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.
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?
I'm a little confused on "500+ data points." Other than that, we agree quite a bit. Even then, I think the intuitive data mirrors the exhaustive analysis . . . to a point. That is, there is no data that can or will correlate with scoring points or stopping opponents. NFL teams have millions of data points and have top stats guys and they haven't figured it out yet. IMO, the reason for that is, within reason, there are a number of ways to win consistently and fans know this without any statistical evidence. Top QB. Top D. Top HC. Top OL. Top Run game. All those can win. Even better, as we know intuitively, is a combination of factors. we've already discussed that.
A little OT, but one of my obsessions. One factor common in winning teams is the ABSENCE of bottom tier players among initial starters. Clearly, injuries affect that, but top 5 teams don't have a 63rd best OT. They have, on average, 2-4 All Pros, a few top 10 guys, and a LOT of average players. But, that's just one of too many factors.
Nonetheless, you have taken on a difficult task. I suspect there is little tight correlation in anything related to football that can be reduced to numbers since the numbers themselves are almost universally open to debate. To me, it's reasonable to say top 10 QBs are more likely to win than middle third QB, but digging to deep into the data will likely cloud that generalization. I'D be VERY interested in any data you can find on specifics of winning teams.