RSS Feed
PDF NOW DISCOUNTED 50%. FIND OUT WHAT YOU MISSED BEFORE THE SEASON.
Click here to buy PDF version
.Click here to buy print version.
STILL AVAILABLE
Click here to buy PDF version
.Click here to buy print version.
18 Mar 2010
P-F-R's What Coulda Been Tournament
Just a fun, fun idea: Pro-Football-Reference is doing a March Madness tournament featuring the best teams that didn't win the Super Bowl. So many teams were nominated that they've expanded it to 80 teams; all Super Bowl losers are represented, as are most teams that ended up 13-3 or better. The top seeds are the 2007 Patriots, 1998 Vikings, 1968 Colts, and 2001 Rams. (We would disagree with the 1998 Vikings -- the 1976 Steelers, 2004 Steelers, or 2005 Colts would be a better top seed -- but that's okay.) They'll simulate games using What If Sports, but that can't stop us from debating!
20 comments, Last at 27 Mar 2010, 4:01am by sports-veronica
Most Recent FO Features
» 2011 Football Outsiders Awards
Football Outsiders readers give out their awards for the 2011 season, handing imaginary FO trophies to Aaron Rodgers, Justin Smith, Carl Nicks, Jim Harbaugh, and the Muppets.
Most Recent Extra Points
Comments
Re: P-F-R's What Coulda Been Tournament
Sounds more interesting than college basketball, that's for sure!
Re: P-F-R's What Coulda Been Tournament
Does anybody know how that "what-if" site works? I can't find any info on the site itself? I mean, how does it manage cross-era matchups?
Re: P-F-R's What Coulda Been Tournament
My understanding is that is rates players based on semi-era-adjusted statistics, and then runs games based on the statistics fed in. The actual statistical model isn't public, to the best of my understanding, but I haven't been hugely impressed with the results.
http://www.whatifsports.com/beyondtheboxscore/default.asp?article=2009NF...
http://www.whatifsports.com/beyondtheboxscore/default.asp?article=2009NF...
http://www.whatifsports.com/beyondtheboxscore/default.asp?article=2009NF...
It seems to me that it is skewed towards : Offensive teams over defensive teams, running teams over passing teams, running backs over offensive lines, and recent quarterbacks over older ones. It also seems to have a thing for volume stats over efficiency.
Overall, it's a fun toy but not anything more than that, IMHO.
Re: P-F-R's What Coulda Been Tournament
Even if two of the 90s Bills teams made it to this "Super Bowl," they'd still both find a way to lose.
Re: P-F-R's What Coulda Been Tournament
Good one.
Re: P-F-R's What Coulda Been Tournament
God, the 2007 Pats... Don't remind me.
Re: P-F-R's What Coulda Been Tournament
The 2000 Giants were a classic "happy to be there" team, and don't deserve to be listed. The best Giants team to never win a SB was without a doubt the '89 team. The one that got boned by Flipper Anderson.
I'd go '98 Vikings as the best to never make it in my lifetime.
Re: 2000 giannts
if read thing properly it sya all super bowl losers included in torunament. so that mean 2000 gaints have to be there .
Re: P-F-R's What Coulda Been Tournament
Could the 90s bills beat 09' Lions in the Superbowl?
Re: P-F-R's What Coulda Been Tournament
Yes, as they could beat the Lions without using their helmets or their kicker.
Re: P-F-R's What Coulda Been Tournament
I see where you're going with this (ie, today's terrible teams would tool past champions, because the game has advanced so much), but the 90's weren't nearly that long ago for that to be the case. If you actually tried to get present-day Kelly/Thomas et al on the field to play the game tomorrow, then maybe.
--
There's a place I want to be. It's the NovaCare Center. That's in Philadelphia. One NovaCare Way, where the Eagles practice and then they eat cafeteria food and they watch film and we eat and we have fun.
-Donovan McNabb
Re: P-F-R's What Coulda Been Tournament
I guess that could've been where he was going, but I didn't get that at all. I saw the obvious joke that those Bills team were just plain doomed to lose in the Super Bowl, regardless of the circumstances involved.
Re: P-F-R's What Coulda Been Tournament
Because it feeds into the popular perception that teams who lose in the championship somehow lack the intrinsic ability to be champions, turning something that's better judged on a spectrum of talent, coaching, and skill into a binary output of winner/loser...in other words defining them solely by the outcome.
Re: P-F-R's What Coulda Been Tournament
Its not necessarily the game, its the athletes. Johnny Unitas was 6'1", 194lbs. Peyton Manning is 6'5", 230lbs. The guys playing today are freakish athletes, in terms of physical ability, as well as the fact that many of them have been playing football for around a decade by the time they get drafted.
Re: P-F-R's What Coulda Been Tournament
I'd take the 1969 Vikings over the 1998 ones. In terms of pure dominance of their season, at any rate.
In other Vikings stuff they left off the 1975 12-2 team, the only one from '73 - '76 to fail to make it to the superbowl, but most vikings fans will tell you that team was their best of that run (losing on the hail mary).
Re: P-F-R's What Coulda Been Tournament
The guy who's setting this all up specifically stated that team was adequately represented by '73, '74, and '76. All the Super Bowl losers were in automatically.
Re: P-F-R's What Coulda Been Tournament
Oh, I know, the rule where all the superbowl losers get in kind of meant they weren't gonna make it. But that really was their best team.
in '73 they didn't have Chuck Foreman yet, in '74 Tarkenton hurt his arm and it kept him from being able to throw as far (and he was never that strongarmed a QB to begin with, his max range went from about 40 yards to about 25 if I remember what he put in his book).
In '75 Foreman exploded on the scene, he had his 22 touchdowns which broke the old mark. Unfortunately for him Simpson also broke it the same year and finished with 23. Foreman would likely have gotten the mark or more except he was knocked out of the last game of the season by a rock-hard snowball that hit him in the head on the sidelines.
By 1976 age was starting to catch up with the defense, they were still good but not quite up there with years past. But they had clearly already peaked, as shown by the continued declineover the next three seasons....
Re: P-F-R's What Coulda Been Tournament
According to PFR Foreman was already a pro bowl back with 1160 yards from scrimmage for the Vikings in '73.
He also had 4 TDs in the '75 finale (ironically, against Simpson's Bills) including two in the third quarter. Doesn't two additional touchdowns in the 4th quarter of a game that was already far out of reach seem a bit optimistic?
Regardless, the '75 and '76 squads were clearly a step up from '73 and '74 and I see no reason to dispute the claim that '75 was their best team.
Re: P-F-R's What Coulda Been Tournament
The 00's Colts are woefully underrepresented here. The 2004, 2005, and 2007 teams should have qualified too. The 2008 team was held together with medical tape, and shouldn't have made the playoffs. Manning basically willed them to 12 wins and a playoff berth.
Post new comment