Month: May 2016

Just How Accurate Are DVOA Mean Win Projections?

Yesterday, Chris Harris Jr. and other Broncos took much issue to an article on ESPN that projected the defending Super Bowl champions to go 7-9 in 2016.  The author of the article in question was Aaron Schatz, founder of Football Outsiders and the concept of DVOA.  FO has been a read of mine for a long time, as long as Schatz started up DVOA anaylsis in 2003.

Schatz’s bearish forecast on the 2016 Broncos hits on some common points he’s made in the past: extreme sides of the ball, good or bad, tend to regress to the mean, and performance on defense is more inconsistent than offense from season to season. Throw in a projection of Paxton Lynch more likely to “bust” than not, and Schatz sees a team that’s more like the Rams teams of recent years than a repeat champion.

As I said above, DVOA projections have been run for the past 13 seasons.  So given the disrespect that Schatz has inadvertently injected in the Broncos’ locker room, let’s take a look at that track record.

Continue reading Just How Accurate Are DVOA Mean Win Projections?

Looking Ahead To The Broncos’ 2017 Offseason

John Elway often says he wants “to win from now on”.  It’s an objective that he is excelling at, and in order to do so, it involves thinking many steps ahead.  So although the 2016 season isn’t even in the books yet, it’s important to keep tabs on a few things for 2017, even with the understanding that what happens in 2016 has the potential to change plans. Continue reading Looking Ahead To The Broncos’ 2017 Offseason

Thin Air Is Back Online

Sorry about the downtime for most of today.  To help ensure that there is not a repeat of the server issues that we’ve been having for the past couple of weeks, I have migrated this website to its own separate server in order to separate it from the rest of those operations.

Unfortunately, the last backup of this database was on Sunday, so there are three threads that lost its WordPress content.  However, the comments for those threads can still be found on Disqus’s website, as follows:

I will try to see if I can find another copy of that 2017 offseason that I wrote, and if not I may try to rewrite it at a later date.

The NFL, The Live Sports Bubble And The Networks

The other day, Kevin Draper of Deadspin wrote a column wondering if the live sports bubble is about to burst.

Draper notes that less popular sports haven’t been able to find buyers for their broadcasting rights, and while it’s easy to say that all deals with the fact the sports aren’t popular, there’s some truth to what Draper is saying. More importantly, Draper indicates the impact is more likely to impact the networks, rather than major sports organizations such as the NFL.

Draper isn’t the only one with this observation. Jessie Karangu at Awful Announcing observes that the so-called “skinny bundles” could put the typical cable bundles in jeopardy and that mainstream sports networks are becoming more conservative about what sports packages they will pay for broadcast rights.

Both columns note that the rise of digital media is giving more people options to watch televised programs. It’s led to some people choosing to “cut the cord,” or dump cable or satellite television in exchange for broadband Internet and subscribe to various distributors who offer a wide selection of programs people can watch at their leisure.

So how does this relate to the NFL?
Continue reading The NFL, The Live Sports Bubble And The Networks