What Can Go Wrong: Crushed Under Fortune's Wheel
by John Morgan
on Jul 6, 2008 3:31 PM PDT
What happens if Seattle plays well, nearto its potential, but still misses the playoffs?
This is the ultimate what could go wrong, and it’s unfixable: Bad luck.
The 2006 Seattle Seahawks scored 6 fewer points than their opponents. Poor performance against a weak schedule earned them the 25th ranked DVOA. But they squeaked into the playoffs thanks to the lucky/clutch leg of Josh Brown. Brown notched 4 game winning field goals, 2 of 50+ yards. In the first round of the playoffs, they pulled out a can’t-win victory after Tony Romo botched the hold on a 19 yard field goal. The 2006 Seattle Seahawks were very lucky.
The NFL’s 16 game schedule creates a playoff-like environment. It’s an exciting format, but also susceptible to the caprice inherent in any small sample. While the game themselves create a representative sample size, wins and losses do not. And wins and losses are all that matters. In the last 10 years, only twice has every team that finished in the top 10 in DVOA also made the playoffs. Their misfortune took many forms:
Bad Fumble Luck: Recovering your own team’s fumbles and the fumbles your team forces is largely luck. Where the ball bounces, who wins possession in the pile—but the outcome, a fumble lost or recovered, greatly affects the outcome of the game.
Bad 3rd Down Luck: Football’s down and distance system makes 3rd downs especially important, but over the course of a single season, a team can simply be unlucky at converting third downs or unlucky at preventing them.
Close Losses: The best indicator of future success is the blowout, but winning by 40 points is still but one win. Good teams with bad records often suffer the other half of the Hawks’ miracle 2006.
There’s other less researched factors in which luck plays a part, but the point here is that no matter a team’s construction, its talent, execution or ability, luck will play a very large part in its record. The Seattle Seahawks could miss the playoffs entirely courtesy bad bounces, bad timing and bad breaks—and there’s no way to predict it, and there’s nothing anyone can do about it.
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Where do the Seahawks stand
on the unlucky at preventing 3rd down over the past year or two. It seemed like teams excelled on 3rd and long against us.
by Nate Dogg on Jul 6, 2008 4:33 PM PDT 0 recs
I don't belive in luck...
If we are meant to have success this year we will. I believe that luck is a word for those who either choose not to describe or understand a spirituality or God…
by Misfit74 on Jul 6, 2008 7:00 PM PDT 0 recs
That may be so or it may not
(I’m a preacher, so don’t think I have an agenda against you) but the fact of it is, if you don’t want to get into the metaphysics of the matter but simply want to describe the effect of random/chaotic/otherwise-unpredictable circumstances on the outcome of games and seasons, “luck” is the best shorthand we have going.
by The Ancient Mariner on
Jul 6, 2008 7:19 PM PDT
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Metaphysics?
I don’t think there is any particular ‘spirituality’ or for that matter anything ‘beyond science’ that can tell you squat about reality. Referring to ‘luck’ has nothing to do with acknowledging kooky religious metaphysics and simply desiring to refer to some divine plan in shorthand. A football game is a completely cold, mathematical, deterministic event. The Newtonian physics which accurately model all the mechanical things happening on the field are well understood. Unfortunately we simply don’t have the data collection and aggregation tools to reduce the level of uncertainty beyond where it is now.
Further, the human mind, also a cold, mathematical, deterministic machine adds another level of uncertainty since neuroscience is still in its infant stages.
It is not inherently impossible to integrate every speck of information including weather, every player’s DNA, etc. and determine the outcome of a football game down to a nearly infinitesimal level of variance (although probably not zero variance due to Huysenberg’s Uncertainty principle).
Now, to answer the question. Luck in sports refers to probability distributions, which is where variance comes from. To truly understand this you need to study random variables.
I am not a preacher, I am a grad student in engineering, so I will admit that I do have an agenda against any sort of pseudo-scientific religious meta-hooha.
As for the Hawks, many would also say that being in the NFC West is great luck! And the odds of that being the case this year are great! Hopefully Shaun is still praying for us.
by michaelfox99 on Jul 6, 2008 8:42 PM PDT 0 recs
Actually, a football game is a chaotic system
which is to say, it exhibits sensitive dependence on initial conditions; as such, your assertion that it’s “a completely cold, mathematical, deterministic event” is, at best, a statement in advance of the evidence. There are those who would go further and say it’s in opposition to the evidence. (The same is, incidentally, true of your statement that the human mind is “also a cold, mathematical, deterministic machine.”)
by The Ancient Mariner on
Jul 7, 2008 10:24 AM PDT
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Huh?
Your comment about a football game being a chaotic system is true. However, your inference from that point is totally false. that is:
“as such, your assertion that it’s "a completely cold, mathematical, deterministic event" is, at best, a statement in advance of the evidence.”
You obviously misunderstand chaos theory:
In mathematics, chaos theory describes the behavior of certain dynamical systems – that is, systems whose state evolves with time – that may exhibit dynamics that are highly sensitive to initial conditions (popularly referred to as the butterfly effect). As a result of this sensitivity, which manifests itself as an exponential growth of perturbations in the initial conditions, the behavior of chaotic systems appears to be random. This happens even though these systems are deterministic, meaning that their future dynamics are fully defined by their initial conditions, with no random elements involved. This behavior is known as deterministic chaos, or simply chaos.
(courtesy Wikipedia, not the best source, but happens to be right in this case)
Sorry, chaotic systems are deterministic. Dynamical systems are deterministic unless either the initial conditions are random variables or the dynamics are somehow random.
Ignoring the probabilistic behavior of subatomic particles (which is another matter, and wholly irrelevant in a system with the scale of a football game or the brain, where laws governing aggregate behavior of these particles take over), nature is deterministic.
To claim that the human mind or a football game is deterministic without understanding exactly every single facet of it is not in advance of the evidence.
Its pointless to use scientific categories like ‘chaotic system’, when you ultimately believe that there is some extra-scientific force which science can never capture which governs these systems. You conveniently believe these forces are outside of science. Therefore, whatever tiny drop of uncertainty science is yet to conclusively eliminate, you will attribute to this extra-science source of randomness (although not really random because these spiritual forces are themselves deterministic, or are they capricious demons and fairies?). You will require no evidence for this reasoning because evidence is only for science and these forces are beyond science…
So…
I do not see how I am at all in advance of the evidence when I say that football and the mind (ie nature) are deterministic. Even the probabilistic behavior of electrons is in fact cold and mathematical, not warm and spiritual. You are in fact making statements in advance of the evidence in suggesting that these forces exist that are somehow outside the realm of science and evidence.
by michaelfox99 on
Jul 7, 2008 11:19 AM PDT
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Don't go too far with that idea
This faith in science is overstated. While it is our only means of prediction, it is not entirely accurate.
Newtonian physics were proved slightly inaccurate by Einstein. Einsteins may be proved inaccurate by another theory.
So what we are left with are hypotheses that can only approximate real events. As we know from our ideas of chaos theory, these minute variances of measured events can have significant consequences on any number of things, i.e. the bounce of a fumbled football or the decision of the referee on a holding call (not to mention free will).
We therefore are limited to what we can predict and control. To me, it is not unwarranted to see luck as a factor or some higher purpose as a factor.
by brahms on
Jul 9, 2008 12:11 AM PDT
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going too far with an idea
I think going to far with an idea is assuming that because science is incomplete that there is therefore a higher purpose factor despite the lack of any evidence for it.
You also refer to luck as if it is some well understood phenomenon, which is precisely the topic of this discussion related to the above post. Some are calling luck a built in uncertainty that scientific analysis cannot reduce because it was intended to be that way by divine forces, and is metaphysical in nature. I am saying that luck is just the variance that comes from the uncertainty of science in its present state, and perhaps natural phenomenon that are probabilistic in nature (like an electron governed by a wave function, although I am not sure this results in any ‘luck’ events on a human-sized scale ).
I agree with you that science only gives hypotheses to approximate real events (although theory is a more appropriate word than hypothesis, because hypothesis typically precedes experimental verification of a theory). However, I do not think that I am stating a doctrine of faith in science. I have no faith that Einstein is 100% correct about relativity and no one will ever improve on his theory with a modification. I do have faith (if you would call it that) that the process of free inquiry and the requirement of clear reproducible evidence to support any new theory is the only way to develop and improve our models of the world around us.
The fact that scientific knowledge is constantly evolving in no way makes it ‘not unwarranted’ (as you say) to view dogmatic or fantastic methods which do not demand evidence to have anything of value to add to the scientific viewpoint.
Seeing a higher purpose as a factor in a football game IS UNWARRANTED. Tell me how it is warranted? Give me a shred of evidence…
Oh yeah, evidence is just for science. your prophecy is self-fulfilling.
by michaelfox99 on
Jul 10, 2008 8:21 AM PDT
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Claryfication of point
My intended point was not that there is evidence for a higher purpose in sport, it is that there are still vast amounts of phenomenon that occur in sports that cannot be explained by science (mostly human behavior) and will not be for the foreseeable future. I believe that this is what was meant by “luck” by John Morgan at the top of this post.
I do not think the human mind is a cold, mathematical, deterministic machine as you stated above. If it we were ever able to predict, with enough computing power, the outcome of any sporting event (as you mentioned above), I don’t think many people would bother to watch sports.
Another way of saying it is that there would be no free will, because if our actions are predictable through calculations of certain chemical reactions in our brains (or whatever), our will would no longer be free. How, then, would we come up with new hypotheses? Or would they already have been predicted? It would make free inquiry rather difficult. This is why I thought you had gone too far with that idea.
I completely agree with you that the process of inquiry and scientific methods are the only way to form a model of our world. However, every shred of evidence that we gather will only be supporting a human-conceived theory/hypothesis and not reality. It is this discrepancy between theory and reality that does leave room for belief in whatever the hell we want that doesn’t contradict our scientific understanding or the world. I don’t know what that is. But I prefer to accept opinions of those who want to believe in something as a possibility no matter how seemingly far-fetched.
by brahms on
Jul 13, 2008 7:11 AM PDT
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the distance from the head to the heart can be far, apparently…
by Misfit74 on Jul 6, 2008 8:46 PM PDT 0 recs
What constitutes luck?
Due to parity, luck plays a bigger part in the NFL than in other pro sports. When considering what are variables effected by fortune, you failed to mention the most obvious. That would be injuries. An injury can effect not only a play, or game, but, the entire season.
by bigmaq on Jul 7, 2008 9:58 AM PDT 0 recs
Well, I did mention injuries in a previous post...
but injuries are both luck and skill, as is creating a roster that can withstand injuries.
by John Morgan on
Jul 7, 2008 10:15 AM PDT
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injuries and luck
Injuries to your opponents, particularly divisional, are a big luck factor. However, not a complete luck factor since I think Rocky Bernard’s pillaging of Alex Smith results in injury more often than not.
Of course, if Alex Smith runs away from Rocky past the endzone and back to the locker room its a safety and Rocky is happy to leave him untouched.
by michaelfox99 on Jul 7, 2008 11:36 AM PDT 0 recs
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