2006 Sos

[GREENSMACKS]

http://www.theredzone.org/strength.asp

we have the 5th easiest schedule.

[Sperm Edwards]

This overall SOS stuff is usually misleading, particularly in March before the season starts. Even when looked at in hindsight after the season’s over, a couple of really bad (or really good) opponents skew the whole thing. On an average week we will not play a team with a .460 win %age.

2004 is my favorite example.

According to the #'s we had like the 2nd or 3rd hardest schedule in the NFL by "total" opp win%. But you all watched the games & saw who we played. Mostly losing or outright pushover teams, three games against 14 & 15-win teams that skew everything, and a 12-win team that was in the middle of a 1-2 start at the time of our game. The Chargers, then, were so unlike their 12-4 ending record, Doug Flutie had to come in to make it a game & people were calling for Phillip Rivers to replace Drew Brees already; they still resembled the team that was awarded the #1 draft pick months earlier far more than the one that would be 12-4 months later. Even other "winning" teams (like Buffalo) were losing teams (0-3, 2-5) when WE played them. And other .500 teams weren't really so. We played the 8-8 Bengals, but not really. We played the Bengals in week 1, embarking on a 1-4 start for them (only beating the 4-12 Dolphins over that stretch). By the 2nd half of the season, once Carson Palmer got some game experience, they were a much better team; but that wasn't the team we played. The Bengals team WE played the one that could only beat the crappy 4-12 ‘fins in the first 5 wks. The other .500 team, the Rams, was only .500 after beating us in week 17.

The biggest reason for the misleading farce was playing the 14-2 Patriots twice and the 15-1 Steelers once. What it means is that in the other 13 games our opponents' W/L record was far, far worse. Your crappier opponents don't get "lent" wins from the better opponents. They are who they are. And they were:

• 0-0 Bengals
  
• 1-0 Chargers
  
• 0-2 Dolphins
  
• 0-3 Bills
  
• 1-4 49ers
  
• 5-0 Patriots
  
• 1-6 Dolphins
  
• 2-5 Bills
  
• 5-3 Ravens
  
• 3-6 Browns
  
• 4-6 Cardinals
  
• 5-6 Texans
  
• 11-1 Steelers
  
• 7-6 Seahawks
  
• 12-2 Patriots
  
• 7-8 Rams
  

-----------------

Total at the time of our games:

• 9 “losing teams”
  
• 6 “winning teams”
  
• 1 “.500 team” (again this was the 0-0 Bengals in wk 1, who started out 1-4)
  

Total by the end of the season:

• 6 “losing teams”
  
• 8 “winning teams”
  
• 2 “.500 teams”
  

But look at the records above of the teams we played, at the time we played them. Does it look like on an average week we played a 9-win team? Of course not. Most of our games were played against teams with losing records. But if you looked at it in hindsight, the total opp win %age was well over .500, giving the impression that our schedule was harder than it was.

Just as a recap to 2004, Herm’s crowning achievement season,

we beat:

• a Bengals team in week 1 who started out 1-4;
  
• a Chargers team in week 2 who started out 1-2;
  
• a 7-6 Seahawks team whose lone win vs a non-losing team by wk15 was the 8-8 Vikings;
  
• 7 teams with losing records at the time of our matchups;
  

We lost to:

• 4 of the 6 teams we faced with winning records (the two we beat were 1-0 SD/7-6 Sea)
  
• the 2-5 Bills
  
• the 7-8 Rams
  

So before anyone gets all giddy at the prospect of an “easy” schedule, refer to this in what was supposedly a “difficult” schedule.

[mbn007]

It makes for interesting discussion, but is really not as meaningfull a measure of your opponents as other measures are.

[SouthernJet]

Our SOS is automatically easier now that we have a HC with a brain.

Herm put us in the hole no matter who we played.