Either way, someone needs to offer an alternative.
Here’s what I want to do.
This being the first.
And I want to bring you along for the ride.
It’s all about the ride!
But you gotta start somewhere!
Let’s get to work.
The idea is super simple.
Whatever that spread happens to be set at.
DVOA is pretty much the best statistical measure out there to say which team is the best.
Feel free to givethis FTN articlea read to learn more.
That’s why I thought I’d develop a simple, digestible model people can relate to.
And apparently the public isn’t correcting them.
It’s really that simple.
The lesser opponent in this example would be a -4.
But that’s not exactly what we’re talking about here.
We need a regression approach to smooth this all out and treat DVOA differences numerically.
Honestly, a good question.
This actually makes me realize why stats words are sometimes so random and bizarre.
You’re either a math person or an English person.
English majors say they don’t do math and vice versa for math majors.
Well, if that’s so, then who created all the math words?
Obviously math people who don’t know shit about English.
But none of this is important for this blog, so I digress.
You:“Wait… did YOU even gress?”
Let’s get things started with a little data exploration.
Then, we’ll tally the running record as we go down each row.
For instance, here is the first ten rows with the greatest DVOA differences in the sample.
The teams with the better DVOA went 7-3 as shown by the last two columns.
Alright, now let’s do that with the entire ten-year sample.
Obviously, the hump at thebeginningis where we want to focus.
But is this statistically significant?
That’s where our logistic regression comes into play.
There were 374 games with a 20+ difference in DVOA between two teams from this ten-year sample.
There’s only one thing left to do now.
I see a ripe slate of lopsided matchups ready to put this model to the test.
So there’s no reason to override this.
And with a 30-rank difference, this is the best team going against the second worst team.
This line just seems low too anyway.
The Jaguars beat the Patriots and they all the sudden get somesemblanceof respect?
Broncos (-11) vs Panthers -112
DVOA difference = 22
Not gonna lie.
Broncos as the 10th best team in DVOA is pretty shocking to be honest.
So here we go.
Remember, this is test out week.
This might all be BS.
But let’s have some fun.
Hopefully I don’t go 0-5 or I might be headed for Rodney Dangerfield’s closet.
