subguy

Billy, I am not calling you out. You post information about almost every player or group(ie..Db's), the coaching staff and so on. Being part of the sunshine club I expect these to have a positive twist ;) My question is, if we did sooooooo well in all of these areas why isn't our team wearing rings right now? You show stats, and we all know stats can be twisted to prove our points. The point is really, that was last year. It is gone. The concern is we do seem to be a team who makes the same mistakes over and over. Coaches take blame for calls that had the play been successful they would have been a genius,instead it failed and they are an idiot. There is so much strategy and the importance of execution cannot be underestimated. Some people are going to take blame and should. No one ever blames the offensive guard. My youth was engulfed with football. And one thing I heard a billion times is.......In as much as you would like to execute well each game, the only thing that mattered was the score on the board at the end of the game. We don't have that winning attitude. If this up coming season isn't a success I would predict a major overhaul. :yltype:

PS I know I ask Billy a question in this mess somewhere?????

[Edited on 31/5/2004 by subguy]

JKool

A question for Subguy: weren\'t those mistakes we made over and over again last year and gone?

GumboBC

subguy --

I talk about last year because that\'s what we need to improve on.

I use stats because they do tell PART of the story. Why does nfl.com post the stats? You can\'t simply say stats don\'t count for anything. I do agree that stats can be misleading. However, I\'m not trying to mislead anyone with stats. I\'m simply using them to try to paint PART of the picture. I\'m not putting a postive spin on any of it.

I make posts about different groups of player ( i.e secondary) because I want to have the best idea I can possibly have where the problems were last year and what will be the most effictive way to correct them this year.

Believe me subguy. I\'m really no sunshiner. I\'m very well aware of what the problems are on this team. I just HATE when someone goes around preaching doom and gloom and I will blow some sunshine over their way.

Look at my posts and I think you\'ll be hard pressed to find me going over the top preaching \"joy to the world\"

subguy

Billy, what I am saying is all of the stats we see look like we are rockin\'......do you think it is the intangibles, the things that can\'t be guaged by stats that could be the problem?

I am certain we can find some negative stats, but I was asking you a legit question.

JKool...yes last year is gone, and the year before, and the year before and the reoccuring mistakes that mimic the previous year.

[Edited on 31/5/2004 by subguy]

Euphoria

You can have all the stats... but one dropped pass or a fumble or a blown coverage effects the score on the score board, that is where you win and lose... on the scoreboard.

GumboBC

Certainly there are things that don\'t show up in stats that contribute to winning and losing games. For example: Dropped passes.

But, stats do tell a lot. For the record, I don\'t think stats are very misleading.

Take the stats I\'ve shown for the passing defense. They show that in the games we lost that the completion % was very high in most of the games we lost. It also shows we didn\'t give up the big pass plays but we were content to give up the underneath stuff.

But its been stated many many times that the reason our passing defense was ranked 8th is because of the lack of pass attempts against it. That\'s simply NOT true as the stats clearly show.

In certain games the secondary did not play well and it really hurt our chances of winning and the stats bear that out. However, in most of the games the secondary played solid and it wasn\'t a major contributor in us losing the game. Which again, I think the stats bear that out.

All I\'m saying is I think stats do provide some good insight on where the problems are with our team.

But, there are things that don\'t show up in stats.

JKool

Subguy, I like your question - if we look pretty good statistically (in fact, better than many other teams), why didn\'t we have more success in the W/L column. That is an excellent question, but I don\'t think that it shows the stats have NO value, it merely shows that they have some limited value.

Here is a quick view on stats: Imagine you and your new girlfriend are watching the game on Sunday. There is as a 4 gap FB lead and Duece fumbles when he is hit by the SLB. That is what you saw. Your girlfriend exclaims \"oh no, there was a big mess of sweaty men in a pile and now the other team has some sort of advantage!?\" You both were watching the same thing, but your gf does not have the background theories (knowledge) of football. Thus, even though you both got the same visual inputs, you both \"see\" completely different things. Stats are like the game, they give you some raw data, but what you \"see\" from them depends on your background theories. This doesn\'t mean the stats are useless (since your gf could learn to see what you are seeing), it means they require some interpretation. Providing an interpretation does not mean that you can read ANYTHING into the stats (your gf isn\'t free to see a sweep left and a touchdown on that play - that isn\'t what happened), but it does mean we should be cautious regarding them.

That said, the point of providing the stats is to discuss what other facts and background theories we need to understand them. Thus, I believe that stats play a role in predicting what will happen (of obvious interest to us) and in serving to identify why intelligent people disagree (e.g. our secondary blows vs. our secondary is actually pretty solid).

Thus, I don\'t think that stats are useless, merely because they are in the past. However, how useful they are must be taken with some caution.

To answer Subguy\'s question, I think in the case of our secondary the stats are misleading (as others have pointed out) because other teams could run all over us. Our stats against the run actually look pretty terrible, so I don\'t think they are lying. When you combine this with what people saw during the games - I think we can safely conclude that our run defense stunk. Otherwise, I\'m not sure what to say about our other stats - I\'m sure we\'d have to take a look at each of them individually.

"... I was beating them with my eyes the whole game..." - Aaron Brooks

D_it_up

Well put, JKool...Great analogy. I agree as well that stats are very misleading. For the most part, stats are for the individual player. Team stats are great and all, but you don\'t see the entire wide receiving corps of a team go to the Pro Bowl because they had the most yardage and touchdowns as a unit. No matter what things look like statistically at the end of the year, the only numbers that count are the W-L columns.

GumboBC

Stats CAN be very misleading. It all depends on what you are trying to prove.

For example: If I wanted to look at a game and try and dertermine if the running game or the passing game was more resonsible for the win against the Giants then I could post these stats and try to prove my point:

Rushing
D. McAllister 15 80 0 35

Passing
A. Brooks 26/35 296 5 0

I think it\'s safe to look at the stats and say that the passing game was what was MOST responsible for winning the game.

It all depends. Stats can be twisted and not tell the whole story. I don\'t think stats ever tell the WHOLE story. But, stats DO NOT lie. They just don\'t paint the whole picture.

JKool

Allow me to quote myself:

I think stats are of critical importance to understanding what happened and why (as we\'ve all said, they are just not the end all and be all of discussion - as Saintfan might put it, you have to look at the WHOLE game). I do think that they are nice rewards for players too; but they are rewards because they recognize something that player did that was of merit. LT\'s sack totals weren\'t just for him; they were quite impressive!

Moreover, Stats are facts about the game, as Billy notes, and they cannot just be disregarding because they can be spun (that was my point about not being able to see a sweep left for a TD).

I do think it is interesting to discuss the value of statistics though - a good point raised by Subguy; my response is - they are somewhat important.

"... I was beating them with my eyes the whole game..." - Aaron Brooks