Been watching the penalty yardage. Last week, the teams with more penalty yardage were 10-6. The theory, in my mind, is that a team that plays on the edge will get more penalties but sometimes those risks will pay off. This week, so far, they are 8-6-1. No tie games, you say? No, but the Seahawks and Chargers tied in penalty yardage at 53. How often does one see that, especially with such a weird number.
Football Outsiders has done a bit of research on penalties and winning. Here’s an early article. The current state of their research is summarized in their FO Basics page:
I also remember an article of theirs that looked at the effect of penalties over the years (though I can’t find it now). Apparently, for a long time there was actually a small *positive *correlation between getting called for penalties and winning. 10 or 15 years ago that changed, and, as described above, there’s now a small negative correlation between penalties and wins.
Anyway, overall your theory is probably accurate.
I had no confidence the Browns would win today until they actually did. Even during the utterly dominant first quarter when it was a completely one sided game, I didn’t get excited.
This had the perfect makings for one of those “The Browns played one of the best teams in the league tough, they can hang with anyone, but ultimately came up just short” sort of games that are surprisingly frequent. You know how announcers are often pointing to win/loss stats for very close games? Good teams find a way to win, and the Browns find a way to lose.
I read something not too long ago where a former Baltimore coach said something like “The Browns will beat you up and play you tough, but just hang in there, and they’ll find a way to lose in the end”
So color me pleasantly surprised when they actually were the team to pull the 80 yard drive out of their ass during the last couple of minutes. I was sure there’d be something - a critical pass drop, a really dumb sack, something - but no, they won.
So a team that people were predicting to be 1-15 (obviously not everyone, but a couple of TV analysts predicted that) is 1-1 with a last second loss that they probably should’ve won. If they can beat crackmore and go into the bye at 2-1 that’ll be pretty amazing.
And the better they do, the more pissed I am about the Gordon thing. If this ends up being an 8-8 type season, then Gordon’s presence could’ve been the extra push needed to squeak out 10 wins.
Actually tugged at the heart strings there for a minute when they showed him crying on the sideline after that injury. I think he knew this was it. He’s always been a class act and huge (and humble) playmaker for Chicago. He’ll be missed for sure.
Tillman has been my favorite defensive player for a long long time. I really hope he’s not done. Awesome player. Awesome guy.
Looks like Tillman will be placed on IR.
Not a real shocker but very sad nonetheless. Tillman was great and underappreciated. I hope he sticks around Chicago to teach the newer guys the Peanut Punch.
Amazing how the* sports talker industry* does the same thing every year. A presumed good team has a very impressive win early and sports-talker-guy says, “they’re going to win 14 games, minimum. Seattle doesn’t play anyone who can possibly beat them until week 11.”
Yup.
Best team to worst team in The NFL is just about 10-14 points. 9-7 is not a bad season. Teams are fairly even and we don’t know which teams are good or bad until about game 4-6.
But, yea. nice start for The Panthers. Along with New Orleans, everyone’s top pick in the division being 0-2.
Would someone pleeeeeease hire Gruden to coach somewhere?
Damn the Bengals rushing attack looks great…and it should with back-to-back 2nd round picks at the position with Giovanni Bernard (A STUD, Hamlet!) and now Jeremy Hill. And it’s going to need to be studly going forward if AJ Green misses any significant time with a turf toe injury…those things can hang around and nag a player.
So now the Bengals have Mohammed Sanu, Dane Sanzenbacher, Will Clark (???) and Brandon Tate as their starting wideouts if AJ Green can’t play, and Marvin Jones is out for several weeks as it is…and so is Tyler Eifert AND Alex Smith, one of their backup TE’s…along with concussion issues with Vontaze Burfict, the NFL’s leading tackler last season, AND 1st round pick guard Kevin Zeitler, whom has a torn calf muscle and will miss significant time…Jesus, costly win against the Falcons on the offensive side of the ball.
Jermaine Gresham is going to have to stop being the invisible man as a former 1st rounder and step it up, along with Sanu. The defense should be fine.
If anyone watched the Bengals on Sunday, it was a clinic on tackling and not allowing YAC. it was actually really impressive. Also Dalton not sacked yet this season.
Remind everyone of Bernard’s yards per carry in yesterday’s game. Here, I’ll help. 90 yards (he couldn’t even get 100 yards against the bad Falcons defense) on 27 carries is … 3.3 yards per carry. And you call that studly? What is Andre Ellington’s 6.1 ypc? Christlike?
Monster night from Sproles put my fantasy team over the top for the win. Sadly, both my fantasy teams now have better records than the Saints.
WHOOOOO, PHILLY! E A G L E S, EAGLES!!
I give a big “Yo!” to all of ya. 
I went 5-0 in fantasy this week. Don’t think that’s happened before. I’m especially happy because I have AP in two leagues.
It isn’t always about YPC. And he was sharing the load with another back. How many catches did he have? Did he score a TD?
The Falcons had nine in the box for practically half the game. Defenses are keying heavily on Bernard when he’s on the field. I don’t know why, exactly, because he hasn’t been that productive even against 7 man fronts, but 'tis so. It will only get worse with AJ Green out.
I’m sticking to my “Bengals in AFC championship game” prediction, though.
Colts fan…
I think the last few seasons gave the Colts organization a false sense of where the team actually was. The Offensive line is gonna get luck killed and the defense has been at best average for more or less a decade.
What I’m getting at is I’ll take a crappy season this year if it means the front office finally does what needs to be done.
When you call someone who gets 27 carries and can’t even break 100 yards rushing a “stud”, then ypc does matter. If you’re trying to assert that he’s some kind of game changing running back, then it does matter that he hasn’t had a rush more than 15 yards despite carrying the ball 41 times.
Those are the stats of an average NFL running back, not a “stud”.
Jeremy Hill was able to average almost 5 yards per carry against the exact same defense. I suppose part of it is that they are “keying” on Bernard, but, once again, if you want to be called a “stud”, you need to be better than that.
If their defense continues to play as well as it has and they don’t have to rely on Dalton, that’s not a bad call.
This is probably it.
They Colts have won more close games (games decided by 1 TD or less) than the statistical average (which is 50/50 for most teams) over the last couple seasons. Among active QBs over the last several seasons, only Peyton Manning and Tom Brady have won such games with any sort of consistency from year to year.
It’s possible Andrew Luck is another such guy. Or it may be that the Colts close game statistics could simply be reverting to the statistical mean.
The normal thing to do is instead attribute it to Luck’s special qualities and the cohesion among the Colts to win such games. That might be true, and it certainly makes for a more interesting news story. But it might also be a statistical aberration leading to a false sense the team is better than it is. They’re still a good team in any case but maybe not as good as people hope/think.
ETA: Whatever the case, they better shore up that O-line. Otherwise JJ Watt and co are going to have at least 2 opportunities this season to tear Luck a new one.
He made some comments about this not being the end. He mentioned that he’ll be staying close to the team and be at every practice doing anything he can to help the new guys learn and help the team win. Not sure how to read that. Could be “not the end” in that he’s going to rehab and come back again, could be “not the end” in that there’s another 14+ games this season, or it could be “not the end” because his career is going to transition to coaching or something else in football.
No idea if he has the coaching gene or not, but I damn well would want to give him a shot with the Bears.