Damn... I take that back.. I thought this was the Pats Pulpit article that had it's tongue firmly in cheek from the outset.edmunddantes said:
This really made an actual headline? Albeit USA today... omg... lol....
CSI Nevermind--Excuses for Why Patriots Opponents Lose
- Thread starter RedOctober3829
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This really made an actual headline? Albeit USA today... omg... lol....
Yeah, I thought of this after my reply. You're right - I was thinking about a different application of the same phenomenon.singaporesoxfan said:
There's also the issue that the probability of any one team winning exactly 12 coin flips out of 25 is much less than 50%.EricFeczko said:
It reminds me a little of... "You know, the most amazing thing happened to me tonight. I was coming here, on the way to the lecture, and I came in through the parking lot. And you won't believe what happened. I saw a car with the license plate ARW 357. Can you imagine? Of all the millions of license plates in the state, what was the chance that I would see that particular one tonight? Amazing!"
Ferm Sheller said:
Right. I was asking if the data they collected was from Pat's road games (meaning it included only Pat's calls) or if it was the last 25 flips the Pats were involved with (meaning opponents called the toss incorrectly at Gillette).
This is what I don't get about the travesty that is called Roger Goodell.
If I'm an NFL team (I'm not, by the way) I have to consider that the utter mismanagement of the message could just as easily come down on me as on Kraft. Precedents of idiocy and unfairness have been set. How could you ever trust the guy in charge to do the right thing down the road?
If I'm an NFL team I have to consider the un-muzzled voices of incompetently run teams making false accusations against me in order to deflect attention away from their own failures - with impunity.
If I'm an NFL team, I have to consider whether or not this abortion of a front office - who is currently on my side - could just as easily flip (out) one day and use their press mouthpieces to gin up non-issues in order to make NFL governance appear better than it really is.
All under the banner of "Integrity of the Game".
Put another way - would you now invest in a corporation that had Goodell and team as the Board of Directors? Or would you demand a re-assessment.
If I'm an NFL team (I'm not, by the way) I have to consider that the utter mismanagement of the message could just as easily come down on me as on Kraft. Precedents of idiocy and unfairness have been set. How could you ever trust the guy in charge to do the right thing down the road?
If I'm an NFL team I have to consider the un-muzzled voices of incompetently run teams making false accusations against me in order to deflect attention away from their own failures - with impunity.
If I'm an NFL team, I have to consider whether or not this abortion of a front office - who is currently on my side - could just as easily flip (out) one day and use their press mouthpieces to gin up non-issues in order to make NFL governance appear better than it really is.
All under the banner of "Integrity of the Game".
Put another way - would you now invest in a corporation that had Goodell and team as the Board of Directors? Or would you demand a re-assessment.
Perhaps a more relevant question: of the 6 times they've lost the coin flip, how often have the Patriots still ended up getting the ball first in the 2nd half?
Or more to the point, since 2008 when the League started allowing teams the option to defer, how many times have teams chosen to take the ball instead of kick?
When a team takes the ball, they may have good reason for doing so – game plan, weather, etc. But when they do it against the Patriots they are helping their opponent carry out an established clock strategy which maximizes their ball possession skills (they led the league last year in 2Q points) and, effectively, minimizes their own. In taking the ball, they may be helping themselves. But make no mistake: they are definitely helping the Patriots.
http://www.patspulpit.com/2014/10/19/7004159/the-patriots-defer-to-the-second-half-with-great-results
While millions of dollars are being spent to speculate on ways that the Patriots are supposedly cheating, it would be nice if even one of these sites that supposedly uses specializes in reporting on sports data were to catalog and analyze all the stupid things the Patriots' opponents do over and over that you could actually PROVE contribute to teams losing to the Patriots more than 70% of the time.
Pure speculation on my part. But my guess is that a "They Hate Us Because They Ain't Us" list would be pretty long.
Or more to the point, since 2008 when the League started allowing teams the option to defer, how many times have teams chosen to take the ball instead of kick?
When a team takes the ball, they may have good reason for doing so – game plan, weather, etc. But when they do it against the Patriots they are helping their opponent carry out an established clock strategy which maximizes their ball possession skills (they led the league last year in 2Q points) and, effectively, minimizes their own. In taking the ball, they may be helping themselves. But make no mistake: they are definitely helping the Patriots.
http://www.patspulpit.com/2014/10/19/7004159/the-patriots-defer-to-the-second-half-with-great-results
While millions of dollars are being spent to speculate on ways that the Patriots are supposedly cheating, it would be nice if even one of these sites that supposedly uses specializes in reporting on sports data were to catalog and analyze all the stupid things the Patriots' opponents do over and over that you could actually PROVE contribute to teams losing to the Patriots more than 70% of the time.
Pure speculation on my part. But my guess is that a "They Hate Us Because They Ain't Us" list would be pretty long.
I don't think anybody is seriously concerned/suspicious about this. The press outlet(s) are simply saying "Hey, it's been about a week since we had a Patriots cheating story, what can we throw out there before this week's games to get some clicks?"
drleather2001 said:
I agree. I don't think anyone is seriously suggesting that this is a thing. I think it's a remarkable coincidence, and everyone is recognizing it as such. Nobody remotely in their right mind would suggest that somehow the Patriots are cheating on the coin toss.
How does a team go from three consecutive losing seasons on coin flips to all of a sudden winning at a 75% clip? Don't give me any of that statistical mumo jumbo, something happened in early 2014 to turn their fortune around.
My current theory is they used black magic to harvest Irish luck from Notre Dame alum Jonas Gray after bringing him up from the practice squad. They then gave him meaningful snaps in a handful of games to throw everyone off before surreptitiously throwing out his luckless husk to be claimed by some other team. Prove me wrong!
My current theory is they used black magic to harvest Irish luck from Notre Dame alum Jonas Gray after bringing him up from the practice squad. They then gave him meaningful snaps in a handful of games to throw everyone off before surreptitiously throwing out his luckless husk to be claimed by some other team. Prove me wrong!
I also thought this must be the issue, with the CBS article calculating for winning exactly 19 flips. But it turns out they did say "probability of winning it at least 19 times", and the .0073 number is the correct cumulative probability. I verified it with an online binomial calculator.
The real issue has been alluded here:
and here:
The original Globe article mentioning the 19 out of 25 was doing data mining, in the pejorative sense, picking things like endpoint, called vs. involved, etc. to get an interesting result. FiveThirtyEight had a recent article talking about this:
And since Harbaugh couldn't call a time-out to try to figure out what was going on, the Pats won the coin flip.
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