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Rivers McCown wrote it for SBNation. He's a newish voice on the Houston Texans blogger scene, and he's KILLING it. You guys should bookmark that site and keep reading his stuff for sure.
-Injuries are a part of the formula. One thing I thought was interesting was when the article asserted that "the Texans WILL have more injuries in 2010 compared to 2009." Thats an outrageous claim with no tangible evidence other than league trends to back it up. I don't care what stats you use, injuries to an NFL team cannot be predicted with calculated numbers.
Certainly, I don't know for sure. But one thing they may be looking at is how many of the base roster is coming back off of 2009 injuries.........making them higher risk for reinjury in 2010.
"-Injuries are a part of the formula. One thing I thought was interesting was when the article asserted that "the Texans WILL have more injuries in 2010 compared to 2009." Thats an outrageous claim with no tangible evidence other than league trends to back it up. I don't care what stats you use, injuries to an NFL team cannot be predicted with calculated numbers."
I somewhat disagree with this part of your post. Sure, freak injuries are unpredictable. But depending on how tough a coach runs a training camp, and how good the S&C/training staff are, also plays a role in the team's injuries.
Although I certainly believe that Houston has a lot of young talent on defense, the parts haven't added up to anything valuable yet -- even with the eighth-healthiest unit in football last year, the Texans' defense was 18th in the league in DVOA. They're going to suffer more injuries this year (even without including the Cushing suspension), and our projection system thinks the increase in injuries will be more important than the growth of Houston's young players
Yep! I follow him on twitter so I can read all his stuff. Classic!
I assume that you also follow me on Twitter, else I'll get my feelings hurt.
@HoustonDiehards
Really? Starting a 1st round rookie CB was a major determining factor in these teams not making the playoffs? Only 12 of the leagues 32 teams make the playoff in a given year (37.5%). 4 of the 15 teams starting 1st round rookie CB made the playoffs (26.7%) So the 10.8% difference is because of the 1st round CBs? Hell, just start a 2nd round or later CB, then.Since 2000, 15 first-round cornerbacks have started 10 or more games in their rookie seasons, and only 4 of them have made the playoffs. Cornerbacks usually take a few years to develop, and early in their careers they make easy targets.
I trust my eyes.
How many wins did they project for us last season?
These are some flaws in the formula I've detected:
-Injuries are a part of the formula. One thing I thought was interesting was when the article asserted that "the Texans WILL have more injuries in 2010 compared to 2009." Thats an outrageous claim with no tangible evidence other than league trends to back it up. I don't care what stats you use, injuries to an NFL team cannot be predicted with calculated numbers.
Certainly, I don't know for sure. But one thing they may be looking at is how many of the base roster is coming back off of 2009 injuries.........making them higher risk for reinjury in 2010.
It's utterly useless to use data from the previous year to predict the future.
"-Injuries are a part of the formula. One thing I thought was interesting was when the article asserted that "the Texans WILL have more injuries in 2010 compared to 2009." Thats an outrageous claim with no tangible evidence other than league trends to back it up. I don't care what stats you use, injuries to an NFL team cannot be predicted with calculated numbers."
I somewhat disagree with this part of your post. Sure, freak injuries are unpredictable. But depending on how tough a coach runs a training camp, and how good the S&C/training staff are, also plays a role in the team's injuries.
Neither of these were mentioned as factors in the formula but I agree they would make sense. This is what the article says about injuries:
Originally Posted by CloakNNNdagger
Certainly, I don't know for sure. But one thing they may be looking at is how many of the base roster is coming back off of 2009 injuries.........making them higher risk for reinjury in 2010.
Originally Posted by TheRealJoker
"-Injuries are a part of the formula. One thing I thought was interesting was when the article asserted that "the Texans WILL have more injuries in 2010 compared to 2009." Thats an outrageous claim with no tangible evidence other than league trends to back it up. I don't care what stats you use, injuries to an NFL team cannot be predicted with calculated numbers."
I somewhat disagree with this part of your post. Sure, freak injuries are unpredictable. But depending on how tough a coach runs a training camp, and how good the S&C/training staff are, also plays a role in the team's injuries.
The bold part is what I'm objecting to. So because we were the 8th healthiest team in football last year, what goes up must come down and we'll be an injury-nagged team this year? Thats quite a reach.
And I have a discrepancy with their "healthiest football team" ranking. That doesn't measure the importance of the injured players. A team could be the healthiest team in the league for a year but lost their starting QB week 1 and lose 12 games that season because of it.
It's utterly useless to use data from the previous year to predict the future.
Teams don't have the same players they did.
They are coaching changes that will affect the level of play of some team
I will say this for all the nay-sayers.
This will be the most important season in Texans history...
This is our first opportunity to have back to back winning seasons. Sure, it wouldn't warrant the fanfare of last years first winning season, but if they don't finish 9-7 or better, for what ever reason, I think that will set the team, the franchise, back several years.
It wouldn't matter what happens to the coaching situation after that, IMO, the team would be devastated, and it will take years to recover.
But I will say this, for the stats. Sure it is worthless to predict future outcomes based on previous data. But the idea should be to look for trends. FO numbers are especially useful, I think, because the numbers are about as normalized as you can get them. Which, I think is better for head to head comparisons.
I haven't done the work, of studying our trends from game to game. But I have to believe (based on what my eyes tell me) that we were a better team, a totally different team really, at the end of 2009, than we were at the beginning.
No doubt in my mind, if we had started 2009 with that team, we would have won 11 games.
So there is no doubt in my mind, that even though we will play the "toughest" schedule in 2010, some of those teams on our schedule are going to look "not as tough" at the end of the year as they do now, and we will be part of the reason.
Isn't this based on the same DVOAs that were widely proclaimed by this board last year as the gold standard of statistics (when, coincidentally, they predicted great improvement for the Texans)? As I recall, they were frequently cited as concrete proof of the direction the Texans were headed. They also were touted as a better indicator of the team than the much maligned win/loss record.
I believe that cacophony I detect is the sound of tunes changing.
The Pencil Neck said:Statistics tell you what is and what was.
We don't have any statistics for this team or any of the current teams in the NFL. When we get into the season and start piling up statistics for this team, then I'll be back on FO's bandwagon. They've got some great stats and those stats can help us look for what's going right/wrong with the team.
But when it comes to prediction? No. There's no statistic out there that can predict the future. They predicted we'd win 6 games last season. They were wrong. Now they're using statistics from last season to try to predict what's going to happen this season and they've got us winning 5 games. When it comes to prediction, they're the same as any "expert" out there putting together power rankings and trying to predict what's going to happen in the coming season.
Their prediction is largely based on how tough our schedule looks. But their definition of the "toughness" of the schedule is based on how strong these teams were last year. That's as good a method as any to predict the future but it's also not something you should bet on, either.
I don't give these stats any more or less weight than I did last year - which wasn't very much. I do think FO have an interesting approach and can give some insight into some aspects of the team. I also think that insight varies from team to team and is surrounded by a lot of noise, so it's predictive use is limited.
I'll still look at the win/loss record to see how the team is doing; I don't care what the DVOAs say.
I will say this for all the nay-sayers.
This will be the most important season in Texans history...
This is our first opportunity to have back to back winning seasons. Sure, it wouldn't warrant the fanfare of last years first winning season, but if they don't finish 9-7 or better, for what ever reason, I think that will set the team, the franchise, back several years.
It wouldn't matter what happens to the coaching situation after that, IMO, the team would be devastated, and it will take years to recover.
But I will say this, for the stats. Sure it is worthless to predict future outcomes based on previous data. But the idea should be to look for trends. FO numbers are especially useful, I think, because the numbers are about as normalized as you can get them. Which, I think is better for head to head comparisons.
I haven't done the work, of studying our trends from game to game. But I have to believe (based on what my eyes tell me) that we were a better team, a totally different team really, at the end of 2009, than we were at the beginning.
No doubt in my mind, if we had started 2009 with that team, we would have won 11 games.
So there is no doubt in my mind, that even though we will play the "toughest" schedule in 2010, some of those teams on our schedule are going to look "not as tough" at the end of the year as they do now, and we will be part of the reason.
Isn't this based on the same DVOAs that were widely proclaimed by this board last year as the gold standard of statistics (when, coincidentally, they predicted great improvement for the Texans)? As I recall, they were frequently cited as concrete proof of the direction the Texans were headed. They also were touted as a better indicator of the team than the much maligned win/loss record.
I believe that cacophony I detect is the sound of tunes changing.
The Pencil Neck said:I think it helps to have everything at your fingertips because the W/L record can be just as deceptive as any other stat.
I'd say the W/L record is less deceptive of a team's performance than most other stats, and even less deceptive than the opinion of a team's hard core fans.
Most sports put a premium on that W/L ratio when all is said and done.
Goldensilence said:At this point I would stop trying to argue. This one goes under:
"Best team to not make the playoffs or win their division!"
Runner said:You're right. I'll attempt to remove myself from the fray.
I'd say the W/L record is less deceptive of a team's performance than most other stats, and even less deceptive than the opinion of a team's hard core fans.
Most sports put a premium on that W/L ratio when all is said and done.