NFL Playoff myth-busters

David Schoenfield, who occasionally substitutes for Dan Shanoff in the Daily Quickie (and apparently loses about 50 I.Q. points when he does), has written a solid article for espn.com on true and false playoff theories. You know, the usual cliches, like "Defense wins championships," and "You gotta run the ball." He takes ten such theories on and compares them to actual facts and figures.

I especially enjoyed his conclusions on that first theory, that defense wins championships:

When's the last time you heard an analyst say, "Offense wins championships!" Fact is, a great defense is no more important than a great offense in reaching the Super Bowl. Taking it a step further, 10 teams which led the NFL in total yards reached the Super Bowl while five teams which led in fewest yards reached the Super Bowl.

Now, SRAM has moaned over and over about people actually forgetting about the role of defense in winning championships, particularly when they're pushing some pet star of theirs. The above quote does not argue against SRAM's beef; on the contrary, it's a confirmation of the obvious fact that, well, defense and offense are about equally important.

The "Defense wins championships" saw is similar to its famous baseball equivalent, wherein people attribute as much as 80-90% of "the game" to pitching. Well, no, actually it's probably around 50% of the game, assuming that statement has any meaning at all. (Rob Neyer took this on a couple of years ago, as I recall, and I'm pretty much just repeating what he said.)

A couple of minor complaints about Schoefield's article. First, he uses data from all teams that made the Super Bowl, not just those that won. This is understandable, since you double your sample size and get more reliable data; and justifiable, because the article deals with success in the playoffs, not just the Super Bowl. But on the other hand, it would be very instructive to look at just the champions, because there have been so many Super Bowl blowouts, and it seems that there have been lots of suspect teams who sneak into the big game, but few of those end up actually winning it.

My second complaint deals specifically with how he handled Theory #3: "You Gotta Throw the Ball." The stat he uses to examine the theory is yards per attempt. This is indeed an important statistic, but it seems to me that it would be used to prove a theory that states, "When you throw the ball, you gotta throw it well." Since the theory simply states that you gotta throw the ball, a better supporting statistic would simply be passing yards for the year, or even just the number of passing attempts. But since Schoefield uses yards per attempt, he actually ends up pointing to this year's Steelers as an example that validates the theory. But how could that be, since the Steelers throw the ball less than anyone in the league?

All that aside, though, it's a solid article. Facts to examine the conventional wisdom. What a concept!