A few weeks ago, I threw out this crazy idea about how to isolate a team's peak performance by SRS:

"Obviously, we can't run the SRS on single-game samples, because it requires multiple opponents to 'work'. But what if we broke each team-season down into 15 to 19 'mini-teams' based on 2-game stretches of the season? Like, the Patriots' win over the Jets in Week 1 of the 2007 season would be part of the 'New England Games 1-2' team, and so would their win against the Chargers the next week. And that Chargers team would be part of the 'San Diego Games 2-3' team, who played 'Green Bay Games 3-4' the next week, who played 'Minnesota Games 4-5' the week after that... and so on and so forth. Now, every 'team' connects to every other team, just like in the regular SRS, but we've also isolated team performance down to the most specific time period possible using the SRS method."

As a follow-up, I calculated the best and worst 2-game stretches by teams this decade (2009 isn't included because not all teams have played the same # of games yet). Remember, the SRS is focused on measuring a team's point differential vs. the point differential you'd expect an average team to have based on the game's location and the strength of the opponent; this method takes it even further and is only concerned with the strength of the opponent at the time of the game, meaning wins against teams with mediocre records can still be positive for a team's SOS if they play them either before or after a strong performance. I think there's definitely some logic to this, because (as Chase pointed out in the post that inspired this series) every game features a different version of the same team; sometimes the differences are so small as to be imperceptible, but sometimes they're huge (think the '07 Giants early in the season vs. late), so it really does matter when you catch a particular opponent.

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Bear with me while I throw two crazy SRS variations out there at you...

First: In the wake of Super Bowl XLII (while I was still weeping, if I recall correctly), Chase wrote this super-philosophical post about there not being a greatest team ever -- that the '07 Patriots might have been the GOAT early in the season when they were blowing the doors off of everybody, but by the time the Giants faced them in SBXLII, that team no longer resembled the team that was being billed as the most dominant ever a few months before. Likewise, the Giants were playing really well by the time January and February rolled around, and were far superior to the sorta mediocre version that trotted out on the field early in the season. So according to Chase's logic, it wasn't like you could really pinpoint "The 2007 Patriots" or "The 2007 Giants", because those two teams didn't actually exist.

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