Sharknado 3: br / Never leave home without a chainsaw

Sharknado 3: br / Never leave home without a chainsaw

Schedule Analysis Page is Back

Last season we introduced our schedule analysis page. On this page we look at teams past and future opponents both by win / loss records as well as PossessionPoints RPM.

A PossessionPoints.com View of Week one 2011 Season

Week 1 produced a good start for the matchup page especially Against The Spread (ATS). For the week, we were 9-7 straight up, but we were actually better in ATS going 10-6. Our Bronze selections were 2-0 ATS and our Delaware 3-Pick was 2-1. The Season Preview picks like the Matchup picks went 9-7. The other thing to watch this season, our top 8 confidence picks were 5-3. We will be tracking and reporting on all these throughout the season.

2011 Season Preview: Cleveland Browns

AFC North – Browns
Summary:

The Browns are playing in one of the tougher conferences in the league just by virtue of having to play the Steelers and the Ravens twice. Last year they weren’t a very good PossessionPoints team with an offense that ranked 26th and a defense that ranked 23rd. Last year we had real questions about the Browns QB, this year we are pretty confident Colt McCoy is going to be the number 1 QB. Veteran Seneca Wallace looks to be the backup. McCoy is a wildcard in our view, he shows great potential but the question is will he get to top form this season. We expect some improvement but aren’t going to go wild. We are actually looking for a little bigger improvement on defense.  

2011 Season Preview: Cincinnati Bengals

AFC North – Bengals
Summary:

Last year the Bengals were an average PossessionPoints team with an offense that ranked 16th and a defense that ranked 14th. Despite these average to above average numbers the Bengals managed just a 4-12 record. We would classify this as an underperformance and we would expect some bounce back in record even if there were to be no improvement in performance. That is a good thing because with the loss of veteran quarterback Carson Palmer and wide receivers Chad Ochocinco and T.O. we are actually lowering their offensive numbers by 10%. We left their defensive performance unchanged.

2011 Season Preview: Baltimore Ravens

AFC North – Ravens
Summary:

The Ravens showed they are going to be a team to contend with every year last year. After falling back to Earth two years ago with a 9-7 playoff making record they once again had an outstanding 12-4 record. They were a good but not outstanding PossessionPoints team last season ranking 13th in offense and 10th in defense. In the past the Ravens running attack had depth, this season it appears that they will be heavily relying on Ray Rice. Yes, they picked up Ricky Williams to compliment Rice but as good as he is he is at 34 he is really getting up there in age for an NFL running back. They picked up Lee Evans at wide receiver and drafted two wide receivers so they may be stronger there but they lost Todd Heap at tight end and his contributions will be difficult to replace.  So, we lowered their offense by 5% and left their defensive performance unchanged. 

2011 Season Preview: Pittsburgh Steelers

AFC North – Steelers
Summary:

Last season we worried about the impact the suspension of Big Ben Roethlisberger might have on the team. This season we wonder if the marriage of Roethlisberger might settle the quarterback such that he once again has a super season.  Free agency and the draft did not seem to bolster the offense. So we took 5% off their offensive performance from 2010. They did draft Cameron Heyward a top defensive end with their first pick even though they are coming off a 2010 defensive performance that ranked 3rd in the league we upped their defensive performance by 5%, that would move them to 2nd this season. 

2011 Season Preview: Buffalo Bills

AFC East – Bills
 
Summary:

The Bills had a yet another season to forget last year. We projected them to have a 4-12 season and that is exactly what they had. The Bills didn’t improve much offense at all and just like 2009 they finished 2010  with the 28th ranked offense as measured by the PossessionPoints stat. They averaged just 70 Offensive PossessionPoints (PosPts) per game in 2010 which was dead on the 10% positive adjustment we gave them in last year’s issue. That level is still well below the 83 PosPts they averaged in 2008. (For those less familiar with PosPts, in a game we turn a team’s offensive effort “green” when they go over 100 PosPts. At the 100 PosPts level a team wins 75% of the time). While the Bills’ offense moved in the right direction last season it still has a long way to go. 

2011 Season Preview: Miami Dolphins

AFC East – Dolphins

Summary:

Last year we projected the Dolphins would have good season but still miss the playoffs. We were half right, they missed the playoffs but their 2010 season can be best classified as average as went 7-9 for the second year in a row. This year they have a slightly tougher than average schedule with the 12th toughest schedule by the PossessionPoints (10th toughest by the classic method). Their 2010 PossessionPoints performances had them with the 20th ranked offense and 13th best defense. Getting their offense back on track and continuing to improve their defense will be key to 2011. We went out on a limb some and adjusted their offense up 10% and their defense 5%. 

2011 Season Preview: NY Jets

Continuing with the 32 team by team preview and projections.


AFC East – Jets
Summary:

Last year, we thought “the progression of Mark Sanchez and the Jets offense” would improve so we adjusted their offense up and projected a 12-4 record. The second year of Sanchez was an improvement but not quite as much as we thought so they got to 11-5. Not a bad projection overall. There is still room for Sanchez and the Jets offense to improve further and we are forecasting just that.  In 2010 the Sanchez-led offense ranked 17th in the league, and the defense ranked 8th in the league as measured by the PossessionPoints stat. Their quest for the Super Bowl fell short for the second year in a row, and Rex Ryan made it very clear he was not happy with just playing in January, he was looking to get to that big game in February.

Patriots Poised To Take AFC East Title

Each preseason PossessionPoints forecasts how each team will do in the upcoming season based on our stat from the prior season and adjustments we make to it for all teams. This year since we converted PossessionPoints.com to a free site we are making the preview available team by team on this site. In each writeup we look at our forecast and then an optimistic and pessimistic scenario. 

Patriots

Summary:

Another year, another season we think the Patriots are the team to beat in the AFC East. Tom Brady’s knee injury is now becoming a distant memory and there is no need to question his durability.  Could the Patriots make another run at an unbeaten season? While unlikely, is not impossible. We have pointed out in the past that the Patriots’ coaching staff is a real strength, and they have a true talent when it comes to rebuilding the roster and assistant coaching staff to maintain a high level of play. There never seems to be a question about chemistry or how player X will blend with this team. But this year may be a real test of that with the addition of Chad Ochocinco and Albert Haynesworth. This season, on the adjustment front, we went very conservative with the Patriots. The defense matured nicely last season and if Haynesworth is even close to the player he was with the Titans the defense will definitely improve. So we adjusted the offense and the defense up by 5%. With these adjustments for the Patriots, the computer produced a projected 14-2 record and well positioned to make another run at the Super Bowl. 

Pre-Season Begins Tonight

NFL Preseason Kicks Off Tonight

We had our doubts as the labor negotiations dragged out this summer, but the NFL Preseason starts tonight on schedule. The only casualty was the Hall Of Fame game.

PossessionPoints.com is ready for the start with a big announcement, the site has been converted to a "free" site this season. You still need a login ID to get access to all of the game by game data but you can register and get that login for free. Giving us your e-mail is part of that sign-up, but you will only get e-mail from us as we don't give away or sell our e-mail lists. And you won't even get that much e-mail from PossessionPoints. Twice per week is our standard amount--once to send you our newsletter and the other to tell you when our Match-up page has been posted.

NFL Playoff Picture: Eighteen NFL Teams Control Their Own Destiny

Every year as the NFL season moves toward weeks 16 and 17, the media and fans alike bemoan the practice of “good” teams resting starters for the playoffs and not putting out an effort in the final weeks of the season. Well, it looks like this year is going to be very different. We did some peeking ahead at remaining schedules, and projected some win – loss numbers, and it looks to us as if there will be huge games in the final weeks. In fact, we only see one or two teams that perhaps can take the final week off.

PossessionPointsPprojections Prove True

This week, PossessionPoints.com went 4-0 straight up in the NFL playoffs and 3-1 ATS. The only loss ATS was between the Colts and the Ravens because we thought the Ravens would give Indianapolis a little more run for their money.

Dear John (Mara): Your New York Giants Aren't That Bad

(An Open Letter to Giants’ Owner John Mara)
Earlier this week you expressed your displeasure with the Giants season performance, and you “vowed to make changes.”

You are quoted as saying “I am disappointed in everybody, in everything. I’m unhappy with everyone. It’s just not acceptable to perform like that. There are 8-8 seasons and there are 8-8 seasons, but this one felt more like 2-14 to me.”

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.”

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.

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.