Whew! Thanks for that rundown on draft QBs, Alpe. Very informative, I knew most of those guys, but not what position they were drafted, and when, etc. I’ve been thinking there are enough data points to estimate the probabilities that a QB taken in a particular round will make it as a starter, and be worth it. I wonder if any NFL teams apply stats in that way, or if it’s all subjective judgment of the coaches.
Regarding the expanded postseason. Like some others here, I think there are already too many teams, and adding two more makes it worse. We’ve discussed before how the post-season is a crap shoot to a great extent, and the more teams make it, the greater the chances that a team that didn’t play that well during the regular season, even a team that finished below .500, might end up winning the SB.
It’s interesting to compare the NFL with the NBA, though, where even a greater number of teams, more than half of the league, make it to the postseason. You might think you would see a lot of teams with relatively poor regular season records winning the championship, but in fact, that doesn’t happen. The team that wins the NBA championship almost always has one of the best regular season records. Why?
One reason is because in basketball, you can play several games a week, so a best of seven series is feasible. If one team is significantly better than another, based on regular season record, it might lose a single game, but is much less likely to lose a best of seven series. Obviously, football does not allow that.
But there’s more to it than that. Baseball’s postseason is also determined by short series, best of five initially (though now there is also a wild card game, a one shot deal), followed by best of seven. A team that is considered better than another, by regular season record, is more likely to win a short series than a single game. Also, baseball’s championship is determined by three postseason series (four for the WC teams), vs. four for the NBA. This should also improve the chances of the best team or one of the best teams going all the way. Yet this frequently does not happen, in fact the best team by regular season record is often eliminated early in the postseason.
Why? In baseball, the difference between the best teams and the worst teams, or the best teams and average teams, is much less than in basketball. The Warriors won nearly 90% of their games this year, which would be unthinkable in MLB. The Warriors, to be sure, had the best regular season record in history, but even in a more ordinary year, one or more teams will win at least 75% of their games. That is still more than any MLB team has ever won. Half a dozen or more NBA teams may win 60% of their games, whereas in MLB maybe only one or two teams will be that successful.
The gap is greater in the NBA, because there are only five players on a team, so one great player—Curry, James, Leonard, Durant/Westbrook, etc.—can have a huge impact, that you don’t see in baseball or football. And the result is that it makes it much more likely that the best team, or one of the best teams, will go all the way. If a team won 75% of its games during the regular season, it has a 75% chance of winning one game against an average team, which it will probably face in the first round. It has nearly a 90% chance of winning a best of seven series. As teams go deeper into the playoffs, the level of competition goes up, and the chances of winning a series decrease, but the result is still that the better, if not the best, teams are selected.
The NFL also features a larger difference between best and worst, or best and average, than MLB. Thus we’ve had two unbeaten teams, several teams that won 15 games (94%), and I can’t remember a year when the best team didn’t win at least 12 games, or 75%. This turns out to be a bigger advantage than a short series, so while upsets are more likely in the NFL—a team like the Giants winning the SB—the best teams are still more likely to go all the way. In that respect, the fairest championships are NBA > NFL > MLB. NFL has the advantage of relatively large differences between teams, MLB has the advantage of short postseason series, while the NBA uniquely benefits from both.
Another thing I like about the NBA is the seeding. As we’ve seen in recent years in the NFL, sometimes a team with a poor record gets into the postseason, because it wins its division, whereas a team with a better record stays home. The wild card helps alleviate that, but not always, and even when it does, frequently a wild card team has to play on the road against a team with a poorer record.
In the NBA, the top eight teams in each conference by record make the postseason. The only exception to this is that a team that wins its division will make the postseason regardless of its record. So divisional competition is not irrelevant. However, it’s very unlikely in an eight team field that a division winner will not have one of the top eight records, and I don’t think it’s ever happened. A division winner is also guaranteed the number four seed, regardless of its rank in wins. Last year, e.g., Portland had the sixth best record in its conference, but the best record in its division, so it was seeded higher than two other teams with a better record. But even then, it ceded home advantage to its first round opponent, the fifth seeded team, because the latter had a better record.
The current NFL playoff scheme follows this pretty closely, except that a division winner gets a home game regardless of whether its record was better than that of its opponent. I think a lot of people want to see that changed, and I think it might, eventually. To be completely like the NBA, the top two teams in each conference would get a bye, even if both were in the same division. But probably that won't happen.
Beyond that, I don't think there's anything more that can be done to make the NFL postseason fairer—except, of course, eliminate some of the teams, which will never happen.
Facebook
Twitter
Instagram