WhoDeyRevolution

Jimmy Clausen Needs a good Welcome to the NFL Moment

So the bengals will get a rookie qb in his first career start in the NFL. It seems the team has been down this road many times before with terrible awful results. Th bengals D just needs to break Clausen this time and then kick him while he's down just so he doesn't get any silly ideas. Please bengals I beg of you do not let this asshat hang around and think he can win when he just should stomped on like the fake orange colored roach he is!!!

 

And yes I have hate in my heart!!!

Worried You Don't Spend Enough Time Following Football? We're Here to Help.

Friends, family and significant others often remark how little attention I pay to the NFL for someone who claims to love it.  "You spend too much time focusing on those you care about," they say, "you really should be more selfish and channel that energy into following football, which, as you noted in the first sentence of this post, you love."

As you can see, I have wonderful and understanding people in my life.

But no.  I cannot heed their wise advice and their remarkable ability to reference this post before it was even written.  That's just not me.  I cannot commit more of my precious spare time to football when there's so much life to be lived.

But, hypothetically, if I were to spend more time on football, here are a few handy links* that, if you cared to do such a thing, you could waste an entire lifetime perusing. And hopefully they will make you a better and more intelligent observer of the game in the process (unlike me).

The 2009 Bengals Season: A Triumph for Anecdotal (mindless), not Statistical (thoughtful) Analysis

Old School guys like Hob who go all Old School explaining the how the 2009 Bengals win through some Old School formula of grit, toughness, chemistry, ball control, eye discipline and Old Schooliness appear to be right. 

The Bengals sit at 9-3, in full control of the AFC North, a division they have swept even though it contains the two teams from last year's AFC Championship game.  They have high quality wins against good opponents on the road including Green Bay, Baltimore, & Pittsburgh where if you watched the game you could tell the Bengals appeared to be the superior team (perhaps only slightly) and the outcome was fair.

Yet the those purveyors of more intelligent NFL statistics find the 2009 version of the Bengals about as compelling this year as the Jets or Niners and less so than the Ravens and Steelers, against whom we are 4-0.

From Brian Burke of Advanced NFL Stats via his New York Times 5th Down Blog (Doc also points this out in TML, likely much earlier than I did):

The luckiest teams this season have been the Vikings, the Colts, the Bengals and the Saints. Usually when teams have extremely good records, they are both good and lucky. The reason is simple: It’s extremely rare for a team to have a good record and at the same time be unlucky.

And check out Football Outsiders DVOA ranking, the stat they use to measure which teams are the strongest and weakest each year (since folks have asked:  DVOA basically measures how a team performs compared to the NFL average on every play, taking into account things like down, distance, score, time and quality of opponent).  The Bengals sit right in the middle of the pack at 15th.

Basically, the implication is that the either the Bengals a)have had more than their fair share of luck this year or b)these stats just can't quantify something (like the ability of Brian Leonard to intimidate our opponents?).

So what do you think?  What's going on with this 2009 season, a whole lotta luck or something else?

My take:  a little bit of net good luck (would be much more if not for the Denver game) plus scraping out bare bones wins against teams we are actually far better than (Cleveland twice, Detroit) making us statistically unappealing. 

Remember those 1994 Knicks coached by Pat Riley with guys like Charles Oakley who just beat the crap out of you and won ugly?  I think we have lots in common with them.  An ability to make opponents play ugly like you is not luck and that is what we do.  But we will look statistically bad anyway.

At least, that's what I hope.  Cause if it's a lot of luck that will not continue.

Through Air or Sea or..........FIRE. (Cue The Guitar Power Solo)

The Bengals scorched earth campaign against the Bears seems like years ago coming off a bye week. Does Bratkowski continue to have his Frank the Tank "That's how you debate!" moment? Is Brian Leonard going to do everyone a favor and vivisect Ray Lewis in the tunnel before the game? Will Ed Reed miss the game due to overwhelming fatigue stemming from being a badass 24 hours a day? We will find out in a few short hours.

More on Bengals Wins Under Mike Brown

In a recent post I asked readers if they could provide more details on exactly who the Bengals beat to amass Mike Brown's staggering 101 total wins in 18 seasons.  Lo and behold, reader Jerome sent in a fantastic spreadsheet.

Now, this breakdown does not tell us how many wins came at a time when both the Bengals and their opponent were already eliminated from the playoffs (which was what I was hoping for), but it does give us a nice breakdown of each season and who we beat.  From that, I can sort of triangulate how many meaningless wins make up Mike's total. 

It turns out the 57 of the Bengals 64 2nd half victories (I actually came up with 67 in my own tally but I'll use a lower number to be fair and cause I don't have time to research it again - thanks to commenter WhoDeyFans for noticing the original incorrect figure) came against teams with records of .500 or less.  Given the Bengals propensity to start poorly, I'd guess they were eliminated from the playoffs in about 85% of those 57 wins.  And let's say their opponent in those 48 or so wins (.85 x 57 wins) was already eliminated in half those games.  That means roughly 24-25 of Mike's 101 total wins came in meaningless games, or about a quarter of his wins.  Unscientific, I know, but I'd be surprised if I overestimated the actual total.

You can check out the file here:  Download Bengals Wins Since 1991

It also has another worksheet that summarizes some of the findings, such as the fact that the cumulative win percentage of the teams the Bengals beat comes out at .390 (now, I assume most teams garner lots of wins against bad teams, so I'd like to see this stat league wide, but that looks pretty bad at first glance).  And also some great stuff about the Bengals wins coming suspiciously against expansion teams.  In my opinion, though, I like this stat the best:

With only 37 wins in 18 years coming in the first half of the season, the Bengals average start to a season is about 2-6.

Disgusting.

Football Outsiders Interview

The Football Outsiders Almanac is perhaps the most in-depth NFL publication available right now, with their advanced stats and groundbreaking findings -- such as field goal accuracy not being a consistent stat -- creating a book high in quality and quantity (517 pages). I highly recommend buying it. The writer who composed the Bengal's section, Rob Weintraub, was kind enough to answer some questions about the upcoming season, and Football Outsider's projections for it:

The Bengals have a 2009 mean win projection of 6.9 games (the system used has many, many variables and stats factored in). Why is the projection system not as optimistic as some of our fans?

A Friendly Reminder: WDR Focuses on the Long Term

While skimming some of the feedback on various sites regarding PM Task #9, poster "Tommy <3's Da Bengals" reminded me of one of my favorite stats that summarizes Mike Brown's failure as an owner:

Of Mike Brown's 101 wins, 71 have come in the 2nd half of the season.

If an enterprising reader can dig up the info, I'd love to see how many of those 2nd half wins came against opponents already eliminated from playoff contention (i.e., the game just didn't matter).  The point is that even the "wins" Mike Brown produces are typically of low quality.  That's the type of track record Mike Brown puts up when he's in control and doesn't have a franchise QB leading the team (also known as the "Pre-Marvin, Pre-Carson" Era). 

And this is what the Bengals will revert to when the Carson era ends if no changes are made (I believe he is more important than Marvin since Marvin does not have control like he used to).

This is why, even in a pre-season full of optimism, we still pull PM stunts.  We are rational and have a long memory.

Another Look At Graham

This post brings up some unique, fairly hidden truths about special teams play but reaches the same conclusion all have reached nevertheless: slapping the franchise tag on Shayne Graham, in effect making him one of the most highly-paid kickers in the NFL, was an idiotic move, parallel with many others made by he-who-shall-not-be-named. Fortunately a long-term contract has not been given to Graham (contrary to the opinions on here and here), but there is still this move to discuss.

To begin with, the obvious- spending a great deal of money on a kicker does not make a whole lot of sense. Special teams as a whole is worth relatively little when compared to offense and defense, and using the money on a player who may not even be an asset in (I'll explain) the less-important unit, rather than one who will increase the strength of the important one like a third cornerback, is ridiculous.

Football Outsiders is one of the best NFL sites online, creating new, better statistics to help us further increase our knowledge of the NFL, as well as giving us somewhat radical discoveries. One of the more interesting ones was described in this New York Times article in November of 2006. Basically, their findings told us that we had been judging kickers the wrong way; field-goal percentage, the most common stat used to assess a kicker's performance, had little year-to-year correlation (for all of the details, refer to the article). The statistic most consistent year-to-year, and therefore the only dependable one to judge a kicker on, was kickoff length.

Weird Bengals Quirks: I'd (Almost) Rather Face 3rd & Long Than 3rd & Short on Defense

I do not know if anyone else feels this way.  I do not have any data to support why I think the Bengals might do better against 3rd & Short than 3rd & Long even though less yardage should be easier to convert than more yardage.  But I nevertheless feel this way.

However, The Google lets me down.  When I search I cannot find a site that breaks out each team's 3rd down success into long or short yardage (I would define short yardage as 5 yards or less as it looks like the average defense gave up something like 5+ yards a play last year).

So I am left to use a few different pieces of information to triangulate my way into finding out whether or not I am a crazy person to fear 3rd & Long as much/more than 3rd & Short.

First, I take it as fact that the Bengals defense (particularly last year) stops the run better than it stops the pass.  Reading ESPN Insider confirms this.  They note:

Graphing Things in Excel Helps Me Visualize How Much Mike Brown Sucks

Anyone who follows the Bengals knows Mike Brown sucks. But I am not content just knowing, reading, hearing, or thinking about how much Mike Brown sucks. No. I want to SEE how much he sucks. Hence, enjoy the following chart I created instead of doing real work so far today: