Joined: Sat Oct 16, 2004 10:53 pm Posts: 20537 Location: The City Of Trees
In the spirit of Nick's general sports decade thread, I thought it would be interesting to take a stab at ranking all of the NFL teams by their performance throughout the decade. I have done so, and for another small RM project, I decided that I'll do a short write up of each team, how their decade went, and why I ranked them where I did. With one exception, I kept my criteria simple:
--Regular season record --Number of playoff appearances & wins --Number of Super Bowl appearances & wins --Consistency
That last one is the complicated one. I didn't feel that teams that were generally bad through the last ten years but had one lucky year within that span should get an uneven benefit. Thus, I ranked the teams using a formula that puts the consistently good teams at the top, the inconsistent ones in the middle, and the consistently bad ones at the bottom. If you're really interested in the ugly math, reveal the spoiler.
The best way to measure consistency is by standard deviation. Unfortunately, standard deviation does not yield negative numbers, which is essential to differentiate between consistently good and bad. Thus, I had to make some adjustments to get the approximate measurement I wanted. Here were the steps I took:
1. Get the standard deviation of wins for each team. 2. Get the pure deviation of each team based on the average of all teams' standard deviations. This is done by taking the difference between the team's standard deviation and average of all the standard deviations: Avg(StdDev(All))-StdDev(Team) 3. Normalize the pure deviation to numbers relevant to how many wins and seasons there were in the decade. To do this, I did the following. I multiplied the result in Step 2 by the average overall number of wins (8), and then added to that figure the average wins the team actually experienced in the decade (wins divided by 10 for all teams except the Texans, who are divided by eight). Formula: Team Wins/Years Played + Step 2 result * 8 4. To flip consistency into a bad number for the bad teams, multiply by -1 if the team's regular season percentage is less than .500
My goal is to hopefully reveal these one a day, concluding around the Super Bowl. However, the playoffs this year could screw this plan up, so we shall see what happens. The first four or five are locked in stone, however, and I'll reveal those for sure before the round of playoffs this weekend.
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Joined: Mon Oct 18, 2004 5:51 am Posts: 17078 Location: TX
I strongly disagree about the importance of consistency throughout a decade. Football is about championships, and championships are a measure of a single season. To me, it is much more important the number of times a team approaches, or reaches, a championship. The number of seasons they have at 9-7 instead of 5-11 really doesn't make that much difference to me. I'm not sure if this would even make any difference in the rankings... all I'm saying is I think it's natural for teams to have bad seasons, unless you're the Patriots or Colts.
How are you going to rank a team like the Eagles or Chargers? This should be interesting.
Joined: Sat Oct 16, 2004 10:53 pm Posts: 20537 Location: The City Of Trees
Buffalohed wrote:
I strongly disagree about the importance of consistency throughout a decade. Football is about championships, and championships are a measure of a single season. To me, it is much more important the number of times a team approaches, or reaches, a championship. The number of seasons they have at 9-7 instead of 5-11 really doesn't make that much difference to me. I'm not sure if this would even make any difference in the rankings... all I'm saying is I think it's natural for teams to have bad seasons, unless you're the Patriots or Colts.
The reason I'm using it is to mainly assist in differentiating between the non-Super Bowl winning teams. You obviously can't contrast a thing between two teams that don't have that same thing.
Joined: Sat Oct 16, 2004 11:15 pm Posts: 25452 Location: Under my wing like Sanford & Son Gender: Male
Consistency should definitely be rewarded. As much as I hate the eagles their string of seasons with a certain amount of wins/playoff appearance is pretty ridiculous.
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Joined: Sun Oct 17, 2004 3:08 am Posts: 22978 Gender: Male
Orpheus wrote:
Consistency should definitely be rewarded. As much as I hate the eagles their string of seasons with a certain amount of wins/playoff appearance is pretty ridiculous.
for sure, and that makes them better than a team like, lets say, the bears, or cardinals, etc... teams that had a good season or two, but not the consistancy...
but the question comes in... does that make them better than the ravens? a team that won the super bowl, but had a couple of more down years?
Joined: Sun Oct 17, 2004 3:08 am Posts: 22978 Gender: Male
also...
1.Pats 2.Colts 3.Steelers 4. Eagles 5. Ravens 6. Giants 7. Titans 8. Packers 9. Chargers 10. Broncos 11. Tampa 12. Seattle 13. Minnesota 14. New Orleans 15. Dallas 16. Chicago 17. Miami 18. Carolina 19. Arizona 20. Jacksonville 21. Falcons 22. Jets 23. Bengals 24. St. Louis 25. Washington 26. Oakland (says a lot that a superbowl team from the decade is this low...) 27. 49ers 28. Chiefs 29. Texans 30. Browns 31. Buffalo 32. The Mighty Honolulu Blue and Silver
The decade began on an ominous note for the Lions. They had just concluded an acrimonous relationship with Barry Sanders, one of the franchise's greatest players in history, by successfully forcing him to repay his signing bonus after abruptly retiring. However, this sour note would be nothing compared to the ten years that awaited. Eight of them can be directly attributed to a name that may elicit more curses than Claude Lemieux in the Motor City: Matt Millen. Under his leadership as general manager, none of the pieces came even close to fitting with each other. The coaches (Marty Mornihweg, Steve Mariucci, Rod Marinelli) and players (Joey Harrington, Charles Rogers, Mike Williams) were nothing short of mitigated disasters.
Owner William Clay Ford was roundly and frequently criticized for not firing Millen, even as the losing seasons kept piling up. When Ford finally pulled the plug on Millen in the middle of the 2008 season, it was too late to pull out of the death spiral. That year, the Lions achieved the ultimate humiliation in modern NFL history: the 0-16 season. The new regime of Tom Lewand as GM and Jim Schwartz as head coach will guide fans out of a decade to forget, but early returns are not promising: 2009 offered a 2-14 campaign, which included giving the 1-15 Rams their only win of the season.
To conclude with an aside, you may be wondering why the Lions registered a merely below average ranking of 20th in consistency. The answer was that the 0-16 season was so bad that it shot the deviation from the 4.2 average wins per season through the cellar. Take away 2008, and the 9-7 2000 season, and the Lions would rank second to last in that category.
Joined: Sun Oct 17, 2004 1:14 am Posts: 37778 Location: OmaGOD!!! Gender: Male
I always like to remind Lions fans that in 2007, the week 10 match-up between the 6-2 Giants and 6-2 Lions was the marquee game of the week, featuring what most considered to be a possible playoff preview.
The Lions lost to the Giants and began a run of 1 win out of the next 26 games and 3 of the next 40 (and counting).
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Joined: Mon Oct 18, 2004 11:36 pm Posts: 25824 Location: south jersey
edzeppe wrote:
also...
1.Pats 2.Colts 3.Steelers 4. Eagles 5. Ravens 6. Giants 7. Titans 8. Packers 9. Chargers 10. Broncos 11. Tampa 12. Seattle 13. Minnesota 14. New Orleans 15. Dallas 16. Chicago 17. Miami 18. Carolina 19. Arizona 20. Jacksonville 21. Falcons 22. Jets 23. Bengals 24. St. Louis 25. Washington 26. Oakland (says a lot that a superbowl team from the decade is this low...) 27. 49ers 28. Chiefs 29. Texans 30. Browns 31. Buffalo 32. The Mighty Honolulu Blue and Silver
just glancing at this, id say the packers are a bit too high and carolina a bit too low. i still have nightmares about the panthers beating the eagles though so i may be biased
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Joined: Mon Oct 25, 2004 7:55 pm Posts: 1461 Location: PA
edzeppe wrote:
also...
1.Pats 2.Colts 3.Steelers 4. Eagles 5. Ravens 6. Giants 7. Titans 8. Packers 9. Chargers 10. Broncos 11. Tampa 12. Seattle 13. Minnesota 14. New Orleans 15. Dallas 16. Chicago 17. Miami 18. Carolina 19. Arizona 20. Jacksonville 21. Falcons 22. Jets 23. Bengals 24. St. Louis 25. Washington 26. Oakland (says a lot that a superbowl team from the decade is this low...) 27. 49ers 28. Chiefs 29. Texans 30. Browns 31. Buffalo 32. The Mighty Honolulu Blue and Silver
Buffalo is pretty low here. They had 6 seasons where they won between 7 and 9 games, two seasons with 6 wins, one with 5 and one with 3. I'd say they were on the bad side of mediocre for most of the decade, but better than 31st.
Joined: Sun Feb 26, 2006 3:28 am Posts: 28541 Location: PORTLAND, ME
Stelly wrote:
edzeppe wrote:
also...
1.Pats 2.Colts 3.Steelers 4. Eagles 5. Ravens 6. Giants 7. Titans 8. Packers 9. Chargers 10. Broncos 11. Tampa 12. Seattle 13. Minnesota 14. New Orleans 15. Dallas 16. Chicago 17. Miami 18. Carolina 19. Arizona 20. Jacksonville 21. Falcons 22. Jets 23. Bengals 24. St. Louis 25. Washington 26. Oakland (says a lot that a superbowl team from the decade is this low...) 27. 49ers 28. Chiefs 29. Texans 30. Browns 31. Buffalo 32. The Mighty Honolulu Blue and Silver
Buffalo is pretty low here. They had 6 seasons where they won between 7 and 9 games, two seasons with 6 wins, one with 5 and one with 3. I'd say they were on the bad side of mediocre for most of the decade, but better than 31st.
i'm sure GH's formula has them higher, that was just edzeppe's attempt. not to worry.
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