Vincent Bennekers: I really like my initial reading of your Pro Football Prospectus 2007. I think you find some great statistics that should used to properly analyze football teams and players. In fact, I plan to use a lot of your statistics and analysis in the upcoming year.

However, I question some of your indicators for future team records. Unless I'm reading your book wrong, the major issue I have seen thus far is in the NFC South, picking Tampa with the most wins and New Orleans with the least. During my reading of the analysis of both teams, I really didn't see a strong opinion or statistics on either team to justify these numbers. The Saints kept all their starters from last year and added additional depth (and some that may be better than the starters), so it isn't clear to me how you can predict a 2-3 loss regression. Tampa added some good new pieces, but aren't you going out on a quite a limb to say that Garcia and Adams will add five wins to that team?

I realize that the mean projected wins are based on the previous two years, but don't you think this should be modified if there are major changes in a team structure?

Well, sure -- if we can go back, create an objective variable in past years, and show that there are different kinds of roster changes, and the ones in New Orleans and Tampa Bay mean that you should no longer consider each team's 2005 performance when projecting 2007. However, we have not been able to create such a variable. We run into this a lot -- we can't put an "I don't feel like this is right" variable into the projection system. We end up with a lot of people suggesting that the projection system is missing something without suggesting what it might be.

When the projection system spits out these weird numbers, that gives me ideas for new variables I might try. The goal is to find out where we are missing something. Believe me, I tried TONS of variables that I hoped would make Tampa Bay lower and New Orleans higher this year. Nothing worked. (I also had tons of ideas to make the Indianapolis projection higher and the Jacksonville projection lower, and those didn't work either.)

Somewhere out there is a variable that would make Tampa Bay lower, closer to where we think they really should be, but we have not thought of it yet, and "we think something is wrong" is too nebulous to put into the projection system. I have a feeling that nobody on the FO staff believes that Tampa Bay's projection should average 9.0 wins, but we have a policy -- we don't change the numerical projections. If we think something is wrong, we say it with words. Our belief that the Tampa Bay projection is a little nutty should be pretty apparent from reading the team essay. On the other hand, a projection like this is giving you a signal that Tampa Bay should be better than people think -- maybe not a playoff team, but not 4-12 either.

New Orleans, of course, can somewhat be explained by the fact that they are sui generis, the only team to ever lose a season to a hurricane. The essay straight out says this.

As far as what is in the projection system, besides the simple rebound effect where teams tend to bounce back a little bit if they've dramatically improved or declined from one year to the next, here are some (although nowhere near all) of the reasons behind these projections:

Tampa Bay
1) Better, more experienced quarterback
2) Longtime continuity on the coaching staff
3) Red zone passing tends to drift towards average from season to season, and the Bucs were horrible passing in the red zone. This is also a reason behind the good projections for Green Bay, Jacksonville, and Pittsburgh. Note that this is NOT true of RUSHING in the red zone.
4) Added defense in draft -- defense tends to impact in first year, while skill players tend to impact in years 2-3

New Orleans
1) Offense better on third downs than first/second down in 2006
2) Added very little defense in draft
3) While defense worse on third down than first/second down is a positive indicator, poor rushing defense on third down is a negative indicator no matter what the stats on first/second down, and the Saints were the third-worst rushing defense on third down. This is also a big reason why the Chargers are projected to decline on defense.
4) Faster offensive pace when winning makes life harder on defense

Posted by: Aaron Schatz on 24 Aug 2007

15 comments, Last at 27 Aug 2007, 7:11pm by Mikey