Rational Hope
by John Morgan on Jan 5, 2011 3:33 PM PST
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PrintA 16 Game Season Is Very Short
The 2010 Seahawks have played 964 downs on offense and 1,074 downs on defense. By comparison, the 2010 Seattle Mariners had 5,989 plate appearances by their offense and 6,091 batters faced by their pitching staff. "Plays" and "At bats" measure the progress of a game, and statistical analysis in football and baseball evaluates the outcome of plays and at bats when determining the best teams in the NFL and MLB, respectively. That means analysis of the 2010 Seahawks is working from roughly 16.9% as much information as analysis of the 2010 Mariners. In terms of games, that's about 27.
27 games into the 2010 MLB season, the eventual AL Champion Texas Rangers were 14-14 with a +6 point differential. The eventual MLB Champion San Francisco Giants were behind the San Diego Padres in the NL West. 27 games are enough to get some idea of how teams are playing, but no one would project a champion from what has happened in little over a month.
Seattle has been a bad team in the 16 games it has played, but though it may be the best the NFL can offer, the 2,000 or so plays that make up a 16 game season is still a relatively small sample. Through 27 games, the 2009 Colorado Rockies were 11-16 and in last place in the NL West. The 2009 Rockies finished 92-70 and made the NL Division Round before losing to the Phillies. That example took seconds to find. There are literally hundreds of examples of teams that started slowly but finished strong.
Even though Seattle has played poorly in its first 16 games, we still do not have enough information to confidently predict how it will perform in its next game or its next four games. That is the fun and frustration of football.
A Team Is Constantly in Flux
This week Seattle's wildcard opponent, the New Orleans Saints, put starting running backs Chris Ivory and Pierre Thomas on injured reserve. How does that impact the Saints offense? The most accurate answer is nobody really knows. Nobody knows for sure who is essential to an offense working. Nobody knows for sure if a hobbled Ivory or Thomas is even better than a less talented but healthy replacement.
The already small pool of information we have to evaluate a team is adulterated by changes to both the personnel that comprise a team and also the health of those personnel. If we assume some kind of accuracy in talent evaluation by coaches, a healthy team--and the Seahawks are in tip-top shape for a playoff team--is likely to outperform its season average. And an unhealthy team--and the Saints are relatively unhealthy--is likely to underperform its season average.
How important are Ivory and Thomas to the Saints offense? We'll just have to see how many second and longs Julius Jones puts the Saints into; How many blitzes Joique Bell fails to pick up.
The Playoffs Are Decided by Different Abilities
Maybe it's the weather. Maybe NFL officials are instructed to call the game differently. Whatever the case, what determines winners and losers in the NFL regular season is not the same as what determines winners and losers in the NFL postseason. Run defense, a minor part of winning and losing in the regular season, is suddenly much more valuable in the postseason.
If it is the weather, the Seahawks are in luck. Meteorologists are anticipating cold, viscous rain to fall on Qwest Field. Water viscosity increases as temperatures fall, and cold rain can be some of the toughest conditions to mount a passing attack. The Saints more than any other team in the NFL depend on a high percentage passing attack. Drew Brees has led the NFL in completion percentage for two consecutive seasons. In 2010, his yards per catch plummeted. His 10.3 yards per completion is barely above Sam Bradford's 9.9 yards per completion. The Saints, because they play in a dome and because they play in the NFC South, have yet to play a game all season in cold, wet conditions. They will this Saturday, and don't be surprised if slips, tips and drops ground New Orleans' potent passing attack.
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Fuck you Pandora! Your making it hard to live!
I’m getting too jacked up…
by DJ C-Raig on Jan 5, 2011 3:55 PM PST via mobile reply actions
Bring on the rain!
I say we get together for an open-religion prayer session. Pray that the rain comes down, and comes down hard.
An open mind is like a fortress with its gates unbarred and unguarded.
by Corax --Nevermore-- on Jan 5, 2011 4:02 PM PST reply actions
At first thought
I thought rain would help us a lot, but can we really depend on OUR running game to make us victorious? Is Lynch really better than Reggie Bush? That I’m not so sure about.
Locker --> Seahawks = Superbowl
It's an equalizer
The rain does not make the Seahawks better. It might make the Seahawks worse. But it is likely to make the Saints much worse, because the Saints are less accustomed to playing in elements and the Saints are much more dependent on passing the football.
The way I look at it...
While the Hawks aren’t exactly a love-and-win team in the Rain, the Saints should be worse off than the Hawks, like John said. Also, this might be a stretch for anyone, but can we find some sort of stats that show how Bush does in outdoor stadiums vs. indoor? I know at USC they have an outdoor stadium, but where the speed and the level of play really matters is the NFL, since there isn’t so much of a talent disparity compared to college football. So it’d be interesting to see how he does at outdoor stadiums.
An open mind is like a fortress with its gates unbarred and unguarded.
by Corax --Nevermore-- on Jan 5, 2011 4:32 PM PST up reply actions
It's easy to find these stats.
Yahoo Sports has a split on every player. Bush has played 24 games Outdoors. 219 carries for 875 yards (4.0 average) and 5 TD’s rushing. He’s done even better receiving the ball with 113 catches for 904 yards (8.0 average) and 3 TD’s. He’s played 6 “Cold” games (21 – 40 F). 31 carries for 136 yards (4.4 average) 1 TD. 23 catches for 120 yards (5.5 per) no TD’s.
Based on those stats we want it to rain
Brees has played in 4 games in the rain. 32-59 for 350 yards, 1TD 1Int, 7 sacks and 1 Fumb lost. Comp% is 10% lower than his career average, and his QB Rating drops to 70.6, which is around 20 points lower than his career average.
Cool
never knew. Thanks.
An open mind is like a fortress with its gates unbarred and unguarded.
by Corax --Nevermore-- on Jan 5, 2011 7:35 PM PST up reply actions
You really, REALLY
have to stop giving us hope. lol.
I have all this false hope built up
I half believe Brees will get sick and decide not to play
Hawks!!!
Since nobody reaponded
by Built2Spill on Jan 5, 2011 5:30 PM PST via mobile up reply actions
ISNEARBYSOWEGETRAINWOOO!!
This wooden soul of mine, it cannot ever climb from places it has fallen: In between where light can shine. It never falls in line, it barely has a spine, like branches severed from the vine. Like it was faulty by design.
by Cheddar28 on Jan 5, 2011 6:14 PM PST up reply actions 1 recs
Don't expect to see that face on Saturday......
with or without PT and TUSK…..we will come to play and win!
DON'T STOP 'TIL WE REACH THE TOP!!!!!!!!
Another SAINTS fan in Panther country!
GEAUX SAINTS!!!!!!!!!!!
WHO DAT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
OH!
uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!
by Greetings from the Lord Humongous! on Jan 5, 2011 6:48 PM PST up reply actions
O
I won my fantasy football leauge, so I'm kind of awsome...kind of.
Semper Fi'
Pain don't hurt...
by RolloTomasi on Jan 5, 2011 7:52 PM PST up reply actions 1 recs
The Dirty Brids claimed a 12th man, too.....
nuff said!
DON'T STOP 'TIL WE REACH THE TOP!!!!!!!!
Another SAINTS fan in Panther country!
GEAUX SAINTS!!!!!!!!!!!
WHO DAT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
by SAINTSfaninNC on Jan 5, 2011 6:30 PM PST up reply actions
What?
I won my fantasy football leauge, so I'm kind of awsome...kind of.
Semper Fi'
Pain don't hurt...
Tusk...what a bad ass nickname.
Prepare to be Rudy’d.
by DJ C-Raig on Jan 5, 2011 5:25 PM PST via mobile up reply actions
Seriously Brees, cut the shit...
…and cut your hair.
by DJ C-Raig on Jan 5, 2011 5:26 PM PST via mobile reply actions
He's balding isn't he?
This wooden soul of mine, it cannot ever climb from places it has fallen: In between where light can shine. It never falls in line, it barely has a spine, like branches severed from the vine. Like it was faulty by design.
Been saying this for 2 years, dude needs to do the honorable thing and shave that shit off.
It’s getting bad.
Milton Bradley apologist
by sanford_and_son on Jan 6, 2011 9:48 AM PST up reply actions
I know that this is more of a devil's advocate, "let's drum up some reasons for hope" style post...
…but I still have to interject.
1. A 16 game season is short… for baseball. Baseball is much more probability-based, in huge part because all the strategies in the game are pretty well set in stone and have been set in stone for nearly a hundred years. The only thing a coach can really influence (outside of building rapport with the players of course) is the frequency of use of those strategies and which exact players are used to execute them – and even the latter is more of a probability issue, as a “runner on 2nd with less than 2 out” situation might only pop up for a specific batter once every several games. Even from the players’ side of things, a guy who can’t hit the curveball might just happen to face 7 curveballers in a 16 game grouping of games without that necessarily being a deficiency that will knock him out of the league.
With football, though, although there’s also a good deal of luck involved, there’s also a good deal more, I think, that a coach and the players have direct control over. The luck angle comes in where, for example, Seattle just happened to play its last game of the season against a team with no long-range passing attack and therefore very little ability to challenge our cornerbacks. That, I think, evens itself out during the season fairly well, or at least once advanced metrics like DVOA are applied. However, even over the course of 16 games, a talented team running a game plan suited for it is going to win more games over the course of the season than an untalented team running a game plan that’s suited for a future iteration of it.
And to top off my pessimism for the first point, the metrics point to Seattle being, if anything, worse than their won-lost record indicates.
2. This is a much better point, although I’m not altogether convinced that makes Seattle better off. Compared to the regular season game I guess it’s a better matchup because a. it’s at home and b. Chris Ivory is gone, but it’s still going to be an uphill climb because the Saints are more than 2 players recently added to the IR (I think you’ve said as much about the ’Hawks and their perceived struggles after Red Bryant went out for the season).
3. I’ve never been a big fan of this in any sport; IMO any player that plays harder in the postseason than in the regular season is a player you should look at cutting. There is something to be said specifically for the weather this time of the year and the fact that the Saints play in the South and in a dome, but I don’t think that has much of anything to do with THERE IS ONLY ONE ROCKTOBER (sorry, wrong sport).
At the same time, though, even without Chris Ivory the Saints figure to have a pretty decent RB by committee situation with Julius Jones and Reggie Bush moving behind a line that allowed Chris Ivory to gain 5.2 yards per carry as a rookie, and they’re up against a run defense that as recently as the Bucs game looked just plain awful. And the flip side is, the Seahawks are only averaging 10.9 yards per reception. The guy who we are hoping will replace Hasselbeck averaged 8.9.
Okay, so I know I am being a total pessimist here. I think, though, that there is a decent chance for the Seahawks to win and if we come into the game with a sober, rational idea of why and how this team could win, it will make a loss less frustrating and at the same time IMO make a victory even sweeter.
Eh
I don’t think your first argument makes any sense. No offense. You offered nothing to substantiate why football is more predictable than baseball other than some theories and wild guesses. The amount of control coaches have over strategy does not mean football is more predictable. If anything, strategy only makes things more unpredictable because it adds another hard to define and measure quality to what determines team success.
Statistics indicate football is wildly unpredictable. That may not jibe with your understanding, but I don’t think you provided a very cogent counterargument.
I don’t know what you are arguing with your second point. My point is team health has a substantial impact on team ability and the Seahawks are much healthier than the Saints.
As for players playing harder in the playoffs, I didn’t say anything like that. Statistics show that different qualities are valuable in the playoffs than in the regular season, specifically run defense.
by John Morgan on Jan 5, 2011 5:47 PM PST up reply actions 1 recs
I agree with you
Football has far more variables and chaos than baseball on any given play. It is also the reason why advanced stats are meaningful in baseball and not very meaningful in football.
I think a better argument might be that football has more data per play.
You can’t really compare plays in football straight across to at bats because a football play provides you with some sort of data on all 22 players on the field. An at bat in baseball usually only provides data on 2-3 players (pitcher, batter, something about the catcher) with more data if the ball is put in play (but even usually not on an entire defense, and never on an entire offense). Although really trying to compare across sports is kind of silly so I’m not sure why I’m bothering.
I agree that football provides more data insomuch that the result of a play in some way involves all 22 players,
but it doesn’t take 11 players for a defense to break down. It often only takes one. If anything, because a play result is attempting to measure the interaction of 22 players, the data is of much worse quality. We know what happened but almost nothing about how or why it happened. Meanwhile, a home run is a home run and a double only comes in so many versions, and however it happens, we can be pretty sure why it happens.
A team can gain three yards through a run in literally endless ways. Even attempting to type the ways it can happen is virtually impossible.
This is more of what I was getting at.
It’s a concept I have a sense of but it’s not easy to put it into words.
I misread your 3rd point then.
As for my rebuttal of the first, it’s not an easy thing to really elucidate. There are a lot more ways that things can go wrong on both sides of the ball – one offensive lineman missing his block can create a situation for a defensive lineman to make a tackle the scheme says he shouldn’t have a shot at making, one linebacker biting on a play fake can cause a tight end to be open right in the middle of said LB’s zone, and so on. It’s not really so much about the predictability, it’s about the way luck in baseball has a huge luck factor (factors like where a pitcher happened to release the ball on his pitch, whether a fan in the bleachers wearing a white shirt just happened to stand up in the batter’s field of vision while he was waiting for said pitch, things like that which have a discernable effect on any single pitch) whereas football just has a hundred different quantifiable effects – a lot of different things happening, perhaps even too much for one person to “grok”, but all more or less quantifiable in some meaningful way if you were to sit down and look at it. If football is a game of inches, baseball can be a game of nanometers – measurements so precise that they’re for all intents and purposes beyond human ability to calibrate most of the time and therefore are indistinguishable from luck.
That probably doesn’t make sense but it’s the best I can do for now.
I agree that football is wildly unpredictable; that’s not my point. A sport can be massively unpredictable and still be more predictable than baseball, which is about as unpredictable a sport from one day to the next as you can get. If the Seahawks had a 4-man quarterback rotation then it might start to get to the level of unpredictability of football (of course, the precise reason why baseball has things like 5-man pitching rotations, 7-man bullpens, and platoon-based lineups is due to the evolution of the sport as a 162-game slog rather than a 16-games-and-you’re-done thing like American football. This isn’t about intrinsic qualities of the game so much as the way they’re played).
I really should back this up with hard data, I admit, but I just don’t have the time to do so. I have a general sense FWIW (and I’d love to see this compared) that American football is maybe a step more predictable than pro basketball, a step less than European league football, but significantly more predictable on a per-game basis than baseball if you’re just comparing things to a normal-distribution curve.
I’m not even sure there’s as much variance in football on a full-season basis from one team to the next, at least once you take into account the fact that the worst teams in baseball finish with winning percentages that would earn them a 6-10 record in the NFL. The Mariners, according to the Replacement Level Yankees weblog, are projected to own the 3rd fewest wins in the American League with a little more than 72, play in a fairly tough (if small) division, and yet are still projected to make the playoffs 10% of the time. I’d be interested to see if re-runs of the 2010 season would show any of the Browns, Bengals, Bills, or Raiders making it to the postseason in 10% or more of the simulations.
(I do want to add here that I’m just posting my schema here; I am not so arrogant to admit that my feelings can stand up to your stats. If I’m wrong, I’m wrong. I’ve been wrong before and I will be wrong again in the future.)
Back to your third point, like I said in the subject line I misread it. I’ve seen the “run defense is more meaningful” line as well. My specific point WRT run defense wasn’t so much that I disagreed with your point but that I don’t think it favors the Seahawks all that well (well, that and the ROCKTOBER comment, primarily because I wanted to type ROCKTOBER but also, again, because I misinterpreted what you said).
RE: Baseball vs Football
I completely disagree with you 100%. There’s a reason why its “Any given Sunday” and not “Any given Tuesday afternoon in the summer”. Football is inherently less predictable than baseball simply because there is (A) an order of magnitude more moving parts with (B) at least an order of magnitude more possible permutations, © an order of magnitude fewer games on which to measure performance, (D) more variability in performance due to injury and (E) a higher interdependence of the moving parts which muddles any statistical analysis.
by Greetings from the Lord Humongous! on Jan 5, 2011 9:08 PM PST up reply actions
Oh yeah, I won't disagree that from one season to the next there is a *ton* more variability in football.
The modern NFL has to be not only the most parity-rich major sports league on the planet, it might be the most parity-rich league of all time.
If you know ahead of time that it's King Felix vs. Jeff Suppan, sort of.
But even there it’s not to the level of football, I don’t think. Look at it this way: great football teams can win all of the games on their schedule with a little luck. The best team in the history of baseball lost 46 of the 162 games that it played.
The reason you don’t have an “any given Sunday” type cliche in baseball is because it’s so flipping obvious that even the top team in the league will only beat the worst team in any one game like 80% of the time that this sort of thinking isn’t required. In fact, what you see in baseball cliche is the opposite: “let’s take this one game at a time” is the big one, I think because dogging it for a single game might not contribute to a loss, but a player who has the mindset of dogging it from time to time will cost his team games that a guy who takes it “one day at a time” (given similar levels of talent). In football they talk about not taking plays off rather than entire games.
Water viscosity as pertains to playoff football
Incredible
by jhmg16 on Jan 5, 2011 5:32 PM PST reply actions 1 recs
It really is kind of increadible how things have fallen into place recently.
Trying to not be too hopeful still…but wow what a day.
It's almost like we're the Falcons.
Or, how much things have fallen into place is about how much they benefit from the chaotic disorder of the universe in a given quarter of football.
It goes back, really.
To all those receiver drops against the Rams and that ridiculous spot they gave our future franchise QB MRob for the first down.
This wooden soul of mine, it cannot ever climb from places it has fallen: In between where light can shine. It never falls in line, it barely has a spine, like branches severed from the vine. Like it was faulty by design.
The real measurable value of a Seahawks playoff appearance is that I get to put off the inevitable "what am I supposed to do with my time and energy now?" feeling that comes at season's end
I read a few posts on other teams’ SB sites and realized that, holy shit, the season is over for 20 NFL teams. For some reason, probably many reasons completely personal to me, it’s going to be harder than usual to not have Sundays to look forward to. Here’s hoping that’s not something I have to face after Saturday’s game.
Rations!
Come and get em!
This wooden soul of mine, it cannot ever climb from places it has fallen: In between where light can shine. It never falls in line, it barely has a spine, like branches severed from the vine. Like it was faulty by design.
So not only will the Seahawks beat the Saints on the field
but we’ll do so with SCIENCE!!
Love it.
Always like a little rational hope, no matter how paltry to go with my…
… completely…
…irrational….
…HOPE!!!
SEA!
How much of a playoff run D can you attribute to the weather?... as opposed to an actual dynamic of the run defense?
We know that weather tends to get much worse in January than it was in October…. do you guys think that THIS may be the largest factor in why run D’s become more valuable in the playoffs?
Some more very interesting stats:
Saints ratio of offense per game was 66 pass – 34 rush…
Seattle was about 58 pass – 42% rush.
Surprisingly the Saints mustered just 1519 yards of rushing to Seattle’s 1424.
In a “bad weather game”, where an additional focus may be placed on running games… the loss of NO’s best two runners may be enough to drop them below Seattle where effectiveness is concerned.
Dammit.. Phrased awkwardly...
Subject line should have said: How much of a Run D’s effectiveness can one attribute to the weather… as opposed to an actual dynamic of the run defense itself.
Viscous rain?
My God, are we playing in K-Y? You guys must have some pollution problem up there.
It was worth the wait.
You've never been to Seattle in the winter, huh.
I am going to come into your house at night and rec up the place.
John is spot on with the viscosity thingy
The dynamic viscosity of water is 80% greater at 32 degrees than it is at 80 degrees … moreover, the kinematic viscosity of water is a whopping 107% greater at 32 vs 80 … compound that with the game being at Quest meaning that all that viscous water will be vibrating with the 12th man … its all good.
Dynamic and Kinematic Viscosity of Water vs Temperature.
Temp / DynVisc / KineVisc
32 / 3.732 / 1.924
40 / 3.228 / 1.664
50 / 2.730 / 1.407
60 / 2.344 / 1.210
70 / 2.034 / 1.052
80 / 1.791 / 0.926
90 / 1.500 / 0.823
100 / 1.423 / 0.738
I think so
but it also might make the water that does stick to the ball less slippery.
by Greetings from the Lord Humongous! on Jan 6, 2011 3:38 PM PST up reply actions
Hope Rains O'er Me
I can see it now, the Seahawks upset the Saints 10-7 in a rain-drenched typhoon of misery for the Saints. The Packers annihilate the Eagles.
And next week, we face a rematch of our best game of the season when we whooped the Bears in Chicago. But weather is our fear – cold, snowy… not Seahawk strengths… but wait, a warm blast from the South comes in and turns that cold and snow into… you guessed it … rain! And the Seahawks advance to the NFC Championship Game, 10-7! Meanwhile, the Packers annihilate the Falcons.
NFC Championship Game… at Qwest! And forecast calls for rain…
Man, if Dallas didn’t have that damn roof, I’d like our chances to win it all!
by Mariner Optimist on Jan 6, 2011 8:18 AM PST reply actions
If Green Bay wins this week, we play the Falcons, no?
Or do they reseed based on record?
by sadface on Jan 6, 2011 10:21 AM PST via mobile up reply actions
Lowest against highest
If Green Bay wins, they play the Falcons. #6 at #1. You would play Chicago. In viscous rain.
It was worth the wait.
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