More division wins than non-division wins

April 5, 2013 Checkdowns

The Rams finished with the best division record in the NFC West last year at 4-1-1, but St. Louis went only 3-7 in games against non-NFC West opponents. The Jaguars were 0-10 in non-division games last season, but beat both the Colts and Titans to finish 2-4 against the AFC South. Since the merger, three [...]

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Previewing the NFC Championship Game: San Francisco at Atlanta

January 17, 2013 Current Events

A couple of interesting notes, courtesy of Mike Sando on ESPN.com. The first is a good bit of trivia: Jim Harbaugh joins George Seifert, Barry Switzer and Rex Ryan as the only head coaches to reach the AFC or NFC Championship Game in each of their first two seasons as an NFL head coach. The [...]

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Previewing the Divisional Round of the NFL Playoffs – Sunday

January 13, 2013 Current Events

Yesterday, I previewed Saturday’s games with um, mixed results (skip the Denver-Baltimore preview and just read the San Francisco-Green Bay breakdown twice). Let’s take another crack at it by examining Sunday’s matchups. Seattle Seahawks (11-5) (+1) at Atlanta Falcons (13-3), Sunday, 1:00PM ET Once again, Atlanta is tasked with facing a dominant wildcard team. Is [...]

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Comparing Matt Ryan to the previous Mayors of Chokesville

January 10, 2013 Quarterbacks

For the second time in three years, the Atlanta Falcons are the NFC’s number one seed. Just like in 2010, the Falcons started this season 13-2 but ended the year with only 11 Pythagorean wins. In 2010, Atlanta lost its first game to the #6 seed Packers, who sported the highest SRS of any NFC [...]

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Checkdowns: Deja vu for the Falcons?

January 9, 2013 SRS

Much has been written this season arguing that the Falcons are not as good as their 13-3 record. Conversely, the Seahawks have emerged as a favorite among some in our advanced statistical community: Brian Burke ranks Seattle as the third most efficient team, Aaron Schatz ranks them number one, and Pro-Football-Reference ranks Seattle second in [...]

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Season in review: AFC and NFC South

January 7, 2013 Review

Last week I reviewed the seasons of the teams in the AFC East and NFC East and in the AFC North and NFC North. Today we’ll review the interesting seasons from the AFC and NFC South divisions. In the AFC South, I had the bottom three teams projected for between 5 and 6 wins for [...]

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Game Scripts, Part III – 2012 results

December 5, 2012 Statgeekery

Last week, I introduced the concept of Game Scripts in Part I and Part II of this series. The short explanation is that a team’s Game Script score is simply the average score during each second of every game. Today, we’re going to look at some data from the 2012 season, although I have not [...]

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NYT Fifth Down: Post-week 12

November 27, 2012 NYT

My article for the New York Times this week takes a look at one interesting statistic for each of the eight division winners.   Atlanta Falcons – Record in Close Games In 2010, Atlanta raced to a 10-2 record on the strength of an improbable 7-1 record in games decided by 7 or fewer points. [...]

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A good shorthand to remember whether or not to go for 2

November 12, 2012 Coaches

Falcons head coach Mike Smith made a couple of interesting decisions in the 4th quarter of Atlanta’s loss to the Saints on Sunday. And by interesting, I mean conservative. The first strategic blunder came when his team scored a touchdown with 13 minutes remaining, to cut the lead to 28-23 pending the point after. Smith’s [...]

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Checkdowns: Updating Atlanta’s odds of going undefeated

November 6, 2012 Checkdowns

Sunday morning, I noted that the Falcons had a 2.4% chance of going undefeated and that the team most likely give them their first loss was the Dallas Cowboys. After Atlanta’s victory on Sunday night, they halfway to perfection. This is the first time in franchise history the Falcons have started off 8-0, although star [...]

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