Originally Posted by Megatron96
We have to use past production because we obviously can't use future production. And I fudged the numbers for both Skyy and Toney several times, because obviously we don't have hardly any production to speak of, so we have to extrapolate some realistic numbers. Last weekend I even fudged numbers for Justin Watson and Noah Gray.
But there are actual mins a team needs to get to in order to have a serious shot at the playoffs. They vary depending on the team, but they exist for each team.
So, just for example, if we look at the Chiefs defense for the last four years and average out a bunch of stats, we find that overall the Chiefs defense allows 75% of teams to score their average. Which coincidentally is right about what our defense allowed last season.
So, take LAC. They basically will score about 26 points vs. the Chiefs. KC tends to score 28+ against LAC. Shockingly, most of the games between KC and LAC are decided by a FG or so, and KC wins most of those games.
When KC plays most any AFC team, the defense allows right about their scoring average, and the Chiefs offense, until 2022, scored nearly a TD more than what the opposing defense usually gave up against anyone else.
Against most NFC teams the Chiefs tend to score nearly a TD above their average, as opposed to AFC teams, no idea why.
Anyway, I can take all those numbers and come up with a basic idea of how many TDs, 1st downs, 3rd down conversions, RZ efficiency, etc. it would take KC to probably get into the playoffs. It wouldn't be precise, but it would be in the ballpark. They won't tell me which games we'll win, but it will tell me indirectly roughly how many TDs KC will need to earn a playoff seed, as long as the defense plays at least as well as they have over the last four years. If the defense somehow craps out, then obviously all that math goes out the window.
It's about the only thing all those season total stats are really good for anyway. Looking at larger sets of numbers, like over a couple years, over five years, whatever.
Anyway, the point is, we can ballpark it. So it's not exactly true that we don't know how many TDs/1st downs/etc. we need. We have enough data to make a decent guess.
|