Balanced teams have higher EPA and win more games

by Jim Glass

Should NFL teams invest the most in offense or defense?

Previously, discussing diminishing returns to passing, I noted that marginal return analysis says investment resources - including NFL salary cap money - should be allocated among different investments to produce the largest return at the margin.


In plain English about football, this means that if your team has two all-pro wide receivers and zero competent linebackers, and you have a choice between adding a third all-pro receiver or an all-pro linebacker, you'd better go for the linebacker. Adding your first good linebacker will give more net points to your team than adding a third top receiver.

This is true even if you believe offense is more important to winning games than defense. Whatever their relative importance in the big scheme of things, you are best off making salary cap investments that produce equal returns at the margin, so that your next million cap dollars invested in offense produces the same net return as the next invested in defense. With diminishing returns to additional investments, if you overinvest in offense you will receive fewer net points than from making that last investment in defense – that third good receiver gives you fewer net points than a first good linebacker. Overinvesting in defense is the same mistake in reverse.

Defense wins Championships ...

... that might be true in Soccer, Hockey, Baseball, Basketball, Handball, Deep Sea Fishing or whatever, but not in Pro Football (nor Cycling).

by Karl Berthold

Pundits like Easterbrook, Prisco, TV Commentators and - Coaches tell us year in and year out that "Offense sells tickets but Defense wins Championships". But is that true, or is it a myth?

Many studies about Superbowl Champions were done by Brian Burke and others based solely on Regular Season Statistics which showed us, the smart readers of "Advanced NFL-Stats", that "Offensive-Teams" (read "Passing-Teams") have the edge to win the final Game of the Season.

But nobody has yet done a study of Playoff - Statistics of Superbowl Winners based on the (up to four) Playoff Games they had to win before winning the Lombardi Trophy. That means the above mentioned "Experts" could still say Playoff-Football is different and in cold January you need a good running game and great Defense to prevail in the end.

Well... no longer can that be said.

Packers and Steelers fans, enjoy this Sunday

-- because "We'll be back next year" isn't so likely any more.
by Jim Glass

Once upon a time, way back before 1998, a team playing in the Super Bowl could reasonably expect to be in the thick of the competition for the Lombardi Trophy again the following year.

From 1970 through 1997 the Super Bowl team conference champions won an average 79% of their regular season games, and during the following year won 69%. In the follow-up seasons they compiled 47 winning records against only six losing and three .500 records. As 69% is 11 wins in a 16-game season, the teams could feel confident that they'd be in the playoffs again.

Then in 1999 the defending Super Bowl champion Broncos and runner-up Falcons, after going a combined 28-4 during 1998, fell to 6-10 and 5-11 respectively.

From then on, defending conference champions not named "Patriots" have had only 10 winning records in 20 seasons, against nine losing and one .500 record. All 24 Super Bowl participants including the Patriots have compiled a following-year average 56% winning record, a tad below 9-7.