D. L. Hot-Flamethrower Posted January 25, 2014 Share Posted January 25, 2014 (edited) A common theme is that the Bills were very competitive in a lot of games, and lost a lot of tough games. I decided to do a little study not knowing the answer. What I did was figure out each teams W/L record in close games, 1 possession or 8 pts or less. Obviously, a victory of more than 8 pts can be described as a decisive win, I figured these as well. I also created an adjusted record by using a teams decisive wins plus a 50% record in their close games. Obviously, the difference between the teams actual record and adjusted record can be described as lucky or unlucky. A few observations: In decisive games Seattle 8-0 and Denver 10-0 led the way. New England 5-0, NYJ 5-1, and Indy 6-1 had the best records in close games! THE BILLS were 4-4, 50% obviously smack dab in the middle! Their adjusted record was 6-10!!! We are who we thought we were. What the Bills really need is to win more games by 9 or more points, they were only 2-6! Edited January 25, 2014 by 75Bills Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Buftex Posted January 25, 2014 Share Posted January 25, 2014 Except a team can lose by more than 8pts, and it can still be a close game...garbage points can skew things. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John in Jax Posted January 25, 2014 Share Posted January 25, 2014 Nice work, but I would disagree that a victory of more than 8 points is always "decisive." Seems like a lot of times a game is very close at the end, and then the team that is ahead gets a pick 6, or a late TD off a turnover, or just a late running TD when the defense is stuffing the line, and a RB breaks through and takes it the distance (New England comes to mind). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bobblehead Posted January 25, 2014 Share Posted January 25, 2014 I'd say this shows that perhaps the Bills played in more close games than other teams. That's a start, now they have to work on their W/L record in those games. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hplarrm Posted January 25, 2014 Share Posted January 25, 2014 I also appreciate the work you did. However, I also wonder about the declaration of goals you have chosen. Are the Bills a mere hair away from winning the Super Bowl? Nope. It would take a lot of plane crashes to even get them in the game. However, the goal is merely to be competitive and have a reasonable shot at winning lots of games. Decisiveness as id'ed by you is simply not determined by the final score but how the game flowed. I think a full analysis that really taught us things would look at how many games this team won/lost from start to finish. If this team always was well behind in the first half and then lost by even larger margins then its time to clean house of probably staff and players. However, if the team got in front in the first half and then lost in the end, it says different things about the team and also what needs to be done to get them better. Likewise the Bills teams under Fitzy which started out 4-0 and ended with their usual average mediocre record is way different than the recent Jets team which won one week at home and then lost badly the next week on the road. Good analysis as far as you went but different analysis is needed to support the conclusions you made. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
D. L. Hot-Flamethrower Posted January 25, 2014 Author Share Posted January 25, 2014 (edited) Thanks! I agree with the critique. There are definetly other, and perhaps better avenues to explore this question. However, I would disagree with the person who said the Bills played in more close games than normal. They were as average as average is.One thing is very clear from this, even if the boundaries are controversial, the really good teams do a lot better in the decisive games. The Bills, were 2-6, in these games. The stronger teams,like the super Bowl squads, DEN&SEA, were a combined 18-0 between them in these types of games!Also, CAR 7-2,SF 9-2, NO 6-2, CIN 6-2 etc. The flip side is HOU 0-5,WAS 1-6, CLE 2-7, TB 2-7,OAK 2-8 were awful. The point is the Bills are a lot closer to these teams still, and lets not fool ourselves into thinking we are a player or two away. WE NEED TO GET BETTER IN ALL AREAS! Another good draft, some more quality free agent pickups, and some more improvement from younger players through better coaching. I think what we did this year was improve our confidence, team direction and our culture. The next step is starting to put away some of those teams we had on the ropes. And, not make that bad play or two that seems to crop up way to often-KC game. When we are able to go 6-2 in those decisive games to go with a 4-4 close games record we will be a playoff team. I want to get there that way, not going 7-1 in close games, get lucky and have an unsustainable record. We want a dominant team year after year. Edited January 25, 2014 by 75Bills Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ganesh Posted January 25, 2014 Share Posted January 25, 2014 Except a team can lose by more than 8pts, and it can still be a close game...garbage points can skew things. +1. The game against Cleveland...The bills kept giving the ball back to Cleveland in that last few minutes of the 4th qtr. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dean Cain Posted January 25, 2014 Share Posted January 25, 2014 It's real simple for me, we were 1-10 when giving up 23 or more points. 5-0 when yielding 21 points or less. 1-7 when our defense created 1 or fewer turnovers. 5-3 when they created 2 or more. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
D. L. Hot-Flamethrower Posted January 25, 2014 Author Share Posted January 25, 2014 (edited) It's real simple for me, we were 1-10 when giving up 23 or more points. 5-0 when yielding 21 points or less. 1-7 when our defense created 1 or fewer turnovers. 5-3 when they created 2 or more. Great Point! I had always thought we did worse in defensive points allowed than we need to. We kept the yardage allowed down, forced turnovers....but gave up touchdowns in the redzone too frequently. Edited January 25, 2014 by 75Bills Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
justnzane Posted January 25, 2014 Share Posted January 25, 2014 A common theme is that the Bills were very competitive in a lot of games, and lost a lot of tough games. I decided to do a little study not knowing the answer. What I did was figure out each teams W/L record in close games, 1 possession or 8 pts or less. Obviously, a victory of more than 8 pts can be described as a decisive win, I figured these as well. I also created an adjusted record by using a teams decisive wins plus a 50% record in their close games. Obviously, the difference between the teams actual record and adjusted record can be described as lucky or unlucky. A few observations: In decisive games Seattle 8-0 and Denver 10-0 led the way. New England 5-0, NYJ 5-1, and Indy 6-1 had the best records in close games! THE BILLS were 4-4, 50% obviously smack dab in the middle! Their adjusted record was 6-10!!! We are who we thought we were. What the Bills really need is to win more games by 9 or more points, they were only 2-6! I contend that is a little more difficult you make it sound. That stat is saying that they lost 6 games by 9 or more and won 2 by the same margin. Thus, you are asking for an 18 point swing in our favor. The games that you are losing decsively now, you would want to be closer in, and the games where you are close, you want those to be decisive W's. By citing that the Broncos were good in close games makes sense as they also had a much better record than the Bills in decisive games aka the Broncos simply were a much better team. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Haplo848 Posted January 25, 2014 Share Posted January 25, 2014 Something that might be more telling is the record of teams when they are in one score games in the last 10-15 minutes. I'd say it's a close game if you're only one score ahead or one score behind in the fourth quarter. IMO, you can still have a close game even if the team that is up manages a pick-6 in the last two minutes (or something else along those lines), putting the score differential at >8 points. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
D. L. Hot-Flamethrower Posted January 25, 2014 Author Share Posted January 25, 2014 (edited) Something that might be more telling is the record of teams when they are in one score games in the last 10-15 minutes. I'd say it's a close game if you're only one score ahead or one score behind in the fourth quarter. IMO, you can still have a close game even if the team that is up manages a pick-6 in the last two minutes (or something else along those lines), putting the score differential at >8 points. I re-thought it with everyone's help. Thanks. I looked at all the boxscores, time on clock, score. Also, took into account whether any garbage scores occurred. Results are below: We were actually 2-3 in decisive games, and 4-7 in close games! DECISIVE VICTORIES NOTES NYJ W23 MIA W19 TIGHT WINS JAX W7 BAL W3 MIA W2 CAR W1 TIGHT LOSSES NE L2 CIN L3 OT ATL L3 OT NYJ L7 KC L10 FG W/2:00 LEFT CLE L13 LATE TD INT W/2:00 LEFT NE L14 LATE TD W/3:30 LEFT DECISIVE LOSSES PIT L13 3-23 BEFORE VERY LATE TD NO L18 TB L21 The point of all this is how close are we really? Well we were 4-7 in the closer games; and it is not hard to envision winning the 2 OT losses, the first NE game, and the KC game! That gets us to 10-6 overall and in the playoffs. However, to be fair, we beat Carolina, Baltimore and Miami the first time in nailbiters that could have gone the other way. I guess it is fair to say we were pretty competitive 13 of 16 games. I think we are getting there, but only 2 decisive wins over weaker teams (NYJ,MIA) is clearly not enough. Edited January 25, 2014 by 75Bills Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dibs Posted January 26, 2014 Share Posted January 26, 2014 Except a team can lose by more than 8pts, and it can still be a close game...garbage points can skew things. ....and the reverse as well. Garbage time can turn a solid thrashing into an 8pt or less victory. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BillsFan-4-Ever Posted January 27, 2014 Share Posted January 27, 2014 off the cuff, between 7 or 8 out of 10 games are close ans some of those are games that exploded against them late in the 4th QTR Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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