The Rebuilding Rams' Offseason

This gentleman seems non-plussed with the Rams cleaning house this offseason

[Note: This post is the 8th in our series of posts on each team's offseason.  After this post, we'll have covered one team from every division.  Past posts have discussed the Chiefs, Bucs, Titans, Bears, Browns, Redskins, and Bills.]

At 2-14, the Rams tied the Colts for the worst record in football last year.  Even though the Colts "won" the tiebreak (and with it, the right to select Andrew Luck #1 overall), the Rams were the worst team by Pythagorean expectation, with just 2.9 wins.  It didn't help that Sam Bradford missed 6 games due to injury.

Unsurprisingly, the "R" word looms large when looking at the Rams' offseason.  St. Louis got rid of 19 players this offseason, including 9 who started at least 8 games last year.  They added a few big names as well, but seem largely content to let a youth movement -- and a healthy Bradford -- determine their fate.

After the jump, a deeper dive into the Rams' rebuilding . . .

Recasting Any Given Sunday

"Ya find out life's this game of inches . . . so's football . . ."

We at the Backup Quarterback Blog had a few friends over for July 4th.  Prior to the evening's fireworks display, we were flipping between the various patriotic concerts and -- one of my favorite things of any July 4th -- old-school patriotic movies.  I happened to walk 2 guests into the living room during Bill Pullman's epic (?) speech in the 1996 movie Independence Day.  After we ceased all conversation and immediately fixated upon Pullman (portraying U.S. President Thomas J. Whitmore), conversation turned to the Twitter feed of Grantland's Bill Barnwell.  In Tweets throughout the day, Barnwell and his followers discussed the prospect of re-casting Independence Day using today's stars.  Among the highlights: LeBron James or Russell Westbrook as Will Smith's character, Vincent Kartheiser (Pete Campbell on Mad Men) as Jeff Goldblum, Will Farrell as Goldblum's character's father, and Bill Pullman's President Whitmore played by . . . Bill Pullman.

A few days later, we found ourselves flipping channels and stumbled upon Oliver Stone's 1999 football drama, Any Given Sunday.  Arguably our favorite football movie of all time ("The Program," "Little Giants," "Rudy," "Necessary Roughness," and "Varsity Blues" also merit consideration, with 'The Replacements" finishing in roughly 1,775th place), we thought we'd try the same exercise here -- recasting Any Given Sunday, except with current players, coaches, and other NFL-related personnel.  Mr. Stone, if you're looking to produce a remake, you can find our cast list after the jump . . .

The Chiefs' Offseason: Cleaning House

Great Googly Moogly, the Chiefs lost a lot of players this offseason

[Note: This is the 7th in our series of posts on the offseasons of each of the 32 teams.  Previously, we've covered the Bills, Redskins, Browns, Bears, Titans, and Bucs.  To even out the divisions, you'll see an NFC West team for installment #8.]

You may be surprised to remember that the Chiefs went 7-9 last year and were in the hunt to win the AFC West well into December.  This is probably due to the fact that they weren't a very good team last year; Pythagorean expectation only had them at only 4.5 wins.  They lost their starting QB (Matt Cassel) and their best RB (Jamaal Charles) to injury, and promptly fired their coach, Todd Haley, now offensive coordinator with the Steelers.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the Chiefs cleaned house in the offseason.  Maybe more surprisingly, the players they brought in don't quite provide a match for the players they lost or got rid of.  In short, it appears new coach Romeo Crennel will face a big challenge in improving on last year's 7 win record.

The Bucs Offseason: A Rousing Success

[This is the sixth in our series of posts assessing the offseasons of each of the 32 teams.  Teams we've profiled so far:

Bills

Redskins

Browns

Bears

Titans

You'll notice we're bouncing around division by division.  Next up is an AFC West team.  Let us know which you want to see profiled.]

Judge Sapp would rule the Bucs offseason to be a rousing sucess

Tampa Bay floundered last year after a surprising 10-6 season in 2010.  This offseason, they cleaned house, getting rid of 15 players, tied for the most of the six teams we've profiled.  They also fired head coach Raheem Morris and brought in Greg Schiano from Rutgers.  The Bucs upgraded at several positions, and it's our view that they had one of the best offseasons of any team in the NFL.

The Titans' Offseason: An Unfilled Hole on Defense

The Titans have a big hole to fill with the departure of DJ Pau . . . er, Cortland Finnegan

The Titans, who finished on the cusp of the playoffs last year, saw some major defensive contributors depart this offseason.  They made a few additions, but are still left with at least one significant hole . . .

The Bears' Offseason: Marshall and Cutler, Together Again

Todd O'Connor and the Super Fans may enjoy Brandon Marshall even more than their Polish sausage

It was an active offseason for the Chicago Bears, the fourth team whose offseason wins and losses we profile here on the BQB.  The Bears made their biggest splash by trading for Brandon Marshall, but also picked up other strong players who should start and provide depth in 2012.  Don't forget, the Bears went 8-8 last year but started 7-3 before injuries to QB Jay Cutler and RB Matt Forte doomed the offense.

After the jump, why we're bullish on what the Bears did in the offseason:

The Browns: Quiet in Free Agency

The Browns are talkin' bout replacing Peyton Hillis with first rounder Trent Richardson

The Browns, who haven't made the playoffs in a decade and haven't won more than 5 games since 2007, were relatively quiet in free agency this year.  Most of the Browns' buzz centers around their 2 first round draft picks, Trent Richardson and Brandon Weeden.  Our take is that they pretty much blew the draft, but the potential exists for those players to be upgrades at offensive skill positions.  In free agency, they were far more quiet, and as we see below, may have upgraded slightly at DE but nowhere else.

The Dolphins on Hard Knocks: What Does it Mean for 2012?

Rex Ryan, Antonio Cromartie, and the Jets set a high bar for
the Dolphins,  the subject of this year's "Hard Knocks"

HBO announced yesterday that the Miami Dolphins will be featured on this year's installment of "Hard Knocks."  The Dolphins' new coach, Joe Philbin, raised some eyebrows yesterday when he claimed that going on Hard Knocks was a "football decision" rather than a marketing one.

We at The Backup Quarterback Blog have been bullish on the Dolphins so far this offseason, for a few reasons:

- They were 2 games better than their record last year
- They had the 4th best draft in the league
- They should get a bump from their new coach

Will appearing on Hard Knocks help the Dolphins?  We had a look at the past six participants on the show to find out.

The Redskins in Free Agency: A Middling Success

Native Haitian and former Colt Pierre Garcon heads the Redskins' free agent class

In the second of a series of looks at each team's offseason moves, we at the Backup Quarterback Blog profile the Washington Redskins.  (Check out our first installment on the Bills, as well as our methodology, here.)  The Redskins made the most headlines for mortgaging the future to trade up for Robert Griffin III, whom they selected second overall in this year's draft.  Aside from draft picks and undrafted free agents, the Skins lost and/or released 12 players and signed 13.   As we delve into the details below, there's reason for mild optimism inside the Beltway.

The Bills' Offseason Moves: Losing More Than They Gained

Stevie Johnson wonders if we should take the Bills offseason moves so seriously . . .

Welcome to the first in a series of posts where we look at individual teams and what they did in free agency this season.  This, along with previous posts focused on expected wins, and the draft, as well as a future look at how teams were impacted by injuries, will aid the BQB in its ultimate goal of coming up with its 2012 season predictions.

First up, the Buffalo Bills.  The Bills dominated some headlines in the offseason, most notably with their acquisition of Texans DE Mario Williams.  But did their additions offset their losses?  Find out after the jump . . .

The New Coach Bump? A look at the chances of success for the 7 new Head Coaches

Will any of this year's new head coaches enjoy the success Coach Boone did in his first season?

Hope springs anew in 7 NFL cities this fall.  Fans in Jacksonville, Kansas City, Miami, St. Louis, Tampa Bay, Oakland, and Indianapolis are convinced that their new coach is the one to lead them to a Lombardi Trophy or, at the very least, that he has to be better than that clown they just fired.  But are these new coaches any more likely to see success than their predecessors?

After the jump, a look at how the 65 first-year head coaches since 2002 have fared in their first season, and what it means for the 7 teams who made coaching changes for this season.

2011 in Review: Pythagorean Expectation and What It Can Tell Us



Ace Ventura and Roger Podacter think the Dolphins were better than their record last year.

Pythagorean expectation is a way to calculate a team's "expected" wins and losses.  The concept takes a team's margin of victory over the course of a season into account, weighing big wins and losses heavily and discounting closer margins.  Consider the example of the following 2 teams over 4 games:


Team A:
Week 1: Win, 21-20
Week 2: Win, 24-23
Week 3: Win, 27-24
Week 4: Win, 9-7

Team B:
Week 1: Win, 35-7
Week 2: Loss, 24-23
Week 3: Win, 17-7
Week 4: Loss, 21-17

Team A's record is 4-0, while Team B's is 2-2.  But who's really the stronger team?  Pythagorean expectation would tell us it's Team B.  The formula is:

Expected wins = 
((Points Scored)^2 / ((Points Scored)^2 + (Points Given Up)^2)) x # of Games Played

Team A would have 2.2 expected wins for the 4 game stretch, while Team B would have 3.1.  Pythagorean expectation is a bit flawed in football, given the low number of games in a season (it's much more applicable to baseball and its 162 game regular season), and it obviously discounts the merits of success in close-game situations, but it's instructive nonetheless in football.

After the jump, we'll look at the 32 teams and how their expected records compare with their actual records.

Obscure NFL Gambling Theory #1: Betting Against Blow-out Winners in Week 1 (who don't cover in Week 2)

Sammy wants YOU to make money on the NFL this season

We at The Backup Quarterback Blog have been crunching away at a database of all 2,560 regular season games played in the NFL since 2002.  Our aim is to come up with a few interesting results / theories applicable to your various football pools -- survivor pools, pick'em pools, etc.

It's harder than it might seem.  When it comes to betting on games (you know, if gambling were legal), the "vig" makes it a lot harder to make money.  For those uninitiated, the vig (or vigorish as it was known in the days of the original Ocean's 11) is the "house edge" on any wager.  The standard vig is -110, meaning that a bettor has to wager $110 to win $100.  So if you assume a wager is a 50/50 proposition and win once and lose once, when you win you'll win $100 but when you lose you'll lose $110, for a net loss of $10.

If you run the math on this, it basically means that a betting strategy has to be correct 52.4% of the time to be profitable.  Turns out, a lot of "blanket" bets -- e.g. "always take the underdog," "always take the road team because home field advantage is overrated," etc. -- are right more than 50% of the time but less than 52.4% of the time, meaning they'll lose money in the long run.

We at BQB, however, strive to find at least a few betting tidbits that should make money in the long-run.  Keep in mind that our sample size may be minimal here, but our first strategy would have only lost money once in the last 10 years and would yield an average return on investment of 7.5% . . .

 

M&T Bank Stadium: The Best Home Advantage in the NFL (and ranking the rest of the stadiums)

The unfriendly confines of Baltimore's M&T Bank Stadium

Perceptions of the relative "toughness" of NFL stadiums are common.  They get thrown around a lot throughout the season, most of them rooted in largely anecdotal evidence.  In 2009, during NFL network's "Top 10" series, the network's top 10 home-field advantages of all-time were as follows (active stadiums in bold)

10. Metropolitan Stadium (Vikings, 1961-1981)
9. Qwest/CenturyLink Field (Seahawks, 2002-present)
8. The Orange Bowl (Dolphins, 1966-1986)
7. Three Rivers Stadium (Steelers, 1970-2000)
6. Veterans Stadium (Eagles, 1971-2002)
5. Arrowhead Stadium (Chiefs, 1972-present)
4. O.co Coliseum (Raiders, 1966-1981 and 1995-present)
3. Memorial Stadium (Colts, 1953-1983)
2. Mile High Stadium (Broncos, 1960-2000)
1. Lambeau Field (Packers, 1975-present)


That seems about right.  EVERYONE talks about how hard it is to play at Lambeau on the road (especially in cold weather).  Arrowhead's sea of red has long been known as a tough venue, and Seattle seems to be the classic "take them at home, go against them on the road" team.  Oakland's Black Hole is a little more surprising to me, but most of that is probably based on the Raiders' first stint there, which is before my time.

After the jump, we'll look at results from the past 10 years and try to quantify home advantage.

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Suggs Tears ACL, 4 Reasons Ravens D is in Trouble

T-Sizzle, out for the season?

Adam Schefter is reporting that Ravens LB Terrell Suggs is out for the season after tearing his achilles tendon in a pick-up basketball game.  The news comes on the heels of the Jonathan Vilma suspension, but the injury to Suggs, the NFL's reigning Defensive Player of the Year, is a much bigger deal for the Ravens than the Vilma suspension is for the Saints.  4 reasons why after the jump.

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