Fun fact: the Buccaneers quite literally pulled off the biggest mathematical upset in NFL history yesterday. The Bucs’ win over the Saints was the first time a team 10 or more games under .500 defeated a team 10 or more games over .500.
I never bought this type of argument. I don’t doubt that there really are times when a team is demoralized or suffering through some other kind of psychological ailment that impedes their on-field performance, but I do object to the notion that we, as fans, have more than the foggiest idea of what these impediments might be, under what circumstances they apply (either generally or in a specific case), or exactly what kind of effects they tend to have.
Of course, I’m just as ignorant of these things as anyone else, so maybe resting starters really does hurt the Colts, psychologically or otherwise. I will raise two objections, however. First, more generally, past performance is no guarantee of future results. Second, to point out merely that the one time Indy won the Super Bowl they had to play through Week 17 is to ignore both relevant context for that fact and evidence which runs counter to your argument. They rested and then lost a very close playoff game to a Steelers team which played a *phenomenal *defensive game; they also rested and then lost an overtime game against a Chargers team that always gives them a lot of trouble – these might just be cases of losing close games against top-flight competition, not of being rusty. Or how about the '04 Colts, who sat their starters for virtually the entire Week 17 game, and then came out in the first playoff game and absolutely demolished a good Broncos team?
Again, I say this as someone who wishes that they’d have played for real, for mostly the same reasons as everyone else: it’s good for the fans, it’s good for the league, the playoffs aren’t the only thing that matters, and if resting has some beneficial effect on their playoff chances, it’s probably a pretty minimal gain in expectation. But still, if Bill freaking Polian thinks that resting starters gives the '09 Colts the best possible chance to win a Super Bowl, who am I to tell him I know better?
The '02ish-'05 Colts demolished the Broncos every time they played, so I’m not sure that’s indicative of anything.
You’re a fan, you can tell him you know better, you can tell him he screwed up, that is what we as fans do.
Varlos, it’s hard to quantify “momentum” and other psychological factors - but in recent years especially, there’s much to be said for teams that are peaking at the end of the season. Arizona wasn’t the best team in the NFC last year but they rode a wave of confidence and other psychological factors through the playoffs. I think the Giants would not have been the force they were in the '07 playoffs if they hadn’t played that epic game with the Pats at the end of the season, etc.
I can’t say for sure what the Colts players are thinking, but I have a hard time believing most would be okay with this. They’re fierce, natural competitors - they want to win every game even when their team is garbage and they’re 2-14. To think that they had a chance to make history, the first 19-0 season, and just chucked it away due to a pretty small chance of injury has to piss them off. I certainly would be pissed off. I can’t imagine the Colts will be playing better on division weekend limping into the playoffs on a 2 game losing streak with disgruntled, dissapointed people in the locker room compared to them coming off the third undefeated NFL regular season in history with a sense of purpose and unity.
This decision just seems bad to me from like 36 different angles.
You are arguing the Arizona Cardinals as an important example of end of season momentum? The Cardinals were terrible down the stretch and just won the division because it was even worse. They then proceeded to play much better football in the playoffs. There is no evidence in any major U.S. sport that late season performance has any effect on post season record. I wanted the Colts to go 16-0 too, but they aren’t any less likely to win a super bowl today than when they were 14-0.
You’re right, I forgot the egg they laid at New England at the end of the season. I guess I was using more generalized “hot at the right time” evidence, but that was ill considered.
Huh? The Saints were 13-1 going in to the game with the Bucs. That’s only 6 games over .500 for that point in the season.
Maybe “with at least 10 more losses than wins” vs “at least 10 more wins than losses”?
it appears that RNATB was using the baseball method of determining games above or below .500.
In baseball, if your record is 13-9, you are said to be four games over .500, despite the fact that a .500 record would actually place you at 11-11, or only 2 games below your current position. Similarly, if you’re 13-1, that’s 12 games over .500, not 6, even though the latter is a much better description of reality.
I’ve always thought it was a stupid way to describe a team’s performance, but it’s pretty standard fare in baseball.
I don’t know what you are saying here. “games over .500” means that you subtract losses from wins and take what’s left. They do it a lot in baseball and that’s how it’s done.
It makes mathematical sense and is appropriate in baseball because it gives you a good barometer for how a team is doing at any point in the season that’s easy to track. Most people can add or subtract “1” once per game and always know how their team is doing. Most cannot remember the exact w/l numbers.
Right, but it’s an idiomatic usage, not a logical, mathematical one.
Lets take two teams.
Team A: 13-1
Team B: 7-7
Team B is at .500, and Team A is 6 games ahead of Team B.
And yet team A is also, perversely, 12 games over .500.
Completely inconsistent. And it’s especially silly in baseball where Games Ahead and Games Behind are, over the course of a long season, very important numbers.
In fact, contrary to cricetus’s claim, it’s actually a bad way to do things in baseball. If i say to you, “Team A is 6 games over .500, and Team B is exactly at .500,” that implies that Team B is 6 games behind Team A. But, using the current system, Team B would, in fact, be only 3 games back. The inconsistency is silly.
Ignorance fought. Thanks.
I presonally think the inconsistency comes in the “games back” definition. If I am ten miles from you we don’t say I am five miles away, even though if we both moved toward each other at a consistent rate we could meet after five miles. “Games back” is the same thing, a team is three games back only in the sense that if they win three games and the other person loses three game then you are caught up.
The reason someone says “games over .500” to mean subtract losses from wins is that it tells you how many games they have to win to get back to even, or how many losses they could withstand and still be even. Baseball seasons being quite long, this makes more sense than it does for football.
It is also the case that the average person is so mathematically handicapped they don’t understand why using the words this way is technically wrong. 
As for the underlying issue, the fact that a team with ten or more fewer wins than losses beat a team with ten or more wins than losses for the first time ever, I’m not impressed. The chances are reduced by the fact that it cannot happen at all until game 10 of the season, and then only with a winless team vs. a lossless team. I’m imagining that the schedule doesn’t allow for more than two or maybe three such games a year, at best. And in the days of the 12-game season, it probably was a matchup that only happened a couple times a decade.
But then, by your definition, there is NO possible way to have a logical “games back” number. After all, if the team that’s ahead doesn’t lose any games, the team behind can never catch up, no matter what “games back” definition you use. Any definition of “games back” that is going to have any meaning at all must always assume that the trailing team needs to win a certain number of games and the leading team needs to lose a certain number of games.
What exactly is “inconsistent”? Whether you like the phrasing or not, it has an internal logic that is extractable from the phrasing and universally enforced. There’s nothing “inconsistent” about saying a 7-7 team is at .500 and a 13-1 team is 12 games over .500. If there is, you need to do more than simply say that one result is “perversely” what it is and actually tell me what rule is followed in the first case and not in the second, i.e., what is “inconsistent.”
The worst thing that will happen is people will have that mathematical discovery that three losses turned into wins makes a six game difference in win-loss differential.
And yet football fans, some of the stupidest people on God’s earth, seem to grasp what it means… somehow…
Hmmm… That sentence seems to remind me of something…