I love Tom Brady, I love Bill Belichick. I love football. However, these conversations about Eli all seem the same on this board. I feel like I have made this same reply, just worded differently on other threads.
Brady also got hurt during that game, which isn't exactly lucky.
The Patriots being good has stopped some of these teams from winning 12. The Dolphins went 10-6 last year with the Pats sweeping them, 11-5 in 2008 splitting with the Pats, 10-6 in 2003 swept by the Pats, and 11-5 in 2001 splitting. The Jets won 11 in 2010 splitting and 10-6 in 2004 swept.
The Patriots' record against other teams is relevant to how lucky they are to be in a division with BUF / MIA / NYJ. It suggests that's not especially a source of luck because the Patriots have a good record against just about everyone.
Two highly mediocre organizations (Jets, Dolphins) and one consistently poor one (Buffalo) is still a bad set of divisional opponents in aggregate.
Right. But just looking directly at the records and performance of BUF, MIA, and NYJ (as you did) makes a lot more sense.
This is amazing. Are you saying the numbers don't matter, despite them showing the Pats have been just as good, in some cases better, against the entire league as they have against division opponents? On SoSH, a somewhat statistical website, you're saying the "eye" test is more valuable than the actual numbers compiled over a decade and a half?
Sort of. I mean, it's a bad set compared to what 31 other teams face on average, but it's not necessarily a bad set compared to what the top of the division team faces on average. If we compare the bottom three teams of each division, the Jets / Dolphins / Bills combine for a .450 winning percentage, which ranks 5th out of 8, which doesn't even factor in that those teams have to play the best team (the Patriots) so much. The best team is always taking a big piece of the pie.
I understand the philosophical point, but the Patriots have been so good that it doesn't really matter. They have been the #1 seed in three of the five championship years (and on three other occasions) and the #2 seed in the other two (and on four other occasions). Maybe if they played with another tough team they would have been squeezed out in 2005 or had to play a wild card game in 2009 instead of a divisional game, but it doesn't move the needle in the seasons that we think about when we think about the dynasty.
I'm saying that you're looking at the wrong numbers. If the question is whether the BUF/MIA/NYJ trio has been significantly worse over the 2001-2017 period than three NFL teams taken at random, or even the worst three teams taken from most other divisions, than just look at their records or their DVOA (which would adjust for the fact that they have to play the Patriots twice a year). Answering that question by looking at the Patriots' record against them versus other teams makes very little sense.
Agreed. But the advantage of facing consistent mediocrity rather than higher variance is relevant here, for the reasons stated in my post. Its not just about total winning percentage.
I think that's true to some degree. But if they played against another elite team twice a year on occasion, they might not have been the #1 or #2 seed so often. A single loss is often the difference between a bye or not.
I wonder to what extent Pats dominance has hurt other the other teams in the division by putting pressure on the organizations to make big moves and splashes.
You might lose a game to a 12-4 team that you wouldn't to a 9-7 team, but you might lose a game to a 7-9 team that you wouldn't to a 4-12 team. This seems to be coming back to a point that's best addressed by overall record (where the 2/3/4 AFCE teams are not remarkable).
If it doesn't affect their win percentage much, it wouldn't affect division titles / byes that much either. Imagine the Patriots and Steelers swap divisions and the Patriots have to compete with the Ravens. The Patriots have had a better record than the Ravens every year since 2008 (when they both went 11-5; you have to go back to 2006 to find a year where Baltimore won more games). The Patriots aren't limping into the playoffs at 10-6 and getting hot at the right time; they're consistently one of the two best teams in the conference.
I think this is a great point. They can cut 1st round picks after only 2 years, make trades like the Cassius March trade and then release him halfway through the season, etc. Huge advantage and something that snowballs.
I’ll get right on it...Just wondering if it would make sense to move all the Pats luck talk in this thread to the other thread discussing whether they have been lucky?
It hasn't affected their W/L much because we're talking about maybe 5 wins over 16 seasons. But those wins can be crucial in determining seeding. The two best teams in the conference often aren't seeded 1-2. E.g. in 2012, Seattle went 11-5 and finished #1 in DVOA, but was a wild-card because they split with SF and SF won the division at 11-4-1. Seattle lost on the road in the divisional round on a last-second field goal.
Part of the reason it doesn't happen to the Patriots is because they don't typically finish with records that low. They've won at least 12 games every season since 2010. Last year they faced a 10-5 Miami team in the last week of the season, but that game didn't decide the division because the Patriots were 13-2.
OK, but the exact opposite happened in 2015 (Denver won their won H2H meeting in Denver in OT, the two teams finished with the same record, Denver got HFA for the playoffs and won the Super Bowl). Denver got the 1 seed and the Patriots the 2 seed in three of those four years, always by less than a game. The Patriots obviously get fewer byes if they play in the same division as the Broncos, but they might get HFA more often. You could argue they might have won more Super Bowls in this scenario, and probably it would have turned out about the same.
Yeah, but (1) that 12-4 team might be you out for the division and (2) even beyond that, the extent of year-to-year variation on team quality, not just the average team quality over many years, is important as a constraint on consistent success. If your divisional opponents are very good in aggregate one year and very bad the next year, its going to be harder for an elite team to get two byes than if your divisional opponents are average in both years.
The main bit of luck on that play was that the refs didn't call the multiple holdings that occurred. Contrast that to last SB when they actually (correctly) called holding on a crucial 4th quarter play to knock the Falcons out of FG range.
I had nightmares for like 2 weeks after that game where Eli would be tackled by dozens of Patriots, including tree-man Patriots that would spring up through the ground to sack him, and he would somehow throw the completion to Tyree.
I agree, neither the Giants nor the Pats deserved to be playing in that game. It should have been Niners and Ravens, which ended up being the matchup the following year. The reason I wrote that it didn't result in a title is that plenty of teams have had luck in single playoff games. Nearly every playoff game, really. But we were focused on isolating when the Pats got extremely lucky during any of their title runs.
Jacquian Williams and Devin Thomas made a great a play happen in overtime. The first one by Kyle Williams was the ghost of Roger Craig.
The 49ers didn't even convert a third down until the very last play of the game. The New York Football Giants deserve a teeny bit of credit besides luck.
This is about saying the New York Football Giants shouldn't have even been in SB 46. First, they won the Super Bowl. Second, in the AFCCG that same day, the Patriots defense played tremendous and made up for the offense and special teams miscues. Brady had two interceptions, and two more with penalties on the play.
And another lineman admitted to yanking on the jersey of another Pats' player on that play. Two absolutely egregious holdings on that play - on the order of the Chris Long takedown late in last year's SB - that happened literally right in front of a ref who was staring straight at it, and no flag. Grrrrrrrrrrrrr
The antidote is the Butler interception and last year’s comeback against Atlanta. 5 and 2 is about what the record should be.
The Giants were in trouble when their wide receivers started dropping like flies. Injuries killed them at that position. So knowing that, it is hard to understand how Manning became the fall guy. But I guess when you lose a bunch of games, someone has to pay the piper.
You said the New York Football Giants shouldn't have even been in 46. The 49ers should have been in the Super Bowl?
I don't really follow what you are saying here. The Ravens deserved to be there over the Pats in 2011, but they probably shouldn't have been there in 2012 due to the video you linked.
