There has to be a way, statistically, to increase the percentage at which people can predict how a team will fair for the upcoming season with an unbiased perspective. A measure that may suggest whether a team is on the rise or fall is a team’s strength of victory. By strength of victory, I am referring to “Close wins” and “Close losses” endured throughout the last season. Close wins refer to any win by 7 or less points. A close loss is the opposite. Generally, the study was conducted under the following thought:
“If one team was very fortunate one year winning a lot of close games, they may not be as fortunate the next season.”
The same goes for close losses.
If a team were to have 3 close wins and 1 close loss in a season then their net total would be 2 net close wins. I will guarantee there is some kind of pattern in the NFL. I am writing this before I have gathered the statistics and I hope that I will further be able to predict whether a team increases or decreases their win total for the upcoming season. Remember, this statistic does not mean that every team who has a net of 3 close wins will have a bad season the next. There are too many other factors that affect a team’s success. However, I’m a guy that plays percentages. If the percentages suggest that it’s incredibly more likely for a 3 close win team to fall, I’m going to believe that it’s very likely.
So, I will be gathering research from the 2004, 2005 and 2006 season to see how effective measuring close wins/losses predicts records.
From 2004-2006 here is the data I collected:
Teams coming into a season with 2 Net Close Wins the previous year saw their record get worse 10 out of 11 times (91%).
Teams coming into a season with 2 Net Close Losses the previous year saw their record get better 6 out of 10 times (60%).
Teams coming into a season with 3 Net Close Wins the previous year saw their record get worse 8 out of 10 times (80%).
Teams coming into a season with 3 Net Close Losses the previous year saw their record get better 9 out of 12 times (75%).
Teams coming into a season with 4 Net Close Wins the previous year saw their record get worse 4 out of 7 times (57%).
Teams coming into a season with 4 Net Close Losses the previous year saw their record get better 3 out of 3 times (100%).
Teams coming into a season with 5 or more Net Close Wins the previous year saw their record get worse 2 out of 3 times (66%).
Teams coming into a season with 5 or more Net Close Losses the previous year saw their record get better 4 out of 4 times (100%).
Analysis of the data:
I’m not going to post what each individual team did over the last 3 years. There was a major pattern when watching teams climb from one year to the next. What surprises me was what happened when teams had 4 Close Wins the previous season. Those cases specifically were the 2004 Seattle Seahawks, and the 2005 New England Patriots and Chicago Bears. Seattle improved from 9 wins to 13 while New England and Chicago improved their records by 2 games each.
As I was putting this together, I did discover something fairly interesting. Poor teams who finished with 4, 5, 6 wins had more Losses than wins the year before, thus making it virtually impossible to have more close wins than Losses. But when those teams had a net Close Loss of 3 or more, they improved their record in almost all cases.
In all honesty, I do trust these numbers to an extent. Next, I will list every team that had 2 or more close wins or losses in 2007 with the idea that there is a very good chance their records will follow the same patterns that I have discovered.
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