Ian Allan
Kansas City faced the softest defenses last year, and that benefited the team’s offense. Houston, the NFC West, and the AFC West teams twice. It’s opponents allowed 24.2 points in its 240 games against other opponents – the highest total ever.
Had we all known this back in August, we might have drafted Jamaal Charles, Dwayne Bowe and Matt Cassel. And some may use reverse mathematics to argue that we should all be lining up to select players from Washington, Tennessee and Miami, who project to face the softest defenses in 2011.
But how reliable is strength of schedule data? Can we actually look at a schedule and conclude that a team will do better or worse, based on who it will play? It seemed to hold for the 2010 Bengals. They were projected to face the toughest defenses, and that’s exactly how it played out – the Ravens (twice), Steelers (twice) and Jets all had tough defenses, just like they were supposed to, and that hurt Cincinnati’s offense.
But consider Washington, Dallas and San Francisco. Those teams were supposed to play the easiest schedules back in August (at least by how well defenses played in 2009). And where did those teams finish? They all wound up between 10th and 13th – so they were just wasting our team.
I have looked at this issue before in more detail (see the 2008 issue of the magazine proper) and will address it again in the future. But below, see some numbers collected over the last nine years. (Any time you’re looking at these kind of issues, you don’t want to look at only a few teams or a few years – you have to widen the scope to get more accurate numbers).
The first of the two charts I’ve thrown together shows the 27 teams that since 2002 (the year the NFL went to the eight-division format) have projected to have one of the three easiest schedules. On average, those teams wound up ranking about 12th to 13th in schedule difficulty. So what starts as 2nd in August wound up being 12.6 (merely above average) in January. They were suppose to play teams allowing 22.4 points per game, but in reality wound up getting 21.8 points per game as some opponents were better than expected.
TEAMS EXPECTED TO HAVE TOP-3 SCHEDULES, 2002-2010
There are three numbers shown for each team. The first (‘Pre’) shows how many points per game opponents were expected to allow in the preseason. The second (‘Post’), shows how many points those opponents wound up allowing in games against other teams. The third number shows where the schedule actually ranked at the end of the year, in terms of points allowed:
Pre Post Rnk Year Team
23.9 22.4 1 2003 Chicago
23.8 23.6 3 2009 Seattle
23.8 21.8 4 2003 Seattle
23.6 19.3 31 2009 San Francisco
23.3 20.3 29 2009 Arizona
23.3 21.6 9 2003 Oakland
22.7 21.8 3 2005 Arizona
22.6 23.6 4 2008 San Francisco
22.6 20.8 15 2005 Philadelphia
22.6 21.8 2 2005 St. Louis
22.5 22.8 10 2010 Washington
22.5 22.4 13 2010 Dallas
22.5 22.8 12 2010 San Francisco
22.4 23.0 9 2008 New England
22.4 23.4 5 2008 Buffalo
22.3 22.9 2 2004 Tampa Bay
22.1 21.8 15 2007 Carolina
22.0 23.0 1 2004 Denver
21.9 22.7 4 2007 Tampa Bay
21.8 18.9 31 2006 Pittsburgh
21.8 22.0 13 2004 Tennessee
21.8 21.5 20 2007 Atlanta
21.7 21.2 24 2002 Jacksonville
21.7 20.0 25 2006 Miami
21.6 21.8 3 2006 Arizona
21.4 21.0 27 2002 Pittsburgh
21.2 21.0 26 2002 Cincinnati
22.4 21.8 12.6 Average of 27 teams
At the other end of the spectrum, it plays out in a similar way. The teams below are the 27 teams that were expected to play the most difficult schedules (the three toughest each year, in terms of points allowed by opponents). But at the end of the year, those tough schedules in reality wound up (on average) ranking 20th to 21st in difficulty (based on how many points were allowed by opponents in other games). So the schedules tended to be a little below-average, but not the crushers that were necessarily expected.
Ultimately, if you look the 27 easiest schedules and compare them to the 27 hardest schedules, you see a difference of 1 point per game. The easy schedules finished at an average of 21.8 points (in 6,480 games). The hard schedules finished at 20.8 points, on average. So that’s a difference of about 5 percent – not a whole lot.
Offenses with easy schedules (when you’re using points allowed as your measuring stick) can expect to get a little more than a 2 percent bonus to their scoring. While offenses seemingly saddled with hard schedules can expect to lose the same kind of production going the other way.
If you want to translate into touchdowns, it would go something like this. Offenses, on average, should score about 35 touchdowns in a season. The teams with the easy schedules can expect to score 36 touchdowns (if they have an average offense). The same offense, with a hard schedule, probably would finish with 34 TDs.
Not a huge deal.
TEAMS EXPECTED TO HAVE BOTTOM-3 SCHEDULES, 2002-2010
Pre Post RnkYearTeam
18.9 22.1 9 2007 Buffalo
18.9 20.5 19 2006 Detroit
19.0 19.3 31 2004 Cincinnati
19.1 21.5 17 2002 St. Louis
19.1 20.8 20 2003 New Orleans
19.5 20.5 20 2006 Tampa Bay
19.5 21.7 16 2007 NY Jets
19.5 21.6 17 2007 Miami
19.6 20.4 28 2004 Miami
19.6 19.4 30 2003 Washington
19.7 21.1 11 2006 Oakland
19.8 22.0 15 2002 San Francisco
19.8 20.2 30 2004 Pittsburgh
19.8 22.1 12 2002 Seattle
19.9 20.2 22 2003 Atlanta
20.1 19.8 32 2010 Cincinnati
20.2 20.7 28 2010 Cleveland
20.3 20.8 27 2010 Miami
20.4 20.3 23 2005 New Orleans
20.5 20.6 26 2008 Detroit
20.5 22.3 17 2009 Miami
20.6 20.7 16 2005 Kansas City
20.6 21.2 6 2005 NY Giants
20.7 19.2 32 2008 Cincinnati
20.9 21.3 24 2008 Indianapolis
20.9 21.4 22 2009 NY Jets
21.0 22.6 15 2009 Denver
19.9 20.8 20.9 Average of 27 teams
—Ian Allan
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