a team's attributes over the season. What are common characteristics of SB teams (remember, I'm not the one limiting data to teams in the SB).
You are right, there are uncontrollable factors in any endeavor involving humans. For example, I know no way to enumerate HCs, OCs, and DCs, though we know they are important.
And, again, my goal is to offer evidence (there is no proof) SB teams excel in a number of areas AND to provide evidence an elite QB, by himself, can't guarantee FREQUENT SB appearances.
You're right again. Analyzing winning hands proves nothing. QTOH, analyzing attributes of winning players can be of value

I just dont know what to tell you... You're limiting your sample to 2 teams per season who may, or may not be the actual best teams in that given season... How relevant do you expect your results to be?

 

[nick1]

I just dont know what to tell you... You're limiting your sample to 2 teams per season who may, or may not be the actual best teams in that given season... How relevant do you expect your results to be?

The formula is simple really. You need to draft well and coach well so you can develop players in your scheme. Sounds simple right? It’s not easy though

 

[FSU Truth]

My daughter is taking probability and statistics this year...I'm gonna need her to tutor me just to keep up with @NBP81

 

[NBP81]

The formula is simple really. You need to draft well and coach well so you can develop players in your scheme. Sounds simple right? It’s not easy though

I think this is pretty straight foward, I've been working on how to accomplish the draft well part. I dont want to sound arrogant but I think the ideas I brought when it comes to draft expected value are actually pretty relevant and something no one considered up to this point.

I agree that coaching might be the most important aspect of them all, Im just not going to get involved in that type of research as it is not something I think I have enough of a grasp on to really make any kind of insightful discoveries.

I stick to game theory and probabilities. I've just been incredibly bored ever since I retired from playing poker, just needed a new game to tear apart into pieces and analyse, football seems like a nice little hobby to keep me occupied.

My daughter is taking probability and statistics this year...I'm gonna need her to tutor me just to keep up with @NBP81

Your daughter's got a bright future.

Thanks for showing interest guys, I always learn new stuff doing all those little projects. I appreciate it.

 

[fansinceGWilson]

I just dont know what to tell you... You're limiting your sample to 2 teams per season who may, or may not be the actual best teams in that given season... How relevant do you expect your results to be?

Nope, I'm not limiting the data to two teams. The general opinion of some is 'elite QBs get their team to frequent SBs,' thus, the universe of that thought process is forced on me - SB teams. And, remember, my goal is to disprove elite QBs, by themselves, reach frequent SBs. I agree with you. Maybe better would be the teams with the most wins in a year, but, even then, there would be debate. 4 teams in the conference games? Same problem.

I would expect the results to be relevant. Whether 2 teams in the SB are the 'best 2' or top 5, I would expect all, say, top 5 teams to share some similar traits and all bottom 5 teams to share some similar traits. Step 1 . . . define 'top 5' and 'bottom 5.' If I get time, I'll do the work and post, but it will be a while. Nonetheless, using the two SB teams over 20 yrs, I count 25 elite QBs (I use a tight definition) of 40, 23 top 10 Ds and 3 more 11 or 12, 21 top 10 OLs with 4 more 11 or 12, and 28 of 40 in top 10 scoring. Of 40 teams, only 3 QBs have reached the SB without a top 10 D, top 10 OL, or top 10 scoring. Just my guess, but I'd bet moving to top 5 teams would not change those stats by much. Those are common for quality teams. I suspect if we could arbitrarily select the 5th best team and 5th worst team over the last 20 years, and compare their stats, the 5th best would have a better QB, better D, better OL, and higher scoring. Maybe not ALL of those traits every year, but far more frequently than the 5th worst. That's where I'm headed - top teams are better teams as a whole, not just at one position - QB.

As a stats guy, you know any endeavor involving humans is messy with endless 'what if's' and outliers, which is why debates at FH often include comments like 'yeah, but what about . . . ' There is no stat that can account for a top player returning to the team on game 10, or 'they played team x when their best two receivers were injured.' And how do I find a numeric ranking for HCs? Messy. Debatable. Let's do it this way. I think we agree the 2 SB teams aren't always the best, winning teams have multiple pieces that rank at the top, and an elite QB, by himself, is not a ticket to frequent SBs.

 

[NBP81]

my goal is to disprove elite QBs, by themselves, reach frequent SBs.

This is my whole point, you dont even need to do any research to prove your point... GREAT OVERALL TEAMS dont even make it to the SB frequently.

Maybe better would be the teams with the most wins in a year, but, even then, there would be debate. 4 teams in the conference games? Same problem.

I agree, this is why Im trying to steer people into analysing what wins football games instead of who wins seasons. Its simply too difficult to filter out the noise in the latter.

If you identify what wins football games, you gain access to much more data than simply a couple of teams per year over 20 years. You'll have 500+ data points per year to work with and be able to draw much more precise conclusions from it.

What correlates to winning%? What correlates to scoring points?, What correlates to stopping your opponents from scoring points? Whats the relationship between scoring alot of points and defensive play? Does scoring alot of points help your defense?

You can anwser all those questions with more than 500+ experiments per season, if you'd use those for your 20 seasons window, you'd have access to 10 000+ data points vs. the 40 you currently use... Which one do you think is more likely to be accurate/relevant/helpful?