being the youngest team

For better or worse, it's looking like we will most likely be the youngest team in the league this year, and plenty of folks are throwing that around like a merit badge. While the benefits of a team being young and healthy, with the ability to learn/grow with your teammates, and ascend, is quite a benefit, I wonder if it outweighs the negatives of inexperience.

So, I decided to look up the five youngest teams over the last five years and see how they did. I expected it to mostly reflect crappy teams amidst rebuilding modes with crappy records, but I was surprised how many exceptions there are to that rule. I believe these to be the opening day rosters, but they may reflect slightly different points of the offseason. Also, to be fair, these are not weighted, so the Ryan Tannehill's age would be equivalent to John Denney's. Finally, the difference between the youngest and oldest team in the league is roughly two years, somewhere around twenty-five-and-a-half to twenty-seven-and-a-half, which doesn't seem like that big of a deal to me. Still, they say football is a game of inches, and it just may be a game of months as well.

I've also included info on the dolphins and the superbowlers:

2012
1 STL (7-8-1)
2 PHI (4-12)
3 CLE (5-11)
4 MIA (7-9)
5 NE (11-5)

21 BAL
27 SF

2011
1 TB 4-12
2 GB 15-1
3 CAR 6-10
4 CIN 9-7
5 SEA 7-9

11 MIA
21 NE
26 NYG

2010
1 CAR 2-14
2 TB 10-6
3 IND 10-6
4 PHI 10-6
5 STL 7-9

13 MIA
14 GB
31 PIT

2009
1 GB 11-5
2 IND 14-2
3 KC 4-12
4 CAR 8-8
5 TB 3-13

6 MIA
31 NO

2008
1 GB 6-10
2 KC 2-14
3 IND 12-4
4 CIN 4-11-1
5 MIA 11-5

? PITT/ARI (The only data I could find for 2008 just had the top and bottom fives; neither team was in either.)

fun with stats

* Overall, the record for the five youngest teams over this span is 189-252-2, pegging a team's odds of winning at 42.8%. That's around a 7-9 season, which which be a muddlingly mediocre year. However, only six of these 25 teams had seasons between 7 and 9 wins, and to my eyes this list seems more like a mix of haves and have-nots, with eight awful teams having 5 or less wins, and some really good teams like the 2012 pats, 2011 packers, and the 2008 & 2009 colts.

* The bad news is that the records for the youngest team in the league were 7-8-1, 4-12, 2-14, 11-5, and 6-10, and that looks even worse. The good news is that the one good team in there had Philbin as the offensive coordinator.

* The most interesting team in this whole thing is the Green Bay Packers. They have probably been the youngest team over the last decade, and we are seeing the influence on Philbin here. Remember, he joined the Packers in 2003, and became the OC in 2007. From 2006-2009 (thats four years) GB was the #1 youngest team in the league, in 2011 when they went 15-1 they were #2, and this year they just missed the top five at #6. It is interesting that when they won the Super Bowl they were at their oldest at #14, but they also took an interesting trip through the wild card to get there.

* On the other end you have the Steelers, who have been one of the oldest teams. Actually, Super Bowl teams tend to be older. Over the last four years they have been the 27th, 21st, 21st, 26th, 31st, 14th, 2nd, and 31st youngest. Who knows, maybe its the ring chasers. But you really can build a team any way you want. Look at 2009 when you had the second oldest team beating the second youngest team in the Super Bowl.


in conclusion
Ireland already liked having a young team, and it seems to be how Philbin rolls, so this is a match made in heaven for them. I don't think they were using the phrase 'younger and faster' lightly. What do you think about being the youngest team?