By the Numbers

October 19, 2006

Anyone who knows me well knows my obsession with numbers. I am a football stat junkie. I have a spreadsheet where I track all my finances….anything from budgeting to checkbook balance to pricing a trip to California. I even have a chart on my bedroom wall where I have tracked my wife’s measurements through 11 years of marriage and 4 kids. I’m kidding. I had just better hope that she doesn’t start measuring….well, I digress.

I leave now the world of cold, objective numbers and try to work with some more subjective numbers, in an effort to try to explain how I see some things this season. I see 2 trends this year…..first, that we seem to be up and down as time goes on…..second, that we seem to underperform when we play better teams.

First, the performance vs. time question. I’ve made an attempt at rating how we did each week vs. how well we should have done according to our abilities. For a game where I thought we performed right at our abilities, I gave us a score of 5. If we did better than expected, I gave us a number greater than 5. If we performed at less than our abilities, I gave us less than a 5. I gave us as high as 8 for the scrimmage and as low as 3 for Sidney and Walton. Note this is an objective number….a 5 against a team like Walton might mean we run up 250 yards and 20 points, where a 5 against someone like Hancock might mean we run up 400 yards and 50 points. OK, so here is how I see it….

Note the near sine wave. I tend to think it is a bit of complacency that sets in as we get more confident in our abilities. We get to thinking that we WILL move the ball. Then we drop off a bit. Then a bit more. Suddenly, we’re in a situation with a good team and we’re in trouble. We looked super in scrum week, then did great against Sully West, but got stuffed a few times. Then TriValley stuffed us several times, but we were still good enough to win by 5 TD’s. Suddenly we really struggled against Sidney. It didn’t just automatically come.

Next, I rated all of our opponents for their relative strength. I put a middle of the road team at 5 and went up or down from there. I didn’t rate the scrimmage, since often teams don’t put their best foot forward there, so it’s tough to tell. I put Sully at a 4, TriValley at a 5, Sidney at a 7, BG at a 5, Deposit at a 3, Walton at a 7, and Hancock at a 2 (possibly could have been a 1, but there were a few decent individuals on that team). Then, for each strength level, I averaged our performances. For example, against 5-level teams (TriValley and BG), we performed at a 5 level for each, so the average was 5. I plotted the chart below, which shows how well we performed against each strength level.

Note the distinct trailoff as the teams get more difficult. We are not rising to the challenge of the tougher teams. I think this one is tougher to explain. I think some has to do with WHEN we played the good teams….being right after big wins could have meant some overconfidence. We also are just not showing very good clutch play for some reason, and that is a very big concern. The bad news is that if you look at where we would have to go to win a sectional and state title, we are way over on the right hand side of this chart. I looked into the future schedule, and gave Oxford a 6-6.5, Candor a 7, Walton an 8 in a second game (since I think they’re getting better), Onondaga and 8, Maple Grove or Randolph an 8, and our state final opponent a 7-8. We have got to learn how to play these tough games better, and we had better do it in a hurry.

Overall, we need to play with a chip on our shoulder. Last season, we were coming off of 3 straight 4-5 seasons, so we had lots to prove. This season, people have been big on us since the end of last year. Most had us to win the section, and many considered us a state favorite. I can’t say what the actual attitude of anyone has been, but the charts above look to me like we think we are state favorites. We need to lose that quickly. We need to play like we need to prove to the world that we can be great.

It all starts Saturday against Oxford. And I think it all starts with the running game. After all, I think that is the part that went up and down. The defense has been pretty steady, with only a few relatively short-lived exceptions. It was the running game that sputtered for half or better of the games against Sidney and Walton. We could be in the same trouble if that happens again on Saturday. With Oxford’s great passing game, they will probably put in at least 2 scores, and maybe more if we lose our cool somewhat. Sidney’s O only scored 2 TD’s (and a field goal), and Walton’s O was held to 1 TD, and we still lost. The offense MUST perform. We need to go onto that field with something to prove. I for one really don’t want to head to Tioga next Friday night (apparently that will be our opponent if we lose). The Dbacks need to just concentrate and do their job…..they are athletic enough, they just need to know how to do it and then execute. We need to get some heat on the QB. We need to tackle well. And goodness gracious we need to move that football and get first downs on a consistent basis throughout the game.

OK, on to picks. Last week I took a step back and went 18-6 (0.750). For the season I’m 128-41 (0.757), and I don’t think mathematically I can make it to 0.800 now L. Oh well. I get even worse at the playoffs. For the last week, I’m going with Horseheads, Corning East, Norwich, END, Waverly, Lansing, Sidney, T-burg, Edison, Tioga, Walton, Deposit, Harpursville, Southside, Owego, Maine Endwell, Chenango Valley, Windsor, Candor, Moravia, UE, and Greene.