Breaking Down the Divisions
Here’s a useful table to contemplate now that we’re in NFL playoff season:
Apparently the two West divisions were the worst, and second-worst performances since the AFL-NFL merger. He then offers us some questionable statistical analysis under the guise of elucidated “conspicuous trends” from the history of this data:
The most compelling of these is that 26 of the 37 Super Bowl winners since the merger came from divisions that placed in the top three in win percentage during that season. This trend gets even stronger if the start year is moved to 1977, as 25 of the 30 world champions in that time hailed from one of the top three divisions based on win percentage. This trend stretched beyond Super Bowl champs, as 42 of the 72 conference champions since the merger came from the top three divisions. (These numbers don’t include the 1982 season because divisional play was not used that year.)
The historical evidence also shows strong indications for playoff teams that come from the bottom divisions. There were six divisions from 1970 through 2001, and only one time during that era did a team that came from the division with the worst win percentage win a Super Bowl (1999 St. Louis Rams). In fact, playoff teams from the sixth division during those years won only 24 playoff games, and seven of those were wild-card victories.
Another way of looking at this is that good teams tend to win the Super Bowl, good teams tend to have very good regular season records, and since NFL divisions are small having a very good team in your division tends to pull your division’s overall record upward.
23 Responses to “Breaking Down the Divisions”
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January 5th, 2009 at 9:59 am
Or it also means that we should go back to three divisions instead of four, which would improve the overall quality of divisions. Whee.
Meanwhile, his flukey team happened to have Warner at QB, which means that we may very well have a flukey team in the Cardinals this year, which would be 16,000 kinds of awesome, particularly since no quarterback has won a more a second Superbowl while playing on a different team than he won the first Superbowl with.
max
['Let's just get all the awfulness out of our system at once and get it over with!']
January 5th, 2009 at 10:12 am
Subtracting the zero-sum 12-12 intra divisional records, the remaining win rates are (in the same order)
0.70
0.66
0.65
0.65
0.49
0.33
0.28
0.25
January 5th, 2009 at 10:23 am
The better solution is to look at actual advanced statistics like FO’s DVOA, because the short season and unbalanced schedule puts the AFC East near the top of these things based solely on the fact that all four teams got to play both western divisions. When n=16 anything can radically swing the standings
January 5th, 2009 at 10:27 am
Go Ravens…who beat the AFC East team yesterday.
January 5th, 2009 at 10:53 am
One quick point is that the NFC South may be overrated from top to bottom by virtue of having half of its schedule come from the barely mediocre NFC north and the downright putrid AFC West.
January 5th, 2009 at 10:54 am
Fairest solution: add one team to each conference and go to twin single-table schedules. Top six teams in each conference make the playoffs.
January 5th, 2009 at 11:46 am
To follow what Jack and Curtis pointed out, the NFC East played the awful NFC West. However, at least they played the AFC North too.
January 5th, 2009 at 1:46 pm
Also note that the NFC and AFC West both played the entire AFC East this year. Rotation of non-divisional opponents will occasionally lead to tougher schedules and (potentially) more losses on a division-wide basis.
January 5th, 2009 at 2:54 pm
Also note the competitive effect – if you only need 10 wins to beat the expected champion of your division, you don’t pay the money to players for a 12 win team. It’s about the $.
January 5th, 2009 at 3:55 pm
Or, we could adapt an English soccer type of system. Each of the best 8 teams play home and away against the other 7 (14 games). Results of that are used to seed single-elimination playoffs (3 rounds). Worst teams are demoted to minor league, best teams from minor league are promoted.
January 5th, 2009 at 5:34 pm
I hear that “they got to play the weak division(s)” argument a lot. However, they still have to win those games. Just ask the Cowboys and the Jets, who both missed the playoffs because of their poor records against the two Western divisions.
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