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New York’s DVOA Streakby Aaron Schatz Now that we’re down to just two conference champions, there’s no point in doing a whole table of “postseason weighted DVOA” with all 32 teams. The Patriots and Giants are the only teams worth talking about, and besides, the weighted DVOA for the Giants still looks ridiculous because they were so mediocre from Week 10 through Week 16. So let’s talk about the Giants and the Patriots — well, mostly the Giants. First, here are the ratings for the conference championships.
Many readers have asked for VOA as well, without opponent adjustments. Here you go, although the adjustment for “fumble luck” remains.
We know the Giants are playing better now than they did before Week 17, but we’re still left with the question of how many weeks are worth using to judge the Giants when we look at matchups for the Super Bowl. Does every single game before Week 17 no longer count? Is four games really enough to judge a team? If we want to also look at games before Week 17, how many should “count,” and how important are they relative to the last four games? There’s really no clear answer here. As an experiment, however, let’s look at just the last four weeks of the season. Now, we’re left with one other issue here, which is that the opponent adjustments are based solely on the regular season. New England’s performance in Week 17 is being judged as if they played a Giants team that was completely average — but we think the Giants are much better than that now. So I’ve gone back and re-done opponent adjustments (for all 32 teams) so they now include every game from Weeks 1-20, rather than just Weeks 1-17. So, with that in mind, here are the DVOA ratings for New England and New York only over the last four weeks: Four games for the Giants, and three games for the Patriots.
Yes, that’s correct. The Patriots have a higher DVOA rating than the Giants even if we only measure the past four weeks. It’s really not statistically significant, but the difference becomes more substantial if we take out the opponent adjustments, which are still heavily rewarding the Giants for the very act of staying in the game with the Patriots.
None of this is meant to belittle the accomplishment of the Giants over the past four weeks. They’ve done something extremely rare: put up four straight games with a DVOA rating over 40%. Here is a table showing every team that has a streak of four or more games with a DVOA over 40%, along with the average rating over the streak, and the rating for each game.
One of these accomplishments sure stands out, doesn’t it? Of course, since Week 13 the Patriots have fewer games over 40% (three) than the Giants do — but two of those three games happen to be the Patriots’ two postseason wins. Notice who else shows up on our list of teams with four straight games over 40%? Hey, it’s the 2006 Giants. These wins came primarily against poor teams (they beat Washington, Atlanta, Dallas, and Tampa Bay) but after opponent adjustments, the streak is awfully impressive. What happened to this “hottest team in the NFL” after Week 8? They followed their four-game win streak with a four-game losing streak and ended the year 8-8. Whoops. If we loosen our restrictions to look at three-game streaks, we’ll find other teams that went on surprising late-season runs but didn’t finish up with a Super Bowl title. The 2002 Jets are a good example. The Jets snuck into the playoffs at 9-7 by winning their last two games 30-17 over New England (DVOA: 46%) and 42-17 over Green Bay (DVOA: 78%). In the first round of the playoffs, they annihilated Indianapolis by the ridiculous score of 41-0, which had a one-game DVOA of 130%. The streak isn’t as long as the Giants’ streak, but the wins are far more dominant. What happened to the Jets in the divisional round? Oakland 30, New York 10. There’s one other question about the Giants: Should we have seen this coming, either objectively or subjectively? Objectively, I don’t really see the evidence. There have been plenty of comments in our discussion threads, saying that the Giants’ postseason run shows a major flaw in our DVOA formula. None of these comments, as far as I can tell, give any suggestions that would improve things. Any change that is intended to raise the Giants’ rating for the 2007 regular season has to work for every other team since 1996. If we really want to use this to improve the ratings, we need to find other teams that had the same markers and were also underrated by the formula. I’m all about the suggestions, and I’m always looking to make the ratings more accurate, but comments that say “The Giants totally prove DVOA sucks” don’t really get us anywhere. (As an aside, people around the Interwebs do seem to have an awfully hard time telling the difference between hardcore statistical analysis of the regular season and subjective preseason predictions that are meant to be somewhat pithy.) Subjectively, there seems to be a general meme in the press that the Giants really had a great passing game all along, they just needed to cut down on the mistakes. This is a fun bit of 20-20 hindsight, but to how many other mediocre offenses would this statement also apply? Isn’t that exactly what happened to the Washington Redskins after Todd Collins came in to replace Jason Campbell at quarterback? How did that work out come playoff time? Don’t the Arizona Cardinals have the talent to become a top offense “if they just cut down on the mistakes?” How about the Chicago Bears? The other popular idea is that a team’s performance on the road means a lot more than their performance at home, and the Giants were 7-1 on the road during the regular season. As I explained a week ago, that didn’t really do much for the 2001 New York Jets. The Giants have been outstanding for the past four weeks. They are going to go into Arizona and make a game of this thing, no doubt about it. But nothing the Giants have done over the past four weeks invalidates the idea that they were a mediocre, overrated team from Week 1 through Week 16. 153 Comments » | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
I think DVOA is fine, as is. People just need to accept the fact that a somewhat “average” team through the regular season can catch on fire in the playoffs.
Colts defense last year, Steelers team the year before…
The only difference is the Giants won’t win the Super Bowl, because I’m a Patriots fan and refuse to accept that possibility.
“I reject your reality, and substitute my own.”
:: Cyrus — 1/23/2008 @ 2:52 pm
I don’t think we can even be sure the Giants will make a game out of it.
:: John Morgan — 1/23/2008 @ 2:54 pm
“Any change that is intended to raise the Giants’ rating for the 2007 regular season has to work for every other team since 1996.”
Isn’t that a mis-statement? It really has to work for the majority of the teams to make the system more accurate as a whole, not all of the teams.
Aaron, don’t be so defensive. If people still can’t understand the concept that a model like DVOA can’t be 100% predictive, they never will.
:: Gil — 1/23/2008 @ 2:55 pm
DVOA is fine - I’ve “monitored” it over the past two/three years and seriously believe in the numbers you’re putting out. Anyone who tries to use unsubstantiated reasonings to dismiss DVOA either doesn’t understand it or can’t beleive a statistical model can be this accurate.
Haven’t read much about it but the fact that Shockey has been out the past what, 5 games, which seems to have settled the offense and let Eli have the reigns if you will.
With the “right” person in the huddle calling the plays and not mucking around with the balance of the team seems to be a good thing with this QB.
Loss of Shockey = Giants winning #42?
If that’s the case and if I were Shockey, I’d be worried…
:: Brandon — 1/23/2008 @ 3:02 pm
External validity is a bcomplex…
:: pat on the back — 1/23/2008 @ 3:02 pm
I think your chart exemplifies exactly what I have been saying about the Giants.
*Two* such streaks over the past two seasons? Perhaps one such streak would be fluky, but two?
They have it in them to be a good, good team. Why they aren’t consistently is very frustrating.
:: Gerry — 1/23/2008 @ 3:03 pm
To believe in a close DVOA between the Giants and Patriots since week 17, you need to believe that the Giants have changed their nature since week 16, that the Patriots have changed since week 16, and that the Cowboys, Packers, Buccaneers, Jaguars, and Chargers have not changed. Otherwise using season-long opponent adjustments combined with 3-4 game DVOAs doesn’t make a ton of sense.
Teams do change. Players get injured or heal. QBs learn new skills and gain confidence. Coaches abandon weak schemes. It’s plausible enough to make the game interesting.
Here’s wishing the Giants a good game, as good as week 17.
And may the best team (ever) win.
:: nat — 1/23/2008 @ 3:20 pm
re 6:
Interestingly, at the end of regualar season, the Giants had really low variance. So they didn’t really show the ability to play great this year. Personally, I think the secondary has been playing way over their heads the past few weeks, and I just hope they continue to do so for one more game.
Plus, Eli has actually played how Giants must have expected when they traded for him.
:: Tom D — 1/23/2008 @ 3:26 pm
While I understand you are somewhat defensive about the Giants disproving all your mathematical calculations, what you simply cannot measure is, for lack of a better word, heart. The human spirit defies any statistical analysis.
As for the Giants’ 2006 collapse that you refer to, how exactly do the massive injuries that team suffered reflect in the DVOA? I don’t know if they do or if they don’t. If you remove the Giants’ starting defensive line from play, then the players remaining obviviously still have to complete the schedule, but their lesser talent and quality are obviously reflected in the statistics. So, until you can come up with some individual metric that accounts for injury and inexperience you will always have some difficulty reconciling reality with your statistics.
:: jerry — 1/23/2008 @ 3:39 pm
Who is this “Patriots” you speak of? Bah! Never heard of ‘em.
:: Cosmos — 1/23/2008 @ 3:42 pm
i want you guys to make money, but if this is what comes of it - i don’t know.
just let the idiot chorus sing and keep doing what you’re doing. eli manning has become a new person and the giants got a lot better. they were OK before the new eli, they are good afterwards. exactly how does that reflect poorly on dvoa, etc.?
just let it go, a-man.
:: karl, miami — 1/23/2008 @ 3:47 pm
i’m saying ignore the idiots
:: karl, miami — 1/23/2008 @ 3:48 pm
Can’t we just live with the fact that NFL football with all of its injuries, constantly shifting player roles and other largely undetectable human variables is patently unpredictable, period? Throw in the fact that you have a limited 16-game schedule to judge a team by, and you have a mess on your hands for the purposes of hard and fast analysis.
I’m absolutely fine with a system like DVOA which measures in realistic terms the quality of a team’s individual departments in the recent past, but quite frankly, I wouldn’t take the numbers to Vegas. Not that I know of any such system, but when we’re left to contemplate whether the “real” Giants are the 4-game, 8-game, 16-game or 18-game variant, let’s face it, we just don’t have much of a clue as to when/where/how a team eventually comes to gel. There’s just not enough constancy in any area, as you might have in a sport such as baseball. That should be the standard disclaimer– “past performance is no indicator of future success”.
:: GlennW — 1/23/2008 @ 4:01 pm
Comment number nine is a very good example of the problem.
The issue here is not being defensive about the Giants defying the math. Yawn, who cares. Upsets make sports fun. The issue here is “should we have seen this was coming, and if so why, and what can we learn for the future?”
Now, if someone had told you on January 1 that one of the four wild card teams would make a run all the way to the Super Bowl thanks to heart and the power of emotion, which team would you have picked?
Anybody who does not answer “Washington” is lying. The Giants’ improvement in “heart” was just as unpredictable as their improvement in turnover margin. So that doesn’t help us figure out how we can better predict which teams will make the Super Bowl in future seasons.
:: Aaron Schatz — 1/23/2008 @ 4:02 pm
I think that the giants have significantly improved. What I think most people are complaining about is not DVOA’s output of the regular season giants being an average team over the whole season, but rather that you implicitly assume that team’s “quality” stays the same and therefore you can use the entire season DVOA to declare a huge mismatch in a playoff game.
:: Dan — 1/23/2008 @ 4:06 pm
RE: GIANTS and DVOA: The DVOA seems to work fine. So it didn’t predict the Giant’s run, who cares? They are who we thought they are! A mediocre team with a mediocre QB. It just so happens that they are playing way “above the rim” right now (sorry for the mixed metaphor, but I have wanted to use that phrase for years).
RE: #9: Heart and human spirit? That is a bit simplistic. Heart and human spirit will help a team be better, but not demonstratively better. As many have pointed out, the reason for their recent improvement is probably a combination of other teams falling off at the end of the season/playoffs and the lack of Shockey (big distraction to Eli even if I do like the guy alot).
:: erik fast — 1/23/2008 @ 4:09 pm
> To believe in a close DVOA between the Giants and Patriots since week 17, you need to believe that the Giants have changed their nature since week 16, that the Patriots have changed since week 16
Good point. Never mind the Giants; the Patriots are a substantially different team than they were at midseason, especially on defense (the dropoff on defense being more significant considering the weather changes and the associated but expected decrease in offense). I know this sounds kind of strange when you’re talking about a dominant 18-0 team, but I sense that the Patriots are almost staggering to the finish line (again, relatively speaking) and would be more than thrilled to come away with a nail-biting win in the Super Bowl. The Pats have still been great towards the end of the season but they’ve been dodging bullets for the past two months.
:: GlennW — 1/23/2008 @ 4:13 pm
One of my pet peeves about this talk about the Giants is the notion that they were 7-1 “on the road” in the regular season. They were 6-1 “on the road” as the term is commonly used and 1-0 on a neutral field.
Although it’s unlikely that they would have lost to the Dolphins in Miami, they didn’t play there. Playing at another team’s home is harder than playing on a neutral field.
Twice in this three-season run of making the playoffs the schedule makers have helped out the Giants, once by giving them an extra home game (and one less road game) and once by giving them one less road game. Would they have made the playoffs anyhow both seasons? Maybe, perhaps probably, but that doesn’t change the fact that they have had an easier schedule over the last three years than any team.
:: mrh — 1/23/2008 @ 4:18 pm
Dude did you read the second half of comment nine? Because it would answer your question about what happened to the hottest team in the NFL in 2006 after week 8.
:: jd — 1/23/2008 @ 4:19 pm
9 - Yes, and it’s precisely because “heart” and “desire” and “moxie” et al are immeasurable that there isn’t any point bringing them up. The discussion can only descend into breast-beating and nauseating exchanges of unfounded insult.
That’s not to say the Giants haven’t shown “heart”; they are clearly on the same page. The surprise is really that this is happening to a team run by Coughlin and Gilbride, who have a reputation for being, let’s say, stubborn, and were reported to be losing the players as early as week two (or, if you prefer, towards the end of last season).
:: ammek — 1/23/2008 @ 4:19 pm
> The issue here is “should we have seen this was coming, and if so why, and what can we learn for the future?”
I would humbly submit that the answer is no, forget it, and don’t expend any energy in trying to figure it out. No system is ever going to predict the postseasons of the 2003 Panthers, 2005 Steelers, 2007 Giants et al. As I understand it you’re very much in the “tweak” stage with DVOA, and teams like the Giants represent sea changes which simply will not compute, at least not without a hammer and tongs…
:: GlennW — 1/23/2008 @ 4:21 pm
I guess Dow Theory applies to football:
Trends exist until definitive signals prove that they have ended.
The Giants’ trend was still in effect, and there were no definitive signals to prove that it ended, so they kept winning. Easy enough. The hard part can be identifying the signals.
:: footballprofessor — 1/23/2008 @ 4:26 pm
The reason everyone is jumping all over this is that first your writers made absolutely idiotic predictions about how the giants would only win 2 games this year based on nothing other than a heartfelt dislike of Coughlin and Eli Manning. Honestly reading the off-season and pre-season Giants coverage on this website made me wonder if Coughlin stole your lunch money or something. Second you guys described the Giants - Bucs playoff game as a huge mismatch favoring the Bucs, which based on your regular season stats may have been true but based on talent level was a ridiculous statement. The Giants have drafted well the past few years and have also done well with free agents and other pickups. They are a talented team. The fact is the Giants play a bunch of talented first and second year guys who got better as the season went along and they were getting used to new offensive and defensive coordinators. Then the emergence of Bradshaw, the loss of Shockey and the return from injury of Steve Smith (who you guys described as merely a system guy in your book) gave Eli the opportunity to start reaching his potential. Basically a young talented team is peaking at the right time. And you guys completely missed it because all you care about is how they played two months ago.
:: jd — 1/23/2008 @ 4:39 pm
I think that the only way to determine exactly how much the Giants have improved is to do a play by play look at each of their drives (both on offense and defense).
It seems to me like there were several key plays that kept drives alive or gave them large chunks of yardage. It feels less like “they were teh awesum!” and more like they were very fortunate at given points during the past 2 games. Penalties moving them into scoring range, etc.
The team has clearly improved, but aside from the game vs NE at the end of the season there were no statistical indicators that I could see that would point to this sort of turnaround. I say this as a Giants fan who watched almost every game of the year live, and re-watched several more.
They looked bad versus WAS and while they won versus an inferior BUF team, they didn’t look great while doing so. The weather was a factor in both games, I admit, but regardless; the team should adapt to the conditions.
:: wbenetti — 1/23/2008 @ 4:43 pm
As a Giants fan, as well as a devoted reader and believer in DVOA, I’ll vote with those that say no adjustments should be made for this season’s Giants team. DVOA’s assessment of the team’s performance those first 16 weeks was fair. I watched every minute of every game and never could’ve seen these last 4 weeks coming. How is one supposed to predict Eli will suddenly start playing better? If his improvement is a result of better playcalling, how is one supposed to predict Gilbride will suddenly stop being a dunce? What are the odds that at the same time things abruptly click into place for Eli, it happens to Corey Webster as well (If indeed things have clicked into place for both of them and this isn’t a fluke)? All I can say is they are playing like a different team right now, and I’m extremely thankful. I can only hope the sudden improvement carries over to next season the way Indianapolis’ defensive transformation in last year’s playoffs carried over to this season.
:: JQM — 1/23/2008 @ 4:50 pm
You’re almost always going to have outliers in a statistical analysis. While you can usually refine models, it’s rare to discover “hidden” variables that allow it to account for a few extreme outliers while still accurately accounting for the bulk of the variance. Anyway, if your model was perfect (which it never can be), you’d always know who is “best” and who would win and that would be pretty boring. The fact is that the Giants have been a different team lately, but there is very likely no objective quantifiable variable(s) that you could add to the model that would have predicted this dramatic change.
:: Bele — 1/23/2008 @ 4:54 pm
I know it’s usually a stupid idea to compare teams from different sports, but with all this talk of how the Giants are “on fire” and how they’re going to play a great game in the Super Bowl (”no doubt about it”), I can’t help thinking back to last fall, when a couple of my friends said that I was “CRAZY” for predicting a Red Sox sweep vs. the “red hot” Rockies.
:: MC2 — 1/23/2008 @ 4:55 pm
I think what explains the NYGs this year is this: They are a cold weather team, but not a bad weather team. They played their worst when there was wind, rain or both. When it’s just cold, they are usually the bigger, tougher team. I think you can throw out two games, MIN and TB. MIN was just a bad game that happens to teams, TB was against the most overrated team of the ‘07 season.
:: Otis Taylor 89 — 1/23/2008 @ 5:00 pm
Wait, wait. So, I don’t really care about “could we have seen this coming?” etc., blah, blah, blah.
The interesting thing from this article to me isn’t “could we have seen this coming.” It’s “The Giants have played at the same level as the Patriots since Week 17.”
The “without opponent adjustments..” part I don’t really agree with - the best way to remove the effect from being boosted by playing New England close is to remove the New England game.
NE, Divisional: 73%
NE, Championship: 41%
NYG, Wild Card: 55%
NYG, Divisional: 46%
NYG, Championship: 48%
Obviously, New England’s going to be better, due to the Jacksonville game, but it’s not a lot, and wow the Giants have become suddenly consistent at performing at a 40-50% DVOA level.
I actually think the top end of DVOA is probably a little artificially spread out - in all ranking systems, it usually is due to the fact that you can only test teams against each other - so the Giants performing anywhere near the vicinity of what the Patriots have been playing at for most of the year really makes me think they might have a shot at it.
Then again, I don’t know why I would think they wouldn’t - New England’s never won a Super Bowl by more than 3 points.
:: Pat — 1/23/2008 @ 5:02 pm
#18 Are you arguing that the Giants winning 10 games (9 by your standards) on the road isn’t significant, but that playing 2 less road games in 3 years gives them an enormous advantage over the rest of the league? I agree that the Giants road record is close to meaningless, and has been way overhyped. I also believe that if you use opponents’ DVOA or winning percentage, you’ll see their schedule wasn’t even close to the easiest in the league over the past 3 years.
:: JQM — 1/23/2008 @ 5:07 pm
> You’re almost always going to have outliers in a statistical analysis.
I think the biggest problem I’ve had with statistical analysis of sports in general (and the same problem I’ve had with baseball sabermetrics, although to a lesser extent) is the implied precision ascribed to the system. Typically I’ve found that this assumed precision is more a misapplication by the users of the system, not of its creators, who generally have a better understanding of the underlying probabilities involved.
With football teams operating in a complex system but only over 16 regular season games, we’re talking about large margins of error being inherent, and that should be well understood going in. I’m not even sure that the Giants are a major “outlier”, as opposed to a nominal one which has only been bumped up a deviation or so over the past four games.
:: GlennW — 1/23/2008 @ 5:11 pm
It amazes me that Green Bay made it into overtime.
:: Will Allen — 1/23/2008 @ 5:19 pm
Just to clear up any misperceptions regarding what the FO statistical model projected for the Giants before the season, here it is, from PFP 2007.
Mean projection: 7 wins
0-4 wins: 14%
5-6 wins: 29%
7-8 wins: 31%
9-10 wins: 19%
11-16 wins: 6%
:: Will Allen — 1/23/2008 @ 5:30 pm
I see what’s happening. Aaron’s trying to rile up the Giants fans in order to invoke the FOMBC…
re: 24
“I think that the only way to determine exactly how much the Giants have improved is to do a play by play look at each of their drives (both on offense and defense).”
Is my sarcasm meter broken?
:: Sergio — 1/23/2008 @ 5:32 pm
> It amazes me that Green Bay made it into overtime.
This is an example of DVOA being a superior measure of performance to the final score (but then again simply your eyes would have told you this). Green Bay hit on one exceptionally long TD play, had another TD set up by a long kick return and a major penalty, and had their final FG created from a recovered fumble on a Giants’ INT return. Meanwhile in between fumbles the Giants were missing makeable FGs. The Packers were absolutely atrocious in the second half especially…
:: GlennW — 1/23/2008 @ 5:35 pm
I’m a Pats fan. That has nothing to do with the following assessment:
I cannot see any way the Giants win.
:: sippican — 1/23/2008 @ 5:39 pm
> I cannot see any way the Giants win.
Well, the evidence to the contrary here would be the 38-35 result in a game in which the Giants committed the only turnover as well as the serious breakdown in coverage on the long Moss TD. I’m not convinced that we’ll see something like this game again, but at least we did once, so we know it’s remotely possible. The counter would be “well, that was a regular season game and the Patriots weren’t really fully prepared or motivated”, but that’s not the kind of game I saw.
:: GlennW — 1/23/2008 @ 5:45 pm
Re: 33
So according to the official FO predictions, the Outsiders said the Giants had a better chance of winning 9-10 games than winning 0-4 games, and a better chance of winning 7-8 games than winning 5-6 games.
I would never have thought that from reading the comments Giants fans have posted here about the FO predictions.
:: The McNabb Bowl Game Anomaly — 1/23/2008 @ 5:52 pm
I can see the Giants winning. I thought the Patriots could win in 2001, also. I don’t think their chances are great, but they can win. I gave the Patriots a 35% chance of winning SB 36. I’d give the Giants a 25% chance of winning SB 42.
:: Scott de B. — 1/23/2008 @ 5:54 pm
#38: Yeah, it’s amazing how so many Giants fans ascribe a preseason comment by one of the writers to all of the writers. After all, one writer can be biased for or against a team, right? DVOA is the only ‘unbiased’ prediction the site has. Everything else is subjective.
The “one writer” was Bill Barnwell.
He’s a Giants fan.
:: Pat — 1/23/2008 @ 5:58 pm
#38:
It wasn’t so much the actual numbers as Aaron’s preseason prediction that the Giants would undergo a total meltdown and get the #1 pick in the draft. That’s really where most of this crap is coming from, I fear.
:: ChrisFromNJ — 1/23/2008 @ 5:58 pm
I agree that the Giants can win. This does not seem to be a mismatch on the order of Bears-Patriots or 49ers-Chargers. The close game in week 17 seems to bear that out, and the general perception that the Giants are not huge underdogs is seen in the 12-point line for the superbowl (remember, the line on the Niners-Charges superbowl was 26 and the Niners pounded the Chargers in the regular season!).
Does anyone have the DVOAs for the Patriots-Giants game in week 17? I can’t seem to find them (or rather, I can’t find the Pats’ DVOA), and those results may be helpful in this disucssion.
:: Dr. Wayne Pitcher — 1/23/2008 @ 6:03 pm
> Does anyone have the DVOAs for the Patriots-Giants game in week 17? I can’t seem to find them (or rather, I can’t find the Pats’ DVOA), and those results may be helpful in this disucssion.
I’d be more interested in straight VOA, just to quantify how the game was played head-to-head, as that’s all that matters now. I’m assuming the Giants outfared the Patriots in DVOA, given the system-perceived quality of opponent.
:: GlennW — 1/23/2008 @ 6:07 pm
The reason for the Giants secondary playing better than the regular season is mosly due to Corey Webster, he was a second round pick and it usually takes a couple of years for dbs to “get it” it just so happens that he “got it” starting in week 16 against Buffalo.
Same for Eli, if you compare Eli and Rivers, it took them 4 years to “get it”, and they are both playing better. I read somewhere that the qb class of 04 is ahead of other qb classes in term of playoff wins. So 4 years seems to be the floor for reaching potential.
Somebody says that The Giants are a mediocre team with a nediocre qb playing above the rim, why can’t we turn it around, they are a good team with a good qb who were underachieving during the season. This is a team that went to the playoffs 3 straight years and without massive injuries could have beaten the Eagles in the first round playoffs last year, they lost by a last minute fg, and guess who took them the length of the field to tie the game? You got it, their mediocre qb.
The question is how do you model that?
Your modeling has to account for reaching potential, a cb needs a couple of years, a receiver needs a couple of years, a qb needs 4 years. And that is especially true for young teams and the Giants are the third youngest team in the NFL.
Young teams are more prone to being inconsistent than veteran teams, and that maybe what your model is missing.
My 2 cents.
:: Aatrouss — 1/23/2008 @ 6:34 pm
“Yes, that’s correct. The Patriots have a higher DVOA rating than the Giants even if we only measure the past four weeks. It’s really not statistically significant, …”
Whoa there. If you set a level of statistical significance, and your test doesn’t reach it, then you cannot say that one value is higher. That’s the whole point of the test and the significance value. If you live by the test, you need to die by it. If you actually did a statistical test of the hypothesis that the Patriots’ 44% is larger than the Giants’ 43%, and it came back negative, than 44 is not larger than 43 - they are effectively the same.
:: MarkB — 1/23/2008 @ 6:48 pm
Re #38
You need to return to the preseason subjective predictions from FO.com to understand the context of more recent criticisms from Giants fans here.
Giants fans, by and large, cried foul at the FO.com writing staff becaues they abandoned their own statistics in favor of subjective analysis. When ranking the units in the NFL, they threw out their statistics in favor of media talking points like “Petitigout left, the Giants have no LT, the #2 OL from last year is now the #25 OL in the NFL”.
Instead of looking at their DVOA-fueled predictions for wins this season — which pegged the Giants as, for all intents and purposes, an 8-8 football team — the writing staff predicted a god awful season. The head writer declared them the worst team in the NFL. Many other writers foresaw a 5-6 win season max.
Giants fans, contrary to the perception some “DVOA is Religion, It Never Fails” fanatics created, were not irrational homers in their critique of FO.com’s preseason predictions and rankings.
Giants fans asked a simple question:
Why are the Football Outsiders ignoring their own statistics solely in the case of the NYFG?
:: Kyle — 1/23/2008 @ 6:55 pm
Re #46
I don’t know; where are all the New Orleans Saints fans complaining about the Saints ending up mediocre when everybody on FO apparently thought they’d outperform their projection and be good again?
:: NewsToTom — 1/23/2008 @ 7:29 pm
46 (Kyle) -
Giants fans asked a simple question:
Why are the Football Outsiders ignoring their own statistics solely in the case of the NYFG?
But they didn’t ignore them solely in the case of the Giants. DVOA picked the Buccaneers to win their division, but the writers were skeptical. DVOA picked the Packers to get a first round bye, and some writers were skeptical. In fact, every preseason the writers have a “which team will outperform/underperform their projection” segment, where they are encouraged to look beyond DVOA.
Remember, DVOA is not the be-all end-all. FO constantly points out that it needs to be used as a tool and that there are some things DVOA cannot accurately measure. Therefore, when making their individual preseason predictions, the Outsiders are never going to just blindly use DVOA - or else they wouldn’t need to write any articles, they would just publish the numbers and be done.
:: Eddo — 1/23/2008 @ 7:31 pm
Re: 46
I am going to direct you, and any Giants fans who feel that “the Football Outsiders [are] ignoring their own statistics solely in the case of the NYFG,” to the actual 2007 staff predictions (linked). It contains an entire section of staff members “ignoring their own statistics.” Teams for which the FO staff ignored their own statistics when making predictions:
Dallas
San Diego
Cincinnati
Houston
Indianapolis
San Francisco
St. Louis
Minnesota
New York Giants
Green Bay
Jacksonville
Oakland
Washington
Atlanta
That is 14 teams, or about half the NFL. By the logic of your post, fans of any of these teams ought to be up in arms.
Even if we single out teams the staff predicted to fall short of their statistical projection, more picked Green Bay (4) than the Giants (3). There is not, nor has there ever been, any anti-Giants bias amongst the staff.
Just for fun, I’m going to print the Green Bay comments:
Ben Riley: Green Bay. The projection system must have access to some of da kine stuff, because there’s no way Green Bay is winning 9.5 games. Or 7.5 games.
Michael David Smith: Green Bay. I have a bad feeling that Brett Favre is going to be really bad this year.
Tim Gerheim: Green Bay. I don’t buy the defense being strong enough to carry this offense toward 10 wins. The running game , “led” by Vernand Morency, smacks of the 2005 Cardinals.
And unquestionably the most hilarious one (in retrospect of course)…
Vince Verhei: Green Bay. Do you realize that according to the projection system, the Packers are not only going to win the division, but get the number TWO seed, a first-round bye and a home playoff game? Yeah, none of that is happening.
:: Pat F. — 1/23/2008 @ 7:33 pm
46: Giants fans, contrary to the perception some “DVOA is Religion, It Never Fails” fanatics created, were not irrational homers in their critique of FO.com’s preseason predictions and rankings.
Predictions based on personal predeliction are often silly and completely subjective, and sometimes flat-out wrong. That’s kind of the point of a prediction; if we just wanted to see what the numbers projected, the FO folks could just post some data and walk away. I suspect it’d make their lives easier.
That aside, it’s not “just” the Giants who got singled out. Out of 16 writers who contributed to the category “Team Most Likely To Fall Short Of Its PFP Projection (besides Tampa Bay)”, 3 (Schatz, Giants fan Barnwell, and Rose) picked the Giants.
Four picked Jacksonville and four picked Green Bay. (One picked Washington - and, of course, Tampa Bay was slighted in the headline.)
And did you see the FO staff’s criticism of Del Rio? Which I agreed with - and was also completely wrong.
Link in my name.
:: patriotsgirl — 1/23/2008 @ 7:36 pm
48 and 49 beat me - too slow!
:: patriotsgirl — 1/23/2008 @ 7:39 pm
The Giants have all the “heart and human spirit”? Please stop disrespecting Rodney Harrison!
:: Glenn — 1/23/2008 @ 8:09 pm
Why are the Football Outsiders ignoring their own statistics solely in the case of the NYFG?
OK, ignoring the fact that you’ve already been shown to be wrong regarding “solely.” Very wrong, in fact. Anyway. Why were they ignoring the statistics in those comments regarding the Giants?
Because the question was “which team is most likely to fall short of its PFP projection.” Any answer to that question is going to ignore their own statistics. It has to. The question is “which team are the statistics wrong about?”
A lot of the response to that was based on the fact that the “team” was going to fall apart, possibly due to Coughlin. That, to me, is where the mistake is: I think sportswriters and fans read waaaay too much into the ‘locker room drama’ that sportswriters invent for storylines.
The interesting thing about this is that it’s easy to look at the Giants season and see how they could’ve ended up one of the worst teams in football. In the latter half of the season, Eli was pretty darned bad, Burress was frequently hurt - without the pass rush and defense which frequently seemed “lost” early in the season, this team could’ve easily been in the 2-4 win range.
Really, a lot of it comes down to the fact that Spagnuolo is a very good DC. I’ll admit to being way wrong on that one (dunno how he sucked so bad as a linebackers coach, then).
:: Pat — 1/23/2008 @ 8:23 pm
God, after all this time, you nerds still don’t get it, do you? Nobody is ever going to take your statistical mumbo-jumbo seriously, unless you start adding in a dummy variable for “heart”, so get to it. And while you’re at it, cook up some dummy variables to account for all the other important factors that you currently ignore, like “moxie”, “swagger”, and most important of all, “clutchness”.
Any true fan knows there’s a reason for every upset, and if guys like Skip Bayless and the “Around the Horn” gang can figure them out (often just hours after the upset took place), then you damn well better include them in your model, if you ever want to have a 100% successful prediction rate. Until then, you’re just spittin’ in the wind.
:: MC2 — 1/23/2008 @ 8:36 pm
I don’t think the Giants run shows that their is anything “flawed” with DVOA. (And I hope no one thinks DVOA is foolproof either because that would be insane).
The Giants have shown that teams do not remain static throughout the season and that teams and players can get better or worse as the year progresses.
For the Giants, the horrible WAS game was a real tipping point. Following that game, they have done a better job balancing the run & pass, alleviating some of the pressure (both physical and mental) on Eli. Also, after the WAS debacle the Giants appear to have simplified the option routes in their passing game and Eli’s completion % has gone up.
Also, following the WAS game they started incorporating Bradshaw and Smith more in the offense. Bradshaw is a very good runner whose style meshes well with Jacobs’. And Smith may finally be the legitimate 3rd receiver that the Giants have been looking for for years.
The D has played better lately too. This has coincided with old man Sam Madison getting hurt and Corey Webster getting his starting role back. Webster looked like a bust earlier in the year but for whatever reason he has been solid since he replaced Madison.
All of these factors have contributed to help make the Giants a better team lately.
I think they will need to play flawlessly and have to hope that the Pats will slip up a couple of times for the Giants to win. But that doesn’t mean they won’t be able to compete like the ‘85 Pats or the ‘00 Giants.
I don’t think that right now the whole season DVOA tells the story for either of these two teams. The Giants are playing at a higher level than they were in weeks 10-15 when they looked really cruddy. Likewise the Pats were otherworldly in weeks 1-11 but they have looked merely very good since Colvin went down against the Iggles.
All told, these teams, today, are a lot closer than many Pats fans would like to admit. It should be a pretty good game in 11 days.
:: Toast Patterson — 1/23/2008 @ 8:53 pm
Meh. Apologies for hyperbole in using the word “solely”. It was a shortsighted and poor word choice.
Amusingly, however, that word was the only part of my post argued. Granted it proves an irresponsibly strong statement incorrect, but the rest of the post’s intent and message was either ignored or implicitly agreed with by pointing to other teams and saying “hey look, you’re wrong… because they ignored DVOA regarding the Saints/Bucs/Cowboys/Etc”.
To reiterate my point, it was that Giants fans did not yell at the FO.com crew for a bias against the team or to criticize their statistics, but rather to encourage them to actually use their statistics instead of falling into mainstream media traps.
:: Kyle — 1/23/2008 @ 9:08 pm
Really, a lot of it comes down to the fact that Spagnuolo is a very good DC.
Yes, Spagnuolo is a big contributing factor (and plenty of Giants fans will be cracking a cold one to celebrate if ATL & WAS both make their HC frontrunners official this week). But the Giants also got unexpectedly strong performances from lots of players:
-Strahan returning from his holdout and being (IMO) the second-best lineman on the team (after Tuck);
-Sam Madison defying Father Time and having a damn solid (and mostly injury-free) season;
-Aaron Ross developing into a solid starter much more quickly than anticipated;
-Getting good contributions from the depth at DB (Dockery, Mc1/4ths, Webster, Michael Johnson);
-Toomer being more effective than anticipated coming off his ACL surgery; and, perhaps most importantly,
-Dave Diehl being a better OLT than Luke Petitgout was.
Pre-season, there was no rational reason for a computer or a person to expect that any of the above would be true.
As for DVOA and the Giants, generally, count me among those who think it’s a hell of a lot of fun to be the Cinderella team in the Finals. DVOA’s regular season observations jive pretty well with my subjective observations of the team. They were mediocre. But they’re not playing that way right now, and that’s what makes this whole thing so much fun– that’s why you root like heck for you team to grab that last playoff spot! Because, whether you’re a person or a statistical projection system, you never really know when things are going to change. Predictable sports are boring.
:: JasonK — 1/23/2008 @ 9:10 pm
57- There was no computer that picked the Giants to be 10-6, but I did :)
I think I get a big old ” told ya so” for Michael Vick, and another big ” I told ya so” for the 10-6 Giants.
Of course, I was wrong with the Eagles/Pats super bowl, but I stand to make thousands on my NFL futures with the Pats.
:: Chris — 1/23/2008 @ 9:43 pm
The week 17 game can be spun a lot of ways for both teams. The Giants played tough and gained momentum from that while the Patriots had 7 scoring drives to the Giants 4 (not including the KO return TD) as well as a 36/24 TOP advantage. Is it too simple to say that red zone performance and special teams will govern who wins the SB and how close the final outcome is? If #17 thinks the Patriots are “staggering” to the finish line, then his expectations seem a tad unreasonable. Brady threw two picks in the second half against SD, but to hold the ball for 22 minutes in the half, including the last 9:13 is as dominant a football performance as you will ever see. The Patriots also held the ball for > 32 minutes against Jacksonville and significantly outrushed them, essentially beating them at their own game. Other than Brady’s picks against SD, I think they’ve got a pretty good winning formula going. It would not surprise me if this team is a little burned out from having to match everybody’s best effort week after week. I would be surprised if the they did not have very high intensity for the Super Bowl knowing that it’s finally over after that.
:: JV — 1/23/2008 @ 9:47 pm
Folks, folks, DVOA doesn’t deserve this sort of bashing. Yes, the Giants have outplayed their projected abilities thus far, but don’t forget that each of the three teams they played in the postseason were already collapsing! Tampa, Dallas AND Green Bay were vulnerable in the very week the Giants played them.
Click my name for the article.
:: footballprofessor — 1/23/2008 @ 10:49 pm
You guys are the most biased, hypocritical so-called football analysts in existence.
“Yes, that’s correct. The Patriots have a higher DVOA rating than the Giants even if we only measure the past four weeks.”
Really? 44% vs. 43%. By any valid measure of statistical analysis (as FO claims to have as a competency), this is an insignificant difference. How about writing, then, something such as:
“yes, that’s correct. The Patriots and Giants have played at the same high level during the past 4 weeks.”
But that’s ok, since the Giants really only have such a high rating because of their difficult schedule:
“…but the difference becomes more substantial if we take out the opponent adjustments, which are still heavily rewarding the Giants for the very act of staying in the game with the Patriots.”
Isn’t that the entire point of DVOA? To adjust accurately for opponent adjustments so we can compare the metric for 2 different teams? Or do you only refer to opponent adjustments when you’re trying to argue that the Giants are a terrible team?
:: Jarrod Bunch — 1/23/2008 @ 10:53 pm
jason k(57)-
one quibble-the one “surprise” about the 2007 giants that i think is not true is the play of david diehl. diehl stepped in at left tackle for petitgout last year and acqitted himself reasonably well. because he was a guard moving over to left tackle there was an automatic reaction thinking that he was going to be overmatched, but the tape and his play from 2006 never indicated that. luke petitgout was a decent left tackle, but certainly no star, and you have to give the giants credit for recognizing that the younger, healthier, and less-expensive diehl was a solid replacement.
:: seth — 1/23/2008 @ 11:28 pm
Toast Patterson (#55) put into words just what I was thinking as I read the article. There is one thing that DVOA and every other possible statistical method are simply incapable of predicting, and that is when and how teams will change in quality. Teams get hot, they get key players back in the mix, they get cold, the QB gets a little shaky and starts thinking that selling insurance wouldn’t be so bad after all… I would be *highly* suspect of any system that claimed to be able to tell when these things would happen. The NFL is small enough, and the season short enough, that not everything regresses to the mean at the end.
DVOA, as I see it, doesn’t exist to account for changes in performance, but rather to show that it happens and to what degree. We can see that the G-Men are hot right now precisely because the statistics changed in a measurable way, and it can’t be adjusted away by tweaking the formula. I fail to see how this could be characterized as anything but a good thing.
:: AHBM — 1/23/2008 @ 11:30 pm
aaron-
i’m a very loyal fan of this site and all your work, and i’m basically on the side of those who say that DVOA is working well as is… but one thing concerns me, and i don’t have an answer for it. a couple friends keep bugging me about this: all year it seemed like the vegas lines had the giants rated as an above-average team. by DVAO analysis, and my own analysis, which is primarily video review and information from FO, the giants appeared to be a .500 team, a team that was “meant” to go 8-8, maybe 9-7…. yet they kept getting bet like they were a 10-6 level team- a team that was really significantly above a .500 team. in addition, this was during the season, before anyone knew of the emergence of ahmad bradshaw or corey webster, before steve smith returned from injury (a bigger factor than realized, i believe), before (at times) the return of gibril wilson (not much discussed, but the defense really missed him- he went out week 12 at vikings and returned for week 16 at the bills)) and before the “new and improved” eli burst on the scene in week 17 (he did have 5 fumbles in week 16 at buffalo, remember). so i wonder- were we missing something? did the emergence of a few young players really make the difference, and thus was the “crowd” accidentally proved correct? or maybe the giants took adavantage of playing mistake-prone qbs in the last 2 rounds of the playoffs, and limited their own mistakes, which can always just happen?
:: seth — 1/23/2008 @ 11:48 pm
was the “crowd” accidentally proved correct?
Not necessarily. Vegas sets the line to try and offset winner and loser dollars. There are more NYers and hence more Giants fans than probably any but a few other franchises. Vegas undoubtedly gets slightly more pro-Giants action then team “merits” every year.
I say slightly, b/c if it was anything more than that, then the market would very quickly correct with all the smart money taking the NYG opponents every week.
:: Carlos — 1/24/2008 @ 12:19 am
In each of the past two years, someone on this site has argued that what the eventual champion was doing was unsustainable. Obviously, the Pats have to be heavily favored, but this is a formidable Giants team that got this far for a reason
:: t.d. — 1/24/2008 @ 1:14 am
A lot of the comments here are making me cringe. FO isn’t out to “get” the Giants. And I don’t believe a majority of NYG fans who are familiar with this site think that. Fans of any New York team get a bad rap for being obnoxious, and I’d like to not perpetuate that stereotype if we can avoid that. Readers are a lot more likely to post comments if they’re upset. Hey, it brings the page views.
That being said, I was a little dismayed reading FO’s subjective commentary parrotting the conventional wisdom on the team this year. The Giants just had a ridiculous schedule in 2006, which combined with a lot of injuries and bad luck. I thought they’d end up at 10-6, with the only caveat being the strength of the NFC East being one potential obstacle.
FO’s metrics say the Giants should lose the game. So do prognostications by almost any standard, so I don’t see why FO should be jumped on about that point. The team is a statistical anomaly that has no meaningful analytic value besides being a reminder that anomalies do occur. Usually regular season performance is a good predictor of playoff success. The fact that the team has improved during the past few weeks in spite of its challenges should be reason enough to celebrate for NY fans.
57, are you serious about the Toomer comment? He’s only been playing at a high level during the playoffs, besides his critical drop vs. the Packers. Simplifying the offense plays a part, but he simply has lost a step. Considering how bad Whitfield was last year (Petitgout didn’t play all that much), I absolutely thought Diehl would upgrade the LT position this season.
:: Jon — 1/24/2008 @ 4:52 am
#62:
Most of the sports media’s opinion of Diehl before the season came from the Giants’ one nationally-televised preseason game, wherein Terrell Suggs made him look silly. I certainly give the Giants credit for having the foresight to make the Diehl move, but I’ll stand by the assessment that the general public who don’t see him in practice every week had no reason to expect him to be an improvement over Luke P. (Over Whitfield, sure, but not over Petitgout, who did start for over half of the season.) Yeah, he did OK in the 2 games he started in late ‘06, but they were giving him lots of help from the backs and TEs in those games.
(Personally, although I didn’t think the sky would fall in like some analysts did, I did think that he would need more help from backs & TEs than he has.)
#67:
Amani Toomer in FO stats:
‘04: 4.9 DPAR (59th), -7.1% DVOA (59th)
‘05: 11.4 DPAR (34th), 0.8% DVOA (48th)
‘06: 8.6 DPAR (50th), 9.8% DVOA (31st)
‘07: 16.4 DPAR (29th), 8.9% DVOA (32nd)
Although there were some drops that stick out in fan memories (the home game v. Washington), he’s pretty much the same guy he was before the injury in ‘06. That’s a heck of a lot better than I expected. (The pre-’06 improvement was probably caused by QB improvement and the acquisition of Burress.)
:: JasonK — 1/24/2008 @ 7:25 am
Oh crap. FOMBC strikes again. We’re doomed.
:: Independent George — 1/24/2008 @ 8:28 am
I’ll bet a lot of people who don’t publish websites ‘picked’ the Giants to go 10-6 before the season.
:: mmm... sacrilicious — 1/24/2008 @ 8:42 am
The only thing that I saw that struck me about this supposed “possible DVOA flaw” is that you noted that there was a team that was exactly the same as this Giants team, who also went to the superbowl completely unexpectedly after a late season surge. Of course in statistics it’s really a matter of trying to predict what is most likely to happen. Even this year’s 49ers COULD put above a 40% DVOA 4 games in a row, but it is extremely statistically improbable. It is completely reasonable to believe that the Giants as simply an outlier, and thats what I assumed it was, but I began to think that maybe something was mising when I realized this wasnt the first time.
The fact that this has happened twice shows that it is more possible that SOMETHING on teams such as these needs to be fixed. But of course it could just be two statistical outliers of similar types, and the formula is correct. I highly doubt those two teams were both actually as good as their last few weeks showed, so it isnt a question of “did they outperform their actual skill?” its a matter of how much. Maybe it is less, maybe it isnt. I only took intro to statistics in college, so I only know the basics, so dont ask me. Im sure you know more than I do about DVOA :-P.
:: Tom — 1/24/2008 @ 8:47 am
# 18: Actually, Giants are 2-0 on neutral ground as they played a home game against the Jets.
:: Paulo Sanchotene, Brazil — 1/24/2008 @ 8:47 am
61 Jarrod Bunch:
The problem Aaron is dealing with is not the opponent adjustments, but the fact that he included a head-to-head game in his week 17-20 DVOA averages. That creates a logical loop, one that doesn’t matter much for a 16 game season, but does matter in a 3-4 game stretch. Like so:
If you assume the Patriots are +52% DVOA over the Giants, then they are only +1% DVOA.
See the violence inherent in the system?
His solution (show VOA instead) wasn’t ideal. Better would be to use the VOA from the Pats-Giants game averaged with the DVOA from the playoff games. In other words, assume the teams are equal, and see what the DVOA average shows.
Or, he could have just used the playoff games, and left week 17 out of the mix. Over the playoffs, the Giants have a 50% DVOA and the Patriots have a 57% DVOA. A statistically “significant” advantage, but not a certain blowout or even a large favorite.
Personally, I suspect Aaron knew what he was doing by including week 17, and was being intentionally obtuse to give us something to talk about for the next week.
:: nat — 1/24/2008 @ 9:02 am
Re 72: How is that a neutral field? The Giants were in their home stadium with their fans. Yes, it’s also the Jets’ home stadium, but the tickets went to Giants fans. Of course Jets fans had a chance to buy them on the secondary market, but that’s no different than when the Giants play any other team.
:: Dennis — 1/24/2008 @ 9:17 am
As an aside, what I love about the comments that reference “heart” and “will to win” is the assumption that the opponents of the heart-led teams have no “heart.” These are highly-skilled professional football players whose main priorities are money and championships (in one order or another - and often the two are interlocked). Can anyone really make a legitimate argument that Green Bay or Jacksonville or the 2001 Rams or anyone else didn’t have the “will to win?”
“Heart” is one of those post-hoc factors that gets applied when trying to explain the margin of error in analysis of this sort.
Remember, History is written by the victors.
:: Bill Moore — 1/24/2008 @ 9:29 am
What’s strange about this post is that Aaron ends with stating that the Giants “were a mediocre, overrated team from Week 1 through Week 16.” Um…really? Mediocre, sure. Overrated? How were they overrated? They were 10-6 beating up on lesser opponents. People called them an underdog against TB in the wild-card round. The Giants were not overrated in the least bit. All NY media expected another one and out year, and I can’t imagine the sportswriters in other cities saying much different.
The 2007 Giants don’t prove that DVOA is broken…they just highlight the importance of using DVOA’s objective measurements to inform your own subjective opinion. Objectively, the Giants didn’t beat one winning team during the regular season. Subjectively, seeing them pull out wins over TB and Dallas in the post-season wasn’t very surprising. It’s a little surprising, even among Giants fans, that the Giants have managed to play so well for four weeks in a row. Anybody who’s watched this team knows consistency is a problem. Have the Jints turned a corner? Or is this a lucky streak? We’ll have to wait and see…
:: Brooklyn Bengal — 1/24/2008 @ 9:49 am
RE: 14
Sorry, but Washington was completely unimpressive to me all season. My gf is a HUUUGE Skins fan, so I keep up on them pretty well, but it was tough for me to believe they’d even make it past the Seahawks.
Still, this whole thread of the Giants being underrated/properly rated by DVOA seems to have brought out a lot of bitterness in the FO staff. No need to get into bickering matches with us posters, just stand by DVOA as having accurately gauged NYG’s performance, not their potential.
:: Brooklyn Bengal — 1/24/2008 @ 9:57 am
“Anybody who does not answer “Washington” is lying.”
I don’t know if I would have picked the giants in that 1 of 4, but I sure as hell wouldn’t have picked washington.
:: Rich Conley — 1/24/2008 @ 9:59 am
74: “How is that a neutral field? The Giants were in their home stadium with their fans. Yes, it’s also the Jets’ home stadium, but the tickets went to Giants fans. Of course Jets fans had a chance to buy them on the secondary market, but that’s no different than when the Giants play any other team.”
Well, while I agree with you to a certain extent, surely you can see how it is at least a little different then when they play “any other team”. If they are playing say, Dallas, while it is possible there will be some Dallas fans at the game, it is unlikely a large number of them will fly all the way to NJ to see the game. Whereas when playing the Jets, there may very well be a large number of Jets fans in the immediate area who can get to the game.
:: BDC — 1/24/2008 @ 10:28 am
> If #17 thinks the Patriots are “staggering” to the finish line, then his expectations seem a tad unreasonable.
Sure, that’s why I qualified the statement by saying “relatively speaking”, as the Patriots have still probably performed as the best team in the league over the past two months. I was just saying that they’re not the same team as they were earlier, especially defensively, and I don’t know if the difference has even fully showed up in Weighted DVOA (as I don’t know exactly where the cutoff point is).
I’m consistently seeing a lot of open space over the middle in the Patriots’ pass defense. In the Super Bowl maybe the Pats will continue with their improvement in redzone defense to offset this, and maybe they won’t. Their redzone performance has been excellent in the playoffs, but was near the bottom of the league in the regular season, and was poor in the Giants game specifically. It’s the one area where I see the Patriots as especially vulnerable, so we’ll soon see…
:: GlennW — 1/24/2008 @ 10:37 am
“Their redzone performance has been excellent in the playoffs, but was near the bottom of the league in the regular season”
Except when they played the Colts…and the Steelers. You know, the teams they played in the regular season who affected playoff seeding.
Its funny how that works out, in the games that matter (good AFC opponents and playoff games), their redzone D has been great. I have a hard time believing that its a coincidence.
:: Rich Conley — 1/24/2008 @ 10:42 am
Objectively, the Giants didn’t beat one winning team during the regular season.
Now we’re down to *zero* such wins? Jeez. Objectively, the Redskins were 9-7, however much they impressed you sitting on your girlfriend’s couch. The Eagle wins obviously should count too, but if you insist on excluding 8-8 teams. Having one win against a winning team is completely unexceptional.
Here are all the 9-11 win teams, and the number of wins they had against winning teams:
Pitt: 3
Cleveland: 1
Jax: 4
Tenn: 2*
San Diego: 2
NYG: 1
Wash: 2*
Tampa: 2
Seattle: 1
* - week 17 games involving Brad Johnson or Jim Sorgi
Yes, the Giants are a surprise Super Bowl team, but this year 9 of the 12 playoff teams would have been surprises if they had made it. I don’t see any reason to believe the Giants are any bigger a surprise than Tampa or Seattle or Washington would have been.
:: Kurt — 1/24/2008 @ 11:00 am
BB, I do agree with you about the “overrated” bit. I don’t see how they could be considered overrated, unless anyone who liked the Giants more than Aaron did was by definition overrating them.
:: Kurt — 1/24/2008 @ 11:03 am
Aaron,
If you see this question and have the time, how about sharing the following information:
How many 40+ DVOA games each team in the NFL has had over the past two seasons, playoffs included. Obviously NE is going to top that list, and I would imagine that Indy will be second. I am also guessing the Giants are not in the top 3.
But I would be surprised if they aren’t in the top 10– which would in my opinion validate what I have been saying, that the Giants are capable of playing at a level that not many teams are capable of playing at. What has made the Giants the Giants is that they play at a mediocre level (or below) significantly more frequently than other teams that share the ability to play at that kind of a high level.
:: Gerry — 1/24/2008 @ 11:13 am
“-Dave Diehl being a better OLT than Luke Petitgout was.
Pre-season, there was no rational reason for a computer or a person to expect that any of the above would be true. ”
Had you left off that last one, I wouldn’t have been able to argue with you, JasonK. Preseason, I expected Diehl to be better than Petitgout. I did not and do not consider Petitgout to be that fantastic when penalties are not included, and I knew that there would be a marked decrease in penalties without him.
The other points you raised, I agree were not things that were likely at all.
:: Gerry — 1/24/2008 @ 11:20 am
”
Not necessarily. Vegas sets the line to try and offset winner and loser dollars. There are more NYers and hence more Giants fans than probably any but a few other franchises. Vegas undoubtedly gets slightly more pro-Giants action then team “merits” every year.
I say slightly, b/c if it was anything more than that, then the market would very quickly correct with all the smart money taking the NYG opponents every week.”
If this was true, we would see at least one of two things:
1) The Giants would, in most year, have a below 500 record against the spread, and/or
2) The final spread in Giants games would have moved from the opening spread significantly more often than it does for other teams.
I am pretty sure that neither is borne out by the facts.
:: Gerry — 1/24/2008 @ 11:24 am
“Objectively, the Giants didn’t beat one winning team during the regular season.”
As #82 said, they beat one.
And now, playoffs included, they have beaten 4.
Let’s not ignore that latter fact. While it may be interesting to say what we could have or should have expected at the start of the playoffs, the more important question now is what can we and should we expect in the Super Bowl.
I see a good team that is on a hot streak going against a great team that is on a bit of a downstreak (for them). And the hot streak and cold streak are relative– the Pats cold streak has still had them playing just as impressively as the Giants have been playing during their hot streak.
I expect the Pats to win. However, the only result which would absolutely shock me would be the Giants blowing out the Pats. A Pats blowout win, a Pats close win, and a Giants close win are all things that would fall into the range of things that would not shock me.
:: Gerry — 1/24/2008 @ 11:38 am
> Its funny how that works out, in the games that matter (good AFC opponents and playoff games), their redzone D has been great.
I was under the impression that in pursuit of the perfect season, all the games mattered. Including the Week 17 game against the Giants, in which the Patriots played all of their healthy starters, and played hard till the end.
I think the precise redzone breakdown is a coincidence, but the larger point is that there have been a lot more such redzone situations to defend later in the season. That’s what somewhat concerns me, how relatively easy it has been to march down the field on the Patriots. After that, the defense has stiffened in the playoffs, but I think there’s a good amount of luck and other factors involved there too (like Dennis Northcutt not being able to catch, Tomlinson being unavailable etc.). The defense is of at least a minor concern imo.
:: GlennW — 1/24/2008 @ 11:53 am
Two thoughts, one on each team:
On the Giants: I know DVOA wasn’t crazy about their regular season, and I know conventional wisdom saw very real things like all of Eli’s mistakes, but it’s possible we were all overlooking something in the schedule.
Just for fun, I track team performance using a Maximum Likliehood Estimation system (linked in my name–so