For the sake of the argument, let's assume the season were to begin today. Furthermore, let's assume that major holes that each team will fill at some point are considered a comparative weakness and justification. The one exception to this should be for the Cowboys and Dolphins' cap situations. (Additions include re-signings) Cowboys Additions: CB Brandon Carr, LB Anthony Spencer (F), LB Dan Connor, G Nate Livings, QB Kyle Orton, G Mackenzy Bernadeau, S Brodney Pool, FB Lawrence Vickers, WR Kevin Ogletree Subtractions: WR Laurent Robinson, TE Martellus Bennett, G Kyle Kosier, CB Terence Newman Estimated Cap Space: $2.1 million The Cowboys’ biggest problem at this point is getting themselves under the cap for 2012. Expect at least one cap casualty on the way. Eagles Additions: DE Trent Cole (R), WR DeSean Jackson (R), LB DeMeco Ryans (T), G Evan Mathis (R), OT Todd Herremans (R), DT Antonio Dixon (R), OT King Dunlap (R) Subtractions: DE Juqua Parker, C Jamaal Jackson, OT Winston Justice, WR Steve Smith Estimated Cap Space: $16.2 million The greatest need for the Eagles at this point is what you argued for the Dolphins—continuity. They’ll get it more so than the Dolphins in 2012 given their less personell/player changes during this offseason. Dolphins Additions: NT Paul Soliai (re-signed), QB David Garrard, G Artis Hicks, CB Richard Marshall, RB Steve Slaton, DE Ryan Baker, TE Jeron Mastrud, RB Jerome Messam Subtractions: WR Brandon Marshall, DE Kendall Langford, S Yeremiah Bell, QB Chad Henne Estimated Cap Space: $6.4 million Given cap space constrictions (and the $5 million approximate commitment to draft picks this year) Miami is in position to lose OT Colombo, OG Carey, and CB Will Allen from last year's team. Langford made little contributions last year but losing him means less depth on the D-Line. The Dolphins have put themselves in no better position to compete in 2012 than they did in 2011 in terms of free agency. The only teams that have (thus far) had a worse free agency than the Phins are (arguably) the Steelers, Raiders, and maybe the Chargers. Miami's going to be one of the worst teams in the league. Their QB situation remains unresolved (Matt Moore is average AT BEST), their Running Backs undynamic, their WR’s horrific, their O-Line in shambles. Their D-Line and LB’s largely intact (with the exception of Jason Taylor) but their secondary is worse. For a different perspective, I'll give you the token ESPN analysis on the Phins' offseason: Quarterback Vick, Romo, filler, filler, filler, Moore. In that order. Dallas QB > Miami QB; Philly QB > Miami QB Running Backs Steve Slaton, Reggie Bush, Jerome Messam, and Daniel Thomas. Versus LeSean McCoy, Dion Lewis, and Ronnie Brown. LeSean McCoy showed last year his abilities can make up for the Eagles' O-Line ineptness. Sure, McCoy ran for a ridiculous 7.1 YPC behind Peters but only 28% of his runs came off the left end or behind the left tackle (compared to 72% over the middle or to the right). Same as above. Versus DeMarco Murray and Felix Jones. On the Dolphins’ side, you can’t honestly expect another year of Reggie Overrated Bush, Daniel Draft Bust Thomas, Steve One Year Wonder Slaton, and Jerome Canadian Football League Messam to give the Dolphins anything but an average or below-average running game. Dallas RB > Miami RB; Philly RB > Miami RB Wide Receivers Brian Hartline and Davone Bess. Miles Austin and Dez Bryant. DeSean Jackson and Jeremy Maclin. The Dolphins have arguably the worst receiving core in the league (hands-down worse than the Jets, for example). Dallas WR > Miami WR; Philly > Miami Offensive Line (Source: Football Outsiders) Philadelphias' offensive line will regress but not as greatly as Miami's will; the loss of Jason Peters is overstated. Philadelphia’s offensive line was formidable overall in pass protection and the Phins’ O-Line losses exceed Philly’s loss of Peters. Dallas’ Tyron Smith is comparable statistically to Jake Long. Doug Free is statistically a top 25 Tackle. None of these three teams’ centers can protect the pass (Pass Blocking Efficiency ranks—Costa 28th DAL; Pouncey 30th MIA; Kelce 34th. Pouncey & Kelce are young and expected to improve while the Cowboys are looking to replace Costa. Signing Livings (started the last 2 years in Cincy) and Bernadeu (17 starts in Carolina) will allow the option to shift one of their Guards (likely Arkin or Nagy) to Center. The adjustment to the zone blocking scheme will likely inhibit their O-Line development (and may hurt Jake Long statistically). For the Phins, signing Artis Hicks just gives them a versatile RG/RT backup who only started 3 games in Cleveland last year; but, they may be forced to thrust into a major role in 2012. Dallas (9th for run; 13th for pass) > Miami (17th for run; 30th for pass); Philly (26th for run; 12th for pass) > Miami (17th for run; 30th for pass) Overall Defense (Source: Football Outsiders) Overall defensive ranks from last year showed that Miami and Philadelphia were approximately equal but both were better than Dallas. While Miami’s D has taken a step-back going into 2012, both Dallas and Philly have improved due to the aforementioned reasons. Miami (11th) = Philly (12th); Miami > Dallas (16th) Run Defense Philly re-signed Trent Cole and picked up DeMeco Ryans. Ryans has upside to rebound from his Achilles injury and had a down year in 2011 partly because of the new 3-4 scheme. He’s switching back to the 4-3 in Philly and will improve their run D up the middle. Miami (12th) > Philly (18th); Dallas (8th) > Miami Pass Defense Philly's pass defense will improve as their secondary gets more comfortable working together. They had unexplainable lapses in coverage (Ranked 21st vs #2 WR's) and no consistency. Getting rid of Terence Newman automatically makes Dallas' secondary better (he finished in the bottom 10 among all CB's in Yards/Pass, Success Rate, and YAC allowed). Sean Smith and Vontae Davis are the most overrated CB tandem in the NFL (Jeff Ireland came out and said the old coaching staff “used them wrong”) while losing Will Allen (9th in the league in Yards/Pass) will really hurt them. Jason Taylor’s retirement will hurt their pass rush (7 sacks last year). Philly (11th) > Miami (12th); Miami > Dallas (19th) RedZone D Not going to argue here because Miami was stellar in preventing TD’s in the RZ. Although the Phins will regress in RZ Defense as their pass D regresses, they will still be at least equal to Philly and Dallas here (if not better). Miami > Philadelphia; Miami > Dallas Turnovers Philly’s biggest problems last year were turnovers. While Moore should throw less INT’s (IF he’s the starter) the Phins’ O-Line regression should mean at least that many more Turnovers in the form of fumbles. Dallas and Miami turned the ball over at the same rate last year. Miami > Philadelphia; Dallas = Miami Score: Philly 5 – Miami 3 Philly’s advantage over Miami is deceptive—Miami’s advantages over Philly are much closer than Philly’s advantages over Miami. The offense makes the difference here. Dallas 5 – Miami 3 Same case for Dallas, except their offense is worse than Philly’s. I cannot say definitively that Dallas and Philadelphia will be better football teams than Miami in 2012, but I can say that analyzing the teams makes it obvious that Dallas and Philadelphia have a much greater chance and are in a much greater position to be “better than the Dolphins” in 2012. Despite your arguments about division strength, the Cowboys and Eagles have a stronger SOS than the Dolphins in 2012. Now, given the fact that you’ve done nothing to defend the Dolphins and have talked little about the Cowboys and Eagles as football teams, you’ve got a lot of ground to make up here buddy.
Philly played well down the stretch and DeSean is finally happy with a 5 year contract. I think they have a shot this year to be very good. The cowgirls not so much.
You must also not know how to read. Thats why you missed the line in my original post that reffered to Vinny T's helmet scoring a touchdown as an example of a win that lost its luster. but if youd rather compare it to an injury that happened during the regular season to the colts, and earl came in a played well with the team to bring them to the super bowl and then got outplayed, well thats upto you then. just to add to it, Earl was the NFL MVP that year, so yea....your a great fan, trying to diminish our SB for the sake of an obvious troll Giants fan without any actual backing, good to know where you stand.
The questions I was answering were: Who is better, Philly or Miami?; and, Who is better, Dallas or Miami? not Is Dallas good?
I understand you took a lot of time to put all this together, but I'm not sure how you even begin comparing talent for talent and position for position to actual on field performance and results as a team. Your using a whole lot of speculation as far as to how each team's finished product will perform on the field based on your own evaluation of players. If you believe that you can take individual talent and successfully predict the combined team performance on the field, more power to you. I would have to bow out of something like this because I don't even know where to begin. I'm a firm believer #1 reason NFL teams win and lose football games is execution. As far as DVOA goes I don't believe in it, for the same reason, on either offense and defense. It's not as accurate as other lesser known stats to the general public that do a better job measuring teams as a whole such as yards per point. One of, if not, the most important stat in football. Defensive ranks in DVOA mainly breaks down each individual units. They don't take into consideration how they work together as a whole. When they say defense, they mainly look at what the defense unit actually does. A team's total defense includes A LOT more than that. It includes special teams defense and offense when being put in a position to play defense such as after a turnover. For example, the Patriots defense gave up roughly 400 yards in field position to the NY Giants in their regular season game. But if you go and pull together the total amount of defensive yards that team gave up as a whole there is roughly another 400 yards in defensive field position that they gave up due to their offense and special teams. This doesn't show up in your typical stats, they don't combine them, and they don't present them. The combined 800 yards is a team's true total defense, and more importantly the points they gave up more so than the yards.
And as far as not backing it up.... offense(13th): http://www.teamrankings.com/nfl/stat/yards-per-point defense(6th): http://www.teamrankings.com/nfl/team-stat/scoring-defense-category And then look up the stats' correlation to winning. I can only go off of results, and the most recent results. Like I said, I can't possibly begin translation players and positions into team strength.
If you rank the AFC and NFC East you get this: (using ESPN's Pre-draft Rankings) 1. Giants (1) 2. Patriots (2) (probably actually reversed in terms of 2012 performance but ESPN's rankers won't put the SB champ anywhere but 1 which is appropriate) 3. Eagles (12) 4. Cowboys (14) 5. Jets (20) 6. Bills (23) 7. Redskins (25) 8. Dolphins (28) That's 8 professional sources voting and a reasonably safe estimation of how things stand. NFC East > AFC East by quite a bit. Eagles and Cowboys > Fins by a landslide.
My objective was to contextualize performance and then attempt to project into next season (even though the margin of error is sky-high at this early point).
What made you choose yards per point, if any reason in particular? Personally, I'd probably go with a combination of points per play, offensive point share percentage, red zone scoring TD%, and turnover margin per game when looking to TR.
Results. It's by no means perfect, but out of every NFL football stat that exists, including point differential, there's nothing that correlates better to winning. Not even DVOA. And even Football Outsiders admitted this much. It's a simple and yet effective method of measuring overall team offensive and defensive efficiency and execution as a whole. With all the parts working together. You have to know how to read it, because it's not quite as simple as looking at a ranking, and there's other things such as 3 and outs and turnovers that must be taken into consideration and used in conjunction with YPP, but when you do that, you tend to get pretty decent results. And we're talking proven results dating back to day 1 of NFL football.
this stat only gives information on how a team scores with relation to the yards they gain. 3 and outs don't offer additional information because the information for a 3 and out is stored within this stat. if you gained 0 yards and went 3 and out - that is in the stat. if you went 9 yards and failed to gain a 1st down, that is also in the stat. you sum over all yards gained. A team who continuously fails in the red-zone will have a high score. Those whose defense produces turnovers and offensively turns them into points, will have a lower score.
Yeah I'm aware of that and explained in my post, but the perceived issue with that is only in theory. In reality it translates very well. Track record speaks for itself. All stats have a similar issue and hole. When you combine defensive and offensive stats together however, it takes care of itself. A 3 and out doesn't show up in offensive efficiency, but it does immediately impact a team's defensive efficiency due to the field position giving up on the defensive side. When you punt, it doesn't count against the offense, but you're usually giving your opponent great field position, hence making you less efficient on the defensive side. The reason you would keep track of 3 and outs and turnovers is if you want to go back and aside blame to one side of the ball or another. Which is what makes it so valuable. It doesn't work in a vacuum. However as it turns out, offense is usually all you need. And defense turns out to make very little difference in the NFL from one team to another. Typically the team who scores better in offensive efficiency wins the game.
Yards per point is an interesting stat. There seems to be more variability and more outliers with opponent points per game when correlating to win%.
Are you really building an argument that can be boiled down to "they should have won better?" The Eagles have been to 5 NFC Championship games and 1 Super Bowl in the past decade. The Cowboys (despite losing most of these games) are annual playoff contenders. The Redskins suck, but I don't think they suck as much as Buffalo has for a while now. Miami hasn't had a QB in over a decade. The Pats are great, but that's it. Romo would be the 2nd best QB in the AFC East, hell so would Vick. You're argument doesn't make much sense to me and I don't think it's based on anything accurate.
Week 1 they lost due to injuries and not yet having time to adjust to said injuries. The second game was a case of simply coming out flat. The Giants have played down to bad competition and up to good teams (at times). The Eagles are a well run franchise and have a lot of talent. Just because they underachieved this year doesn't suddenly make them awful. By that same token, Miami overachieving doesn't make them notawful.
I see he's new. Is he a Tebow guy? And FWIW, I think what Toomer said in regards to Sanchez not being great right now is true. He could develop, but he's by no means great right now. I'm kind of surprised nobody mentioned Woody Johnson drawing that Eli-Sanchez comparison. That sentence is right up there with Tanny's "we have a roster full of guys like Victor Cruz" comment.
No we were debating the validity of the perception that the NFC West is the hardest division in football. I'm not talking about how the teams performed over the past decade. But more along the lines of whether they stand now, how they performed in recent years, and the direction they seem to be going.
