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Alternate Theory of last year and our current team......

Discussion in 'Miami Dolphins Forum' started by Fin D, Aug 29, 2014.

  1. Limbo

    Limbo Mad Stillz

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    No. Your own games are excluded only in adjusted strength of schedule. The OP is drawing numbers from regular strength of schedule. Our opponents' 2013 overall record, 134-122, adds up to 256, which is 16x16. It includes the games we played against them.

    Our opponents won 134 games last year, for a .523 win pct - 6th toughest in the NFL.

    If we had beaten Buffalo OR the Jets just one more time...
    Our opponents won 132 (division opponent record counts twice) for a .515 pct. - 13th toughest.

    One game changes a lot in the SoS stat, which is one reason why it's far from perfect. The margin is so tiny in the NFL because the parity is good overall and there are so few games. SoS is just an okay stat that doesn't work at a finer level because it does indeed include what your own team did to its opponents. It's not hard to see why playoff teams had 'easier' schedules...they had already had their way with said schedule. I don't have the adjusted SoS but if someone does it would be more telling.

    Notice that if we had won 1 of the last 2 we would've joined the playoff group in the actual postseason AND in the OP's top-12 cutoff. So yes, SoS is based a lot on how YOU play. Especially when we're talking about ONE game to make or miss the playoffs as it usually happens in the NFL. It's not an excuse. We had control over it.
     
    finwin and Brasfin like this.
  2. Alex44

    Alex44 Boshosaurus Rex

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    Thanks, I felt like it impacted it somehow but I didn't feel like number checking.
     
  3. Tin Indian

    Tin Indian Rockin' The Bottom End Club Member

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    Never thought that Thomas was hated as much as everyone was disappointed in him.

    Ireland was pretty clearly over his head. Way too many misses, but that has been the case here for a long time.
     
  4. Pennington's Limp Arm

    Pennington's Limp Arm Well-Known Member

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    Great post Fin D. A lot of things went against this team last year and stood in the way of success.

    Things aren't off to a perfect start this year though... if things go downhill, I'm sure the suspensions to two key defensive players will be looked back at in a similar thread next year.
     
    Fin D likes this.
  5. Griese's Glasses

    Griese's Glasses Well-Known Member

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    Between Sherman, the o-line, boo-lee-ang, home game turnouts, Caleb Sturgis, NE refs, and simply the ever depressing presence of Jeff Ireland, how the **** were we supposed to win 8 games? Well, we did.
     
  6. Fin D

    Fin D Sigh

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    You can't play it that way though or it throws every record off. We wouldn't be 13th because if you did it for us then you need to do it for everyone else which would surely change the ranking.
     
  7. Limbo

    Limbo Mad Stillz

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    The exact ranking isn't important. The stat is just delicate and misleading. Because of parity and a short season, how good YOUR team is affects the stat a lot. Especially for a stat that supposedly isn't about your team at all (which is the entire supposed point of SoS and what you're trying to make it say).

    If we won 11 or 12 games last year i highly doubt we would've had a top-10 toughest schedule in postseason SoS measures. My post about us winning just one more game makes that pretty clear. It's also apparent in the fact that you pointed out yourself...that playoff teams were near the bottom in schedule difficulty. This is at least in part because they dished out more losses to people on their schedule.

    On a broader scale it's okayi guess, maybe it's sort of useful to bring up. But breaking it down into finer points isn't useful because your own play can move it so much. It's just not that pure of a measure, and there's a far better version that might make your point if we had it (adjusted sos).
     
  8. Fin D

    Fin D Sigh

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    The end result of your argument is that we could have went 16-0 and the only reason we didn't was because we failed. We were not capable of going 16-0. That means there's teams better than us. We also weren't bad enough to go 0-16 and that means there's teams worse than us. We didn't win more games in part BECAUSE of how good our opponents were overall. You're saying we COULD have won more, but we didn't. The results are what they are. You are confusing the concept of "parity" with all the teams being equal and they aren't.
     
  9. Limbo

    Limbo Mad Stillz

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    You're missing the point.

    You're trying to make postseason SoS say something that it doesn't definitively say. The point of SoS is that it's supposed to measure the teams you play against. It isn't supposed to measure how good YOU are. Only...it does measure how good you are when you look at the postseason unadjusted SoS. Good teams win more games over the year and therefore DIRECTLY impact their own SoS and make it 'easier'. Playoff teams give out more losses and therefore their schedules are considered easier.

    Bottom line: Us winning more games would've made our SoS 'easier' even though we played the exact same teams.
     
  10. Fin D

    Fin D Sigh

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    The bold contradicts the underlined.
     
  11. Limbo

    Limbo Mad Stillz

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    Reading comprehension? "Supposed to" is usually followed by some sort of 'but'...which it is in my post. Re-read. I tried to make it more obvious.
     
  12. pmj

    pmj New Member

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    Why are you trying to stand up for SOS as some important stat? It's really not, and not all stats are equal or useful frankly. It's just like +- can be misleading in basketball when talking about good teams; generally everyone on good teams has a good +- and everyone on bad teams has a bad one. It's also a small sample, too small to assume that all circumstances (good or bad, such as an important player being out) affects everyone equally.
     
  13. Fin D

    Fin D Sigh

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    Fine, so let's follow your point then.....

    - First, your argument was that since 1 win can change a lot then unadjusted SoS is far from perfect. (Forget that no one said it was perfect.)
    - Then it was, the stat is misleading because of parity and a short season and of how good your team is.
    - Then it was, that I'm saying the stat says something definitive. (Which I did not.)
    - Then it was, that it doesn't show how good your team is but yet it does.

    And you've defended all that winding and often contradicting stuff, with the hypotheticals of "if we had won 2 more games".

    Maybe the problem isn't my reading comprehension, but your rambling.
     
  14. Brasfin

    Brasfin Well-Known Member

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    Found the adjusted SoS numbers for the 2013 season
    http://espn.go.com/blog/tennessee-titans/post/_/id/4899/now-lets-see-adjusted-strength-of-schedule

    We're 13th in the list... funny is that top 3 hardest schedules in the NFL last season was Denver's, San Francisco's and Seattle's... all three went deep in the playoffs.
     
  15. Brasfin

    Brasfin Well-Known Member

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    To summarize his arguments (which I agree with):

    1) Strength of schedule takes into account your own wins/losses over your opponents
    2) If you're a good team --> chances are your SoS will be lower than average
    3) If you're a bad team --> chances are your SoS will be higher than average

    Therefore, regular SoS cannot be used to determine whether you had a tough schedule or not.
    That is where adjusted SoS comes in, where it counts your opponent's wins/losses without factoring in your own.
     
  16. Limbo

    Limbo Mad Stillz

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  17. Clark Kent

    Clark Kent Fighter of the Nightman

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    Interesting. I remember Olbermann was talking about the inequality of the NFL's scheduling. How does a team like Oakland end up with the hardest schedule in 2014 (based on 2013 results)? It's ridiculous. Why not just get rid of divisions and keep conferences? Every AFC team plays once. Maybe they play one random NFC team per year. That way, everyone truly plays everyone and the best team will win.
     
  18. Fin D

    Fin D Sigh

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    So I'm clear, you guys agree that points 2 & 3 are true even though you just provided a link that says otherwise?
     
  19. roy_miami

    roy_miami Well-Known Member

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    How could the Jets have a harder adjusted schedule than us when their uncommon opponents went an adjusted 10-20 and our uncommon opponents went an adjusted 18-12? Unless I'm really confused everything else should be the same between the Dolphins and Jets so clearly they had an easier schedule adjusted or otherwise.
     
  20. rafael

    rafael Well-Known Member

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    The Vermiel study I was referencing was an adjusted SoS.
     
  21. finwin

    finwin Active Member

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    One game change could move our adjusted SoS from 13th to 8th to 9th. For example if we played and lost to the Cards instead of beating Cleveland. So adjusted SoS is a pretty good factor in determining how good a team is.
     
    Fin D likes this.
  22. rafael

    rafael Well-Known Member

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    I guess I assume that there's always some inequity in scheduling. I'm not so much focused on the inequality. I just believe that there are years when it works for you or against you. And I do think it's valuable to consider whether you were in an easy or tough year when looking back on a season in terms of assessment. I would say that conservatively a tougher schedule can mean two fewer victories. Using last year as an example, that was more than the difference between making the playoffs or not. If we had made the playoffs last season there's a fairly large percentage that would have considered it a successful year or at a minimum a significant improvement. If your goal is to gauge if the team is better or not then I think you look at the team and consider their opponents.
     
  23. Brasfin

    Brasfin Well-Known Member

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    Where does it say otherwise in the link that I provided??

    I said if the team is "bad" (hence losing more games) it will have a higher SoS than expected, and vice-versa.
    The article gives a clear example of this:

    The Titans lost those two games to the Colts and their SoS was .438, if you take away those two losses, the SoS lowers quite a bit. Thus, if a team has more losses than wins, their SoS is expected to lower in a greater rate. Conversely, if a team has more wins than losses, its SoS will higher in a greater rate when you factor out their own wins/losses.
     
  24. Fin D

    Fin D Sigh

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    Who had the top 3 toughest adjusted SoSs?
     

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