Titans and Broncos: A Study of Contrasting Seasons

When the NFL schedule came out last spring, a quick glance at the bye weeks showed that two of the teams off in Week Seven were the Titans and Broncos.

If we told you in the summer that one of these two teams would be 6-0 and the other would be 0-6, and then asked you to tell us who would have the winning record, we are confident that you and any other football fan would have replied, “That’s easy—the Titans will be 6-0 and the Broncos will be 0-6.”

We are sure you all know now that it was the Broncos who were 6-0 at Week Seven and the Titans who languished at 0-6.

Teams often use their bye weeks to try to make big changes, get healthy, and right a ship going in the wrong direction. Teams never want their bye to “break their momentum” when things are going right, but sometimes the bye week turns out to be a curse instead of a welcome respite.

When Week Seven arrived, it is as if someone stole all of the Broncos’ momentum and transferred it to Tennessee as a cruel joke.

So, we decided to take a look at the two teams’ seasons to date to see what the PossessionPoints stat could tell us about it. For those of you not familiar with the stat, we will give you a very brief rundown. The stat is based on, among other things, “time of possession” and points scored on a scoring drive.

We have determined significant values where we turn our indicators Green, Red, and Yellow. In a game, a team with a “Green” offense wins better than 75 percent of the time and a team with a “Green” defense wins over 80 percent of the time. We find these color indicators very useful in evaluating team defense and offense.

If you look at the Broncos’ and Titans’ charts below, you can see that they reveal some interesting things. The first six games the Broncos were pretty balanced, mostly led by their defense with four green performances, but their offense did have three green performances.

The Titans had no green performances. In fact, they had three red offensive and three red defensive performances.



Since the bye, the Broncos have been almost completely red, and their best performance was a yellow performance against the Steelers. However, the Titans seem to have found their offense with Vince Young. Their defense had its lone green performance of the year right after the bye, but it is the offense that proved to be the main factor in their recent success.

It is hard to ever say one player is responsible for winning or losing, but the Titans made a switch at QB in the bye week, and it is hard to argue with results.

We’ve been doing a lot of schedule analysis this season, and we have found that frequently in the NFL teams beat the teams they should, and their losses come at the hands of better teams. When teams go on winning or losing streaks, a look at their schedule often provides the answer as to why they are on a winning or losing run.

However, this schedule is not the case with either the Broncos or Titans.

One of the ways we have been looking at this is by looking at “Quality Wins” and “Bad Losses.” By our definition a Quality Win is a win against a team with a .500 or better record, while a Bad Loss is a loss to a team with a sub-.500 record.

When we look at the Broncos and Titans, we see that four of the Broncos' six wins were Quality Wins and two of the Titans' four wins were Quality Wins. In games where both the Titans and Broncos lost, both teams had a Bad Loss.



So we don’t think we can blame or credit the schedule maker with the success and failure of these two teams this season. You just have to blame it on some good old-fashioned fundamental football for the Broncos’ downturn and the Titans’ ascent.

With the Titans, you can certainly make the case like we did earlier that the QB switch changed their fortunes. For the Broncos, we don’t have as pat an answer. Were the Broncos just playing over their heads early in the season and now their weaknesses have caught up to them, or are they not playing to their potential now?

What would a study of these two teams be without at least a glimpse into the future? Here again there are some similarities. Both teams have to face some tough competition. The Broncos have to face the Colts, Eagles, and Giants. The Titans have to face three division leaders in the Cardinals, Colts, and Chargers (we know Broncos fans will be rooting for the Titans in this one).




The Titans' only slim hope for the playoffs is to grab a wild card, and to do this they may have to run the table. Just last year the Titans started the season 10-0; could they finish the remainder of this campaign 10-0? Nothing in the NFL is impossible, but that is a very tall order.

For the Broncos to get to that same 10-win mark, they would need to win four of their remaining six games. To PossessionPoints.com that means that the Broncos must win the three games against the Chiefs (two) and Raiders. They then must find a way to come up with one more Quality Win against the Colts, Giants, or Eagles.

There are a lot of “ifs” out there for these two teams. Both have the opportunity to make a run for the playoffs, but the Titans have a long road up and the Broncos seem to be falling downhill fast.

AFC North: Toughest Division in the NFL?

Get a group of football fans together talking about their favorite teams, comparing records and schedules, and sooner or later, someone will throw out a phrase along the lines of “Well, they play in a tougher division.”

We, at PossessionPoints.com , confess we love this discussion. We write about it as often as we can. We address this issue in the preseason , regular season, postseason, and offseason.

In past discussions, we have used our “Relative Performance Measure” (RPM) as the main talking point in the discussion. If you have been following some of our “schedule analysis ” articles this season, you know we have been looking at teams’ records vs. winning and losing teams.

So, we are going to throw some new definitions and tables at you so you are better armed with more talking points when you get into one of those “who has the toughest division” talks.

Some people will always fall back to win-loss records and that will be their sole basis for which division they believe to be the toughest. By this measure, the AFC South has the best win–loss percentage right now. But in six of the eight divisions all teams are at or above .500, and the chart below does not really make the AFC South stand out to us.



This season, we have been looking at teams’ schedules and measuring what we dub “quality wins” and “bad losses.” By our definition, a quality win is a win over an opponent with a .500 or better record, and a bad loss is a loss to a team with a sub-.500 record.

When we look at how divisions have performed by this measure, it paints quite a different picture.




The AFC North has a remarkable 10-0 record by this measure. Even though the division has the Browns with a 1-7 overall record, the Browns still do not have a “bad loss” by our definition. Here is their season record to demonstrate the point. They have no quality wins or bad losses. All seven losses came against teams with .500 or better records while their lone win was over a team with a sub-.500 record.




What we found even more remarkable than the AFC North’s 10-0 record was seeing the AFC West with the second-best Quality Win percentage. This division, with a combined record four games under .500 at 14-18, only has one bad loss and six quality wins, which is quite remarkable.

Granted, most of the quality wins belong to the Broncos (4), but it is still pretty impressive that the Broncos on their own have as many quality wins as the entire NFC East, a division frequently touted as the toughest in football.

There has been a great deal of talk about how weak some of the schedules have been so far for teams in the NFC East, but a look at our charts drove the point home. We love digging into numbers to get insights that traditional win-loss records do not provide. In fact, that is why we still look at teams and divisions with our RPM stat which provides a different angle than traditional win-loss record stats.

The RPM measure gives yet another view of which division is the toughest, and this view, quite frankly, is the one that probably agrees more with conventional wisdom. By the RPM measure, the AFC East is the strongest division by a pretty good margin, followed by the NFC East.

After these two divisions, there is a sizable drop in RPM to the three next divisions: the AFC North, the AFC South, and the NFC South, whose RPM measures are somewhat close to each other.




(These charts and others related to our 2009 schedule analysis work are available here on our site. More information on the PossessionPoints Relative Performance Measure RPM can be found in the BleacherReport Article NFL Week 2 Performance Rankings)

NFL 2009 Win – Loss Records: A Look At The Schedule Excuse

It does not seem to matter if your team has a good record or a bad record. Why? Because, fans, sportscasters and writers will point to your team’s schedule and tell you if their record is either the beneficiary of an easy schedule or the victim of a difficult one.

We are not going to belabor the point, but as of now we would say that there are only seven teams in the league who based on their schedule should be looking in the mirror and feeling especially proud or upset with themselves.

We have heard the schedule excuse relative to the Vikings, Giants and Redskins. Well, in the Redskins’ case, we hear how they have been responsible for the first win for three teams, and they have a 2-3 record to prove it. In fact, it is pointed out by various sources that they have not faced a team that has a win on their record at the time the Redskins played them.

Since PossessionPoints.com is a “data analysis” company, we decided to look at all 32 teams and the win-loss records of their opposition to date to see where everyone’s record and performance truly stacks up in relation to their schedule.

The results were interesting. Fifteen teams have played opposition whose current combined record is over .500. Of those teams, only three of them - the Patriots, Bengals and 49ers - have a winning record. None of the five currently unbeaten teams have played teams whose combined record is over .500.

That leaves seventeen teams to have played opposition whose current combined record is under .500. Of those teams, only four of them - the Jaguars, Bills, Texans and Redskins - have a losing record. None of the four currently winless teams have played a teams with a combined record below .500.

Does it sound too obvious to state that if you have played tough teams you have a tough time winning while if you play lesser teams you have a tough time losing?

The table below shows all the teams sorted by their past opponents’ winning percentage. The Lions and Browns have faced pretty tough competition, but at least the Browns’ future opponents have a sub .500 record. The Patriots, Bengals and 49ers, who we highlighted before, also face future competition with a sub .500 record. On the flip side, the going gets tough for the Giants, Eagles, Vikings, Ravens and Bears (unfortunately it’s no picnic for the Redskins either) as they all face future competition whose combined record is well above .500.

Saints Shine in FIrst Quarter of 2009 NFL

The Saints are one of the teams to start this year with a record of 4-0. At PossessionPoints.com our expectations were high for the Saints this season as we expected that they would win their division and play the Giants in the NFC championship. Nothing we have seen in the first quarter of this year makes us rethink our projection. If we were to rethink anything, it might be the expectation of the Giants as the NFC champions.

The Saints currently have the best Relative Performance Measure in the league with an RPM of 68.6. (For more details on the PossessionPoints.com RPM see the Bleacher Report article “Week 2 Performance Rankings” where we do a more through explanation of this measure).

The Saints have achieved their 4-0 record while facing teams with a combined record of 7 wins and 8 losses or a .467 winning percentage. The four teams that they have played have a combined RPM of -20. By either measure, their first-quarter schedule ranked 20th in the league.

Their schedule going forward does not look much tougher. Their future opponents have a combined record of 16 wins and 28 losses for a winning percentage of .364 which is the lowest winning percentage of any team’s future opponents’ schedule. By the RPM measure, their future opponents have a combined -96 which ranks 27th in the league.

By contrast, the Giants have played teams with a combined record of 4 wins and 12 losses (a 0.250 winning percentage) and an RPM of -103. The negative103 RPM was the easiest 4-game combination in the league. By combined record, the .250 winning percentage also ranked as the easiest in the league.

Going forward, the Giants’ future opponents have a combined 26 win - 17 loss record (0.605 winning percentage) and a combined RPM of -2. From a winning percentage point of view, that is the second toughest schedule while from an RPM point of view it is the 14th toughest.

Our outlook looks bright for the Saints. Their schedule does not look tough, and their performance has been outstanding. If they keep it up, we could easily see them playing the Giants, who are number two on our RPM chart with an RPM of 56, in the NFC championship game which was our original forecast for them.

The full Week 4 Performance Ranking chart is below:

NFL Week Two Performance Rankings

In our articles, we often refer to our “Relative Performance Measure” or (RPM) which is the statistic we use to make up our performance rankings. Unfortunately, it is impossible to explain our RPM fully in each article, but we do get questions from readers such as “What is your RPM?” and “Why is it significant?”

Since it is early in the season, and there are only two games to go on with our RPM, we thought we’d take the time here to explain what they are, and why they are significant.


What are the PossessionPoints.com RPM numbers?

This may take some time to explain, so be patient and stay with us. You won’t be sorry.

The basic PossessionPoints.com stat is an offensive measure. It is a blended stat (which means it is generated by a mathematical formula from other stats and game information). As the name implies, “time of possession of a scoring drive” and “points scored on a drive” are key components. The quarter in which the points are scored also come into play.

As an offensive measure, we have key cutoffs at 60 and 100 (From analyzing numbers, we determined that 60 and 100 were significant levels where winning percentages changed.) This is where our color codes come in.

We turn an offense “yellow” at 60 and “green” at 100. From the time that we have been keeping this stat from the 2006 season, we have noticed that a team that gets to the “green” level of offensive performance, wins better than 75 percent of the time.

The defense of a team is measured by how many PossessionPoints it allows the opponent’s offense to total. The same key cutoffs apply, but this time we start a defense “green” and turn it “yellow” at 60 and “red” at 100. A team, that keeps its opponent below 60 (Green), wins better than 80 percent of the time.

We have talked about offense and defense but haven’t mentioned RPM yet. To get a “team” measure in a game, we simply subtract their defensive PossessionPoints performance from their offensive performance. This net number can be positive or negative and has its own significance.

You’ll note the 40-point yellow range in the offensive and defensive numbers. That range has significance here also. We color the net “green” at positive 40 and “red” at negative 40. Here a green net equates to better than 90 percent winning. This net number is a single game “Performance Measure.”

Our season “Relative Performance Measure” is the average that a team has performed in all of the games they have played.


Why is the RPM significant?

This is an interesting question because different people find significance in different numbers so we will look at a couple of things. As you know, 12 teams make the playoffs each year. Based on end-of-regular-season RPM’s, eight of the top 12 RPM teams in 2006 and 2008 made the playoffs, and 10 of the top 12 in 2007 made the playoffs.

In 2006 and 2007, five of the seven teams with the lowest RPMs to make the playoffs lost their first game, and in 2008 six out of seven lost their first game. In 2008, three of the top four were in the Conference championship games, and in 2006 and 2007 it was two out of four.

Another way to look at significance is to look at a team that this season is defying the PossessionPoints stat, and is 2-0 despite a very red -66 RPM. That team is the Colts.

In 2006, the Colts went 12-4 and won the Super Bowl. They finished the regular season with an RPM of 17 which was tenth in the league. They owe it all to their offense who was first with an average 134 PossessionPoints per game. Their defense was dead last with an average of 116 PossessionPoints allowed. But they won it all.

However, if you remember, their defense came alive in the playoffs and performed to an average of just 53 PossessionPoints allowed in the Playoffs. So, there was no surprise that this new-found defensive strength coupled with their famed offense, proved to make the Colts unstoppable that year in the Playoffs.

In 2007, the Colts as a team did better in the regular season with an RPM of 29, but their offensive performance fell a little to 124 while their defense improved to 94. They went 13-3 and got a first-round playoff bye. They met the 11-5 Chargers who had the No. 2 defense that year and an RPM not far behind the Colts at 23. The Chargers’ prevailed 28-24, and the Colts were one and done in the Playoffs.

In 2008, the Colts were again 12-4 like 2006, but this time they were one of the few teams to ever make the playoffs with a negative RPM. Last season, they had a -6 RPM and had to travel to San Diego to play the Chargers in the first-round game.

The Chargers’ regular season RPM was 29. It was by no means a mismatch, but the Chargers did prevail 23-17, and the Colts were once again one and done.

We find significance in winning football games, but can a team win without following the PossessionPoints formula? Sure, it seems the Colts are trying harder than ever to prove it in 2009, but we wouldn’t count on it. More likely the Colts will take a deep breath, realize they are fortunate to be 2-0 and make fixes that will result in them performing better by our measure.


On to the Week Two Rankings:

As the season goes on and there are more weeks of data, we would stack our stat-generated “performance rankings” against any opinion-based “power rankings.” Early in the season with only two games done, many position changes for the teams are still ahead of us.

Does it surprise anyone that the Jets are on the top of the performance rankings after two weeks? The probability is that their numbers cannot stay this strong. An RPM of 100 is way more than the Patriots’ 2007 RPM of 83.

That RPM was off the charts for a full season. By comparison, last year the Steelers after the Super Bowl had the top RPM, but it was only 37. So, we have to believe the Jets will come back to the pack a bit, and the question we have to ask is that as they get reeled back in will they continue to win?

Behind the Jets are the Saints, while the Jets have been defense led (allowing only 23 PossessionPoints per game) the Saints as you probably have guessed have been offense led posting an average of 163 PossessionPoints per week.

It’s a long season, but those two teams are off to a great start. We could talk a lot more about the chart below, but we spent a great deal of space trying to answer some questions we have gotten in the past.

2009 NFL Preseason Performance Rankings

While we like to ignore most preseason records, we do take a look to see how teams measure up in our “relative performance measure” (RPM). However, similar to preseason records, YOU CAN’T READ TOO MUCH INTO THESE NUMBERS. The reason we do present them is to highlight any warning signs that teams may be exhibiting.

While these RPMs are interesting to look at and speculate about, you have to remember two things: Only three preseason games are used in generating these numbers and preseason games are not coached or even played like regular season games.

Since the RPMs are an average of just three games , a single game like the Saints thumping of the Raiders, can skew things for these two teams. The Saints vaulted to the top while the Raiders sunk to the bottom. The Saints’ RPM number of 90 is a better game average than the 2007 Patriots who had an RPM of 83 and went 16-0. At possessionpoints.com, we admit that we like the Saints a lot this season, but not that much.


It is nice to see that the preseason Saints are not doing anything to make us back off our preseason preview prediction which says that New Orleans will be a playoff team this year. But note that the Falcons are right there on the Saints’ heels in the preseason, so that could be a very interesting division to watch.

Right behind the Saints and Falcons are last year’s two Super Bowl teams: the Steelers and Cardinals. The Steelers had a full season RPM last year of just over 40 and their preseason number is very similar.

The Giants, Eagles, Texans and Packers are all teams we think could and should make the playoffs, and their RPMs are right around 0. It is not impossible for teams to get into the playoffs with an RPM that low, but when it happens typically a team loses their first playoff game. (See the article we wrote in January, Playoff Upsets – What Upsets?)

An RPM in the low, single-digit, negative numbers to an RPM that goes positive is not something to get too concerned about in the preseason from our point of view.

The opposite is true too. You’ve probably heard it a hundred times this preseason: The Lions went 4-0 last year in the and then went 0-16 in the regular season. Preseason numbers would have been misleading at best putting the Lions near the top of the chart..

So, are we concerned about the 1-2 Chargers who have a terrible -55 RPM? Yes, we are a little, To us, this might be a warning flag. We would rather see the Chargers’ RPM up there with the 0-3 Broncos. But the Chargers have started slowly in the regular season in the past and still managed to make the playoffs. Will they repeat that trend this season? Perhaps, they are getting their slow start out of the way in the preseason, so they can get into a winning frame of mind quickly in the regular season.

We hope that is the case, as they might not be able to afford being upset by the Raiders in their opener this year since they have the Ravens and Steelers as two of their next three opponents. We would hate to see them go into their early bye week with a 1-3 record especially since our preseason preview was expecting them to be 3-1 at that point.

Ain’t the preseason fun?

2009 Fantasy Football Player Lists With A Twist

It is late preseason, and if you can’t find a list ranking players for Fantasy Football then you aren’t looking too hard.

Fantasy lists vary from site to site, but possessionpoints.com likes to look at things a bit differently. Our player lists contain an “expected value” next to the player’s name. This expected value helps Fantasy participants gauge if there really is a difference between the No. 4 and No. 5 players on the list. Of course, this “expected value” is based on one particular scoring system, which we list at the end of this article for your reference. Depending on the Fantasy game you may play, this expected value may vary some, but it still gives you a relative difference between players.

When you look at most lists, look to see if they are they giving you a list for the best player next week or for the remainder of the season? Can you even tell? Fantasy can get complicated, so you have to know what your list is telling you.

Over the last three years, we have found that many Fantasy players have the most fun when they can actively manage their team. To accommodate this management need, we provide three lists for each player position: an Expected Value for Next Week, an Expected Value for the Next Four Weeks, and an Expected Value for the Remainder of the Season. We give you a sneak peak at these lists later in this article.

If you are someone who wants to set your roster and only make changes when injury or something like that forces you to, then look at the Remainder of the Season charts. You’ll have your up and down weeks, but in the end, we think the top players on this list will serve you best.

However, if you are like most Fantasy players, you will want to know what to expect from your players this week and who on your roster to sit or play. For this type of game involvement, you need the Expected Value for Next Week chart.

Four weeks into the NFL season completes a quarter of the season, so even if you only adjust your roster a few times a season, you may want to look at the next quarter of the season to see where your players stand. That’s why we have the Next Four Weeks list.

See for yourself below how the lists can vary by looking at just the top five in each player position.

Quarterbacks:


It would seem that it is hard to go wrong with any of the top five QBs for the season: Brees, Brady, Rodgers, Romo and Rivers. Tony Romo is one that we struggled with as far as any offseason adjustments. He lost a top target, Terrell Owens, but perhaps team chemistry will make the difference here.

If we had him on our fantasy team, we would keep a close eye on how he performs the first few weeks. We expect he will be with the leaders the first week, and the first 4 weeks. However, if he underperforms early, perhaps you might want to see if you can upgrade as there is a pretty good chance he will fall short of being a top five for the full season.

Running backs:



Let’s see: Adrian Peterson, Adrian Peterson and Adrian Peterson. Anybody surprised by that? Of course not, but some of the other players on our lists surprised us a bit.

DeAngelo Williams isn’t on the “Next 4 weeks” chart, mostly because he has a bye in week Four. This shows what every Fantasy player knows, and that is you have to manage carefully for bye weeks. Our full lists also highlight in what week players have byes. It looks to us that Matt Forte, Clinton Portis and Maurice Jones-Drew may have a better first quarter of the season than they will the remainder of the season.

Wide Receivers:



Larry Fitzgerald is tops on our Expected Value for the Remainder of the Season chart, but his bye in week four keeps him off the “Next 4 Weeks” chart. Greg Jennings is fifth on the season chart, and we really think the Rodgers to Jennings combination could be as potent as the Brady to Moss combination.

Calvin Johnson will be a top target for whoever is the starting QB in Detroit. However, the biggest variable with Calvin Johnson will be the Lions themselves. If, as a team, they improve over last year, then he will be a top, if not the top Fantasy receiver this year. For Calvin Johnson to become the top receiver in week one depends on whether or not the Saints have improved on defense. If in your draft you have the choice between Calvin Johnson and Larry Fitzgerald, nobody would be the least bit surprised by a selection of Fitzgerald.


Tight Ends:




Similar to the other lists, nobody will be surprised to see Witten, Gates, Clark or Gonzales on the top of these lists. Where the lists get interesting is seeing Shockey at number two for the first week. We guess we he can attribute this to the fact that the Saints open up against the Lions in Week one.

Defense / Special Teams:



Defenses that can generate turnovers and score are featured on these lists. The Ravens, Steelers and Titans all fit that description. We are a little worried that we may not have made enough adjustments to the Eagles’ defense from last season, and that they won’t live up to our expected values. They have a new defensive coordinator and have already lost their starting middle linebacker for the season. However, Asante Samuels appears primed to have a big season in the turnover department. If he can convert a few of his picks into touchdowns, the Eagles should have a top five defense.

Kickers:




Kickers are typically taken in the later rounds of the draft, and with good reason. If you get one of the good ones, there isn’t that much difference over the course of the season. So draft a top kicker, and forget about him, as long as he doesn’t get hurt, he should contribute.

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For completeness, the scoring system on which our Expected Values are based is:
Touchdown is 6 points - passing, receiving, rushing or Kick return (a passing TD the QB and receiver get 6pts. Kick return points go to player not DEF/special teams)
Passing: 0.03 points per yard passing, -3 points for an INT
Rushing: 0.1 points per yard
Other: -2 points for a fumble, 2 points for 2 Point conversion.
Kicking: 3 points for FG, +1 if over 39 yards, +0.1 point each yard over 40, 1 point for PAT, -1 point missed PAT or FG under 30 yards
Defense/special team: 6 points TD (not kickoff or punt returns), 2 points safety, 2 points INT, 2 points fumble recovery, 2 points blocked kick (FG, punt, PAT), 1 point QB sack, 12 points if No Points are allowed, -0.5 points for each point allowed.