Starting strong
Green Bay looked terrific in the
really simple ratings posted last week, and they continued to impress by beating the Vikings. Remember, the Packers were bad last season —
Green Bay’s SRS score was -4.4. Of course, who cares what happened in 2006 now that the Packers are 4-0, right?
Well, maybe. From 1970-2006, ninety-eight teams started 4-0 in a season. Their average SRS rating the season before was +3.6, which is quite a bit better than -4.4.
Knowing nothing else, we’d project a +3.6 team in Year N+1 to win 9.6 games, and a -4.4 team to win 6.0 games. Of those 98 teams, 27 of them had negative SRS ratings in the season before going 4-0, but only five of them had an SRS rating worse than the 2006 Green Bay Packers. Here are those five teams, along with their final record the year they went 4-0:
det 1980 -11.0 9 -7 -0atl 1986 - 8.9 7 -8 -1atl 2004 - 7.4 11 -5 -0nwe 1974 - 6.1 7 -7 -0ram 1995 - 5.3 7 -9 -0The 2004 Falcons got 15 starts out of Mike Vick, while he only started four games in 2003. Consider that in games Vick did not start Atlanta went 2-12 in 2003 and 0-1 in 2004, while going 3-1 in 2003 and 11-4 in 2004 in games that he did start. So the Falcons aren’t a good comparison to this Packers team. The 1995 Rams changed cities and coaches in the off-season, and had lost their last seven games in 1994. I don’t think they’re a good comparison, either, and the other three occurrences all happened over twenty years ago.It is a bit surprising, though, the relative lack of success from those teams (Vick’s Falcons notwithstanding). None of them played even .500 football after going 4-0. On the other hand, while not shown, the next six worst teams (ranked by SRS the previous year) all had double digit wins. The formula that best fits the data for 4-0 teams, to predict their final winning percentage, is 0.68 + 0.0085 * (Prior Year’s SRS score). That projects the Packers to win 10.3 games, while if they had a +3.6 SRS last year, they’d be projected to win 11.4 games. So if we know nothing else about the Green Bay Packers (change in talent, coaching, etc.), we might predict them to win one fewer game this year than your average 4-0 team, based on their poor performance in 2006.
Throw in the towel?
Conversely, San Diego (+10.2 SRS score in 2006) and Chicago (+7.9) were two of the top four teams in the NFL last year. But this past Sunday, both teams suffered their third loss of September! From 1970-2006, 246 teams started off 1-3, like this year’s Chargers and Bears. The average SRS rating of those teams in the prior season was -1.92, making the Chargers and Bears dissimilar from them. In fact, only four 1-3 teams had a better SRS in Year N-1 than the Chargers (and six more had a better rating than the Bears). How did those teams do?
pit 1976 14.2 10-4-0dal 1974 12.8 8-6-0nyj 1999 11.2 8-8-0clt 1972 10.4 5-9-0dal 1996 9.7 10-6-0phi 1982 8.7 3-6-0oti 2001 8.3 7-9-0kan 2004 8.3 7-9-0gnb 2004 8.1 10-6-0buf 2005 8.1 5-11-0That ‘76 Steelers team would go on to post the third highest SRS rating for any team ever, although injuries hampered Pittsburgh in the playoffs. Like the current Chargers, they had a brutal early schedule, facing an eventual 1-loss, 2-loss and 3-loss team in the first four weeks. The 1996 Cowboys were without Michael Irvin for the first five games, and would go 8-4 with him. The 2004 Packers simply started slow, and can’t blame injuries or a particularly tough schedule for their 1-3 record. Outside of those three teams, none of the other squads would have a successful season.The Bears are riddled with injuries now, and can’t have much hope at 1-3 and huge QB worries. The Chargers? The best-fit formula for the 1-3 teams to predict final winning percentage is 0.40 + 0.0052. That formula still only projects the Chargers to win 7.2 games this year, indicating that a 1-3 record is nothing to sneeze at. They can always point to what the Steelers did 31 years ago, but Chargers fans should certainly be worried about this start.
ackers:
for posterity, including the Houston, Minnesota, and Tennessee predicted victories over the San Diego.
