The playoff odds at Football Outsiders give the Dolphins a 67.5 percent chance of winning the AFC East, and give the Patriots just a 21.6 percent chance of winning the AFC East. The Patriots are one of five teams that still haven’t scored a rushing touchdown this season.
As much as I love seeing that, it's complete hogwash. There are still 13 games left to play (81.25% of the season) and we are only two games ahead of the division. While I do think we have a good shot at being division champs, I can't see how we win the crown in 2/3rds of all scenarios like the statistic suggests....it's just way too early to dangle a statistic like that. It will drastically change this Sunday and again the Sunday after that. I like cBrad's stat better on the probability of making the playoffs at 3-0, 4-0, etc. We know it probably takes 10 games to get in the playoffs and we're almost a third of the way there...so that's awesome news. And heck, ten games could win the division this year as well if the Pats/Bills/Jets don't rapidly improve. Let's not get ahead of ourselves though since we will lose one in the near future...whether it's this weekend (it won't be) or a few weeks down the road. Pats, Bengals, Bears, Lions, Texans is a tough stretch of games and it will be very tough to come out of that stretch 5-0. But even at 3-2 (6-2 overall) going into week 9, we'd have a great shot at taking the division.
I agree on cart before horse prognostications. I disagree on how "tough" these next 5 opponents will be. We all know the Pats are not playing well. The Bengals are the best of this lot, still not better than the Dolphins. The Bears. Good D, No O. Lions? We are better than the Lions, especially at home. Houston is overrated.
Hey, I think we're a top 4 team in the league and we don't play any of the top 3 until January....so I'm 100% with you. We're better than all five teams. But did the best team win last week in Miami vs Raiders? I'd personally say no, they were better than us but we wanted it more. So I'm still expecting a loss somewhere in the next 5.....but I don't think it will be this week. Isn't it almost silly that we're talking about our chances of losing? For the past two decades, we weren't sure if we could hang with the bad teams. It just feels so different this year with the way they're playing angry and making things happen....Sunday can never get here fast enough for me.
There's an old sayin' I learned growing up in farming territory in Fla. "Even a blind hog finds an acorn once in a while!" I want to wait a bit before I declare victory for the season, but.... This is a really good way to kick of this year, and if the team can keep it's cool and focus on taking care of the business at hand - that team from Boston - and do so with alacrity and furioscity (sp. deliberate!) then the other half of that old sayin' will come to pass... I will be happier than two pigs in a peach orchard!
After they get beat by us they have a short week/Thursday night game against the Colts. Then they get 10 days to prepare for the Chiefs. It could be an implosion for them going to the Chiefs game at 1-4. They might be lucky to get out of that stretch with a 2-4 record.
I hadn't looked at their schedule....they could legit go 0-3 in that stretch if we put a beat-down on them.
Are the playoff “odds” pure statistics or do they incorporate betting lines and Vegas style handicapping? There may be a human overlay to those “odds” based upon perception.
They're "pure" statistics in the sense that once you have a model of which team is stronger you just do tons of simulations. They did 50,000 simulations apparently. And no they didn't incorporate betting lines. Thing is this.. their model of which team is stronger is based on something called DAVE, which is Football Outsider's DVOA ratings combined with their preseason ratings. Not only is DVOA as non-transparent as ESPN's QBR, they say that at the moment 65% of DAVE consists of the preseason projections lol.. https://www.footballoutsiders.com/stats/playoffodds https://www.footballoutsiders.com/stats/teameff Anyway, whatever their model the historical odds of making the playoffs after 3-0 is 75%, and it will be 83% if we go 4-0.
