Good day in the standings for the Steelers…

The cracks on offense were simple. They were counting on too many guys who were breaking down. Pouncey was done. Injuries had ruined DeCastro. Villanueva was serviceable but not as good as he had been. Roethlisberger broke down physically and mentally. He stopped trusting his body to do some things. He also stopped trusting his line. All of that led to the most predictable offense in the NFL. He has those same issues this season and the line really isn't much better. I didn't expect him to get better physically, but I did hope that he might recover a bit mentally. He hasn't. Those throw charts with nothing over the middle prove it.

The defense broke physically. Losing Bush was bad. Losing Dupree as well was crippling. Then they briefly lost Haden to injury, then again to COVID for the playoff game. He was, and is, still their best cornerback. Throw in Spillane just returning from injury and playing horribly and losing Highsmith during the game and the defense completely collapsed in the playoff game.

My issue is with the people who forget what that team was before it broke down. They were legitimately as good as anybody. That first half against Tennessee was a high point, but the version I think of is the one that beat the crap out of the Browns. That was the high point, but it was also the beginning of the end because that was the day Bush tore up his knee.

 

The idea that when other teams win its because they're great but when the Steelers win they're lucky gets really tiring for me.

If we want to be really pernickety, we could go back to the 1970s Steelers and see how many games where 'luck' was involved (Jackie Smith's drop in the EZ in XIII? Preston Pearson not running out of bounds in X? The umpire preventing a tackle on Franco in XIII?). None of that diminishes the calibre of the team at the time.

 

Exactly. I brought this up earlier also. People act like every year we won a SB....We were blowing out every team we faced. LoL. All I can say is
1. Short memories.
2. They didn't watch.

 

KMM's mantra works better in sports that don't have drafts specifically designed to address competitiveness.
The NFL is supposed to have close games, it's how it's designed from the draft to the scheduling.
That's a far cry from, say, the Premier League where there's no salary cap and everyone plays everybody.

 

http://www.optimumscouting.com/news/nfl-s-close-game-analytics-how-lucky-wins-or-losse


Try to forget about the betting and Steelers angle. Here's the important line regarding the whole good teams win close games myth:

"From 2006 to 2016, only 19 teams posted five or more close wins than close losses in a single season (ex: 5-0 record or 8-3 record.) Only about five percent of NFL teams over the last 11 years qualify for this group, a telling sign for how random the results of close games are." They defined a close game as 7 pts or less.

You can see it in every sport. Check out baseball teams' records in one-run games. It has a small correlation to W-L record.

 

I never claimed that the Wikipedia article was my personal strong point.
(In a strange bit of coincidence, my background was actually "quantum physics as measured in a super collider".)
I put in the article to make the discussion shorter, rather than put up a wall of text in a football chat forum.

I already said there had to be some correlation between wins and point differential.
Since the league-wide average of (wins-losses) and PD are both zero, those are constraints that will produce correlations regardless of the game or the teams involved.

If you get a high "r" factor even when the results are random, then that dilutes whether 0.85 is "very strong". (I haven't tested the null hypothesis with a Monte Carlo simulation, but neither have you. That sounds like too much work for either of us to do over a sports opinion. I just wanted you to understand why 0.85 without more context isn't compelling.)

The question is, is it strong enough to make meaningful predictions about the teams.
If the same PD can lead to a 7 win difference, or having a +80 higher PD can still result in a lower win count, then that should make you question how strongly you can rely on it to support your arguments.

As for outlier, you are right that I wasn't using it in the statistical definition.
I was referring to the "teams each year that significantly under or over produce vs their point differential", which is a lot longer than a 7 letter word. You keep saying that it is only 1 or 2 teams each season, without showing why you claim that. I gave examples from the full 2020 season to show why it seems (to me) to be more than 2. (And also for the previous five seasons that I looked at.)

(Since we haven't agreed on what precisely "significantly under or over" means, or how teams are judged to be "good", "bad", or "average". I suspect it will be difficult to arrive at an unambiguous answer.)

 

That is an interesting exercise, so before I criticize it let me thank you for adding to the discussion.

I'd be curious how the numbers change if the close game win-loss threshold was lowered to 4 instead of 5.
Not clear why "8-3" is a good data point, but "4-0" is not.
(Probably arbitrary to make the number crunching easier.)

It does provide some evidence against your initial argument that "good teams have less of close games compared to average teams."
The 2006 Colts were 12-4 and SB champions, yet had 11 close games.
The 2015 Broncos (12-4, SB champs) had 12 close games.

 

Deleted my last post. misread earlier one

 

Bengals doing very well against Baltimore. I don’t know if they’ll hold on but they are definitely a better team than many of us thought.

 

Yea they are up 34-17 now and look like they are gonna win. They are in 1st place in the division with road wins at both Pittsburgh and Baltimore which is very impressive. Nobody saw this coming with the Bengals this year. The division is a lot tighter now if Cincy wins this game as well. The Steelers have a chance to pull within a game of everybody with a win in Cleveland next Sunday.

 

Yes the home loss to the Bengals with half the defence missing may not have been the embarrassment that it looked like at the time. They are putting a damn good team together

 

This division race is still wide open and the Steelers have a chance to get back in it if they can win these next 3 games at Cleveland next week and those 2 home games with the Bears and Lions. If they are sitting here at 6-3 in 3 weeks they are gonna be right in the thick of this division race.

 

If the Steelers lose to Cleveland, they're finished. That would mean all three teams in the div have multi-game leads on them and an 0-2 division record, with a brutal 2nd half schedule.

 

No they are not finished Nostradamus. Stop writing off the team. As long as they are mathematically in the hunt they are not finished.

 

If they lose to Cleveland you can cling to mathematical optimism if you like, like the jumper who says "I still haven't hit" as he passes the 10th floor.

 

Yeah, lose next week and they really will need something approaching a miracle given their schedule gets so difficult later on

 

They struggled against the piss poor Seahawks, they aren't beating Cleveland. Bears and Lions sure hopefully.

 

3-4 isn't the end of the season. It's a long season and anything can happen. Write them off and go away. We don't need the negative energy.

 

Teams are only as good or bad as the last game they played. Every game is different and anything can happen.

 

As to the original thread title it was a good day in the standings today. Sure we are in last place but only one more loss then division leader. A win against the Browns would be huge for us at this stage of season. Sadly the Bengals get to play the Jets next week. At least it's at NY.

 

The Steelers have basically been the same time since mid-last year. If Ben is benched or gets hurt, I'd actually have a shred of optimism - he's been dragging this offense down for too long.

 

The loss to the Raiders doesn't look as bad, either. They are blowing out the Eagles today, which will move their record to 5-2 as well.

 

True

I’m still not convinced the Steelers have enough to stay relevant until the business end of the season but at least it makes things look a little better. Probably clutching at straws

 

What does struggled with a team even matter.?? It means nothing...one way , or the other.
Titans lost 2 the Jets(guess Titans should have just quit then), turned around, beat Buffalo, and KC.
Who cares if they struggled with the Seahawks .