Posted on 01/28/2015 3:42:16 PM PST by vbmoneyspender
The 2015 New England Patriots ran 187 plays per lost fumble. Which, statistically speaking, is insane. This season's Patriots are such a black swan that, as data scientist John Candido explained to Sharp,
Based on the assumption that fumbles per play follow a normal distribution, you'd expect to see, according to random fluctuation, the results that the Patriots have gotten over this period, once in 16,233.77 instances.
Which in layman's terms means that this result only being a coincidence, is like winning a raffle where you have a 0.0000616 probability to win. Which in other words, [makes it] very unlikely that it's a coincidence.
It gets unlikelier still: After finding this outlier, Sharp went digging and expanded his search to the last 25 years. And when he ranked the teams, by season, by the highest number of offensive plays per lost fumble, four of the top six seasons recorded were by the Patriots. And the Patriots have led the NFL in the category in every five-year period since 2007.
This sort of thing doesn't happen by accident. It suggests that while the rest of the league was sleeping, Belichick was in his mad scientist laboratory looking for hidden points of leverage within the game and not only discovering them, but finding out a way to exploit them, too. Is this about deflated footballs? I very much doubt that 1.5 psi could account for such a gigantic disparity. In fact, Deflategate is probably the least likely explanation.
No, I suspect that what happened is that Belichick had the some stat-head do a big, Sabremetric work-up of football statistics and discovered that lost fumbles have a disproportionate impact on wins. And I suspect that after learning this, he made fumble rates a key metric in personnel decisions. And I suspect that he did further analysis on what types of plays are more likely to result in fumbles, and then altered his play-calling schemes accordingly. In short, I suspect that Belichick has been doing Moneyball in football without anyone else knowing it.
Not a Patriots fan, but I hope they destroy the sea gulls.
Belichick is a fricking football genius and the other coaches are piqued about that.
Deflategate has been a set up from the get go.
The ball boy takes a leak in 90 seconds and we have conspiracy theorist and jaded pansies at espn having a meltdown!
Puhleeze!
The NFL owes my Boys an apology.
This is the most inept cover up Roger Goodell has put up since Ray Lewis.
Based on the assumption that the sky is red, the chances that it's being blue today was a coincidence is like winning 20 lotteries in a row.
This story blows itself up in its first lines. They sky is not red, and football fumbles do not follow a normal distribution.
If he such a genius how did he blow Super Bowl XLII? It was poor coaching that lost that game.
I’m not a Pats fan, I don’t like Belichick and I will be rooting for the Seahawks in the Super Bowl, so it pains me to say that you really do have to respect Belichick for how smart and relentless he is in his desire to win for the Patriots.
I agree, set up and total bee ess from the git go
LOLOLOLOL.
Regardless of how he does it ....
Belichick is a great coach and manager. No question. His past record speaks for itself.
That is not an endorsement of his team over my Seahawks, however
Go Hawks!
“If he such a genius how did he blow Super Bowl XLII? It was poor coaching that lost that game.”
—
Can’t win ‘em all.
.
Go Pats! :)
roger didnt become commissioner until 6 years after the ray lewis incident,
but dont let facts get in your way.
Go Hawks!
True. However, to prove my point I will provide Exhibit A, The Patriots Penultimate drive (the drive the put the Pats up late in the Fourth Qrt.
)
http://www.pro-football-reference.com/boxscores/200802030nwe.htm
Refer to the drive chart, noting the position on the field and time usage.
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