All those confounds exist in the regular season. So GIVEN those confounds what is the result is what is being asked here. You don't need to know all the cause-effect relationships to estimate something statistically. Besides.. it's not like I'm the only one using points scored and allowed to argue this specific point. Remember last year's SB? Yeah.. a bunch of people used ONLY the 13-3 score to once again say defense wins championships is true, ignoring of course all other SB's. And Carmen (our X's and O's expert here) has in the past said that points scored and points allowed is the most important measure of offense and defense (he's right about that btw.. correlations to win% show that). Can't just cherry pick and use those stats when it supports an argument. Have to live with the consequences of using such stats. btw.. there is NO ONE that can actually answer the types of questions you are posing. People can have opinions, but don't be fooled into thinking any tape watcher or "expert" can tell you what percentage of the success of any play was due to X, Y or Z. NO ONE can do that.
Was the Eagles offense better than Patriots offense or was the Eagles defense better than Patriots defense? Because again, the Eagles defense may have been statistically worse than Pats offense in the season and playoffs, but just so happened to be good enough at the one weakness the Pats had. You don't know without tape because stats won't tell you that.
That defensive play sealed the game. Much like Malcom Butler's INT vs Wilson in SB XLIX. It wasn't cherry picking, it was the cherry on top. Though, speaking of cherry picking, you chose a mere two examples out of 53. And while speaking of defense wins championships, it's a postseason accomplishment, not specifically the SB itself.
The tape won't tell you that either. At least no human can answer that question. All they will have are opinions, nothing else. More importantly, playing the devil's advocate gets you nowhere. Almost all the technology you see around you is due to some application of statistics or modeling of a physical system where tons of approximations are made and we do NOT know the underlying cause-effect relationships – no different than here. What's important to is to find the BEST measure you can think of for something and not wait for a "perfect" understanding of the system that may never come. And in this case that's points scored and points allowed. And based on those measures defense wins championships is a myth.
Yes I did say that..and it’s what I keep referring to, I just feel it’s gonna always resurface..It happens when you don’t trust the player under certain conditions.
Points allowed, turnovers, and 3rd down percentage rate. Next would be special teams effectiveness in the field position battle. Offense can pick it up from there.
I looked at ALL playoff games, you didn't. The results are true for both playoffs in general AND the SB. Be honest. If you had to argue offense wins championships you could easily come up with as many examples as arguing defense wins championships. Just live with the data dude.. there's nothing wrong with modifying a pre-held belief when it's contradicted by data.
I think you are over analyzing the trait, it should be an instinctual thing..not a very difficult concept to understand either..hey if the run game, and the oline, and the coaches understand his weakness and they can mitigate that, roll him left, roll him right, multiple times a game, just get him outside the pocket in a few of those third downs, then maybe he can overcome it.
Too simple, vague, and meaningless in the reality of the game and it's constant ongoing adjustments and occurrences. We all want simple definitive answers, but such cannot be had thru the view of simplistic numbers.
LOL, such BS. You simply looked at statistics. Such of which are not even remotely capable of determining the actual occurrences and circumstances that determine the outcome of a football game.
It's simple yes, but not meaningless. It's not what would be expected if your hypothesis is "defense wins championships". Again.. if defense wins championships were really true, then you'd have to find a way to explain all the way above average offensive production of playoff winners and SB winners. Tall order, especially since humans tend to have a bad intuition for in-game win probability. Note how you argued the Philly SB: you looked at one moment in the game. It doesn't matter if it was the "cherry on top", what matters is that all the other plays in the game MATTER, and humans (including you and me) don't know how to intuit their effect.
If Tannehill's league-high regular season passer rating is truly an indication of his individual ability, there's no reason why he shouldn't be expected to drive the bus on Tennessee's performance against the Ravens. You can't tout his league-high regular season passer rating as an indication of something special about him and then when the going gets tough insist that his surroundings drive the bus on his and the team's performance. If the Ravens were playing against the Chiefs and Patrick Mahomes, you'd certainly expect Patrick Mahomes to have one of his individually stellar games to give the Chiefs the best chance to win. No reason why you shouldn't expect that from the player with the league-high regular season passer rating, if that's truly an indication of his ability.
Defense gets you to the dance, offense has proven to win SBs. Just look at the recent SB games the last ten years.
Did someone REALLY just use an example of "defense wins championships" on a game said defense allowed 33 points (most ever to still win) gave up a record 613 total yards, the Patriots NEVER punted once, and gave up a record 42 first downs as an indicator that defense wins championships is about as funny as a comparison as I have ever seen. Carry on though, I'll be over here chuckling.
Sure it will....or can. It may not always be inconclusive, but knowing what your seeing on the field can certainly tell you if the offense or the defense is the reason for one team scoring more points than the other. Again, your approach removes context. An incomplete pass, in your approach shows up as a QB error and unless you watch the game you don't know if it was a WR error or good defense or the line didn't hold when it should have or the right play was called on defense or.... Your entire approach, if whittled down to it's logical foundation is built on a notion that the offense's success is entirely independent of the defense it is playing against.
I'm not sure they will want to mimic NE's game plan. That game plan would also greatly reduce the number of times their offense gets the ball. IF the game goes into a ground grind and neither team exceeds 30 points base purely off of how many touches they each get, it becomes a little more likely that the Titans could win the game. They have an aggressive defense and they will live with giving up a quick score or two if it means their offense can feast. That's my prediction at least.
Titans blitz percentage (24.9%) is among the bottom 10 in the league. Pees has the same mentality and weaknesses he displayed in Baltimore.
It's not. Passer rating is the culmination of the passing offense as a whole, it has nothing to do with a single player. I'd expect Mahomes to be rattled at times and his inaccuracies to come to surface against a very good defense like the Ravens pose. And again, there are no individual performances to be had in football. Every player is reliant on the unit they play within, and ultimately the team itself.
Only in theory. Never seen anyone in practice demonstrate they can do that using a method that's replicable by others. Absolutely untrue. Using points means you're assuming everything that matters for scoring points matters because it's the effect of all possible causal mechanisms on what matters for winning: point differential.
Both teams typically use a ground grind on offense, though of course Baltimore uses its running quarterback as part of that game plan. We're dealing with the teams here that had the fewest and second-fewest pass attempts in the league in 2019. Neither team likes to feature the pass with its quarterback.
What do you think coaches do? No, it's true. Again, you cannot tell at if the team played bad defense or good offense by point differential. You have no idea. Watching tape can tell you that.
Dude.. I'm the one that looked at ALL games, both all regular season, playoff and SB's. The way you keep repeating "defense wins championships" left NO room for saying it's not true in some cases, which is why I asked about specific games. It's actually refreshing that you're implicitly agreeing it's not true for the Philly game. Why? Because you looked at the stats? There's no way you remember every play in there. Point is, you don't have a method here you can share with us, and you've provided NO evidence to back up your claim. So far your debating strategy is to just dismiss any claim contradicting yours without providing any evidence.
You're just making claims without evidence. Show us a method if you want to prove otherwise. NO ONE can solve that problem.
That's interesting, because it appears that lots of folks here are using Tannehill's 2019 season passer rating as an indication of his individual ability.
Statistically the one exception to offense being somewhat more important is in the conference championships if you break things down by regular season or type of playoff game. I can post the figures again if you want, but the summary over the SB era is basically this: 1. In the regular season, the relative importance of the offense vs. defense when you plot z-scores of points scored/allowed vs. win% gives you a ratio of 11.29/10.76 => offense is about 4.9% more important for winning than defense. 2. For all playoff game winners, average z-score for offense is 0.7294 while average z-score for defense is 0.5464. 3. If you break it down by type of playoff game you get these averages: - Wild Card winner: offense z-score = 0.6383, defense z-score = 0.5655 - Division playoff game winner: offense z-score = 0.7831, defense z-score = 0.4887 - Conference Championship winner: offense z-score = offense z-score = 0.6431, defense z-score = 0.7026 - SB winner: offense z-score = offense z-score = 0.9389, defense z-score = 0.4072. So in all cases except the Conference Championships, it's true that the relative production of the offense is on average better than defense.
With the Titans, they are doing that more. I don't think I am over analyzing what he was coached to do in Miami. I also think the weakness he has in this area is more than made up for with the rest of his game. IMO, 2019 proved that.
And given the small difference there (0.70 to 0.64), and given that there is only one instance of that kind among so many others, that could just be a random anomaly rather than anything systematic.
Mahomes played in 2 playoff games. In one he had a passer rating of 85 and they won, in the other, he had a passer rating of 117 and they lost. Which one was truly an indication of his ability. Same question for the 3 subpar passer ratings for Wilson that I mentioned in a previous post. The problem is that you are holding Tannehill to a standard (i.e. excellence in every game regardless of circumstances) that you hold no other QB to. Common trait among the Tannehaters.
That is because people like you have shoved passer rating down our throats, and used his ratings as evidence of his poor play. We argued for years that rating was a culmination of the offense as a whole. Now, with decent players around him, Tannehill has crushed the rating game this season, so we are all pointing it out, because he's doing exactly what we said he would do.
The only two that are not statistically significant is Wild Card and Conference Championship winners. Division playoff game winners and SB winners you get statistical significance, and of course for playoffs as a whole you also do (and also regular season). So yes that one could be due to random variation.
The above is true when sample sizes are small, for example single games. When sample sizes are huge, as is the case with what cbrad is doing in his analysis, the particulars of individual games that run counter to the overall finding don't happen frequently enough to overcome the overall finding. An example illustrates the point: in a single game a team can win let's say 14-7 because it scores two touchdowns on pick-sixes. You could argue that the team would've lost 7-0 without those defensive scores. However, with the sample size cbrad is using, those kinds of examples (that run counter to the overall finding) can't possibly occur often enough to change the overall finding that offense is more important than defense.
You are making the same error in logic that you have made on every message board you've ever been banned from. Just because it is "not all about the QB" doesn't mean it is "not at all about the QB".
I'm not really talking about pass plays, just an attempt to increase number of possessions. Baltimore still scores at a very high rate per possession, they want the ball in their hands as many times as they can. They don't appear to be interested in running it up the middle for 3 yds a carry and killing clock to win a 10 to 3 style of game. Both teams had a high scoring offense, and fast scoring offense during the regular season. But Tennessee will attempt to adjust their strategy to slow the game and limit possessions, while Baltimore (this is my guess) will attempt to run up tempo and increase number of possessions. If Baltimore starts to see signs of struggling on offense, they might change their strategy. However, if you have the fastest car, you want to play on the fastest track.
Wait, haven't you spent the last 6 days trying to use a single game performance to outweigh a 10 game performance? Hmmm.....
Ya that last paragraph, particularly. That applies to both sides of the ball too...they play very aggressively on Defense as well, when conversely, the Titans are going to have to play very strict assignment schemes requiring maximum discipline to even stay in this game. There will be opportunities because of the Ravens defense's aggressiveness, for the Titans to hit some chunk plays, as long as blocking is at least "OK." TEs should play a major role in this game on both teams.
The Titans need to win the turnover battle and need to force an INT or two from Jackson. They need to make him doubt what he sees and hesitate. Also, the Titans need to continue their red zone success.