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ShareThisConsistent franchises (the other kind)
Last week I posted this collection of data that I thought characterized the consistent and inconsistent franchises of the 16-game-schedule era.
A few readers remarked that the word "consistent" implies some sort of year-to-year consistency. I hadn't intended to measure that with the previous post but it's equally interesting to look at. A reader named Yaguar proposed the following methodology:
Now, what you measure is win difference over each 2 year period, and then average them. So take the 1999-2000 Colts, who regressed from 13-3 to 10-6. That’s a win difference of 3 for 1999-2000. (Note that you’re taking absolute value, so there can’t be negative changes in wins.) For 2000-2001 and 2001-2002, they have win differences of 4 both times, going from 10-6 to 6-10 to 10-6. So from 1999-2002, the Colts have an average win difference of 3.33.
I think that hits the spot pretty well, so I'll just run the numbers.
Since 1978, arranged from most consistent to least:
Avg 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 0
==============================================
crd 1.8 1 3 6 5 7 6
phi 2.0 1 1 1 3 3 6 8 5
dal 2.1 1 1 5 4 4 6 7
mia 2.1 1 1 4 3 7 10 2
gnb 2.1 2 1 4 3 9 2 7
sea 2.1 2 4 4 8 6 4
min 2.3 2 2 2 3 9 8 2
rai 2.4 2 5 4 6 9 2
oti 2.4 1 1 1 4 3 3 7 8
was 2.6 1 4 4 5 5 5 4
pit 2.6 1 1 6 7 4 8 1
cle 2.6 1 2 5 2 6 7 1
kan 2.6 3 1 6 3 6 7 2
tam 2.6 2 1 3 4 3 4 7 4
nor 2.7 3 1 1 2 7 3 8 3
cin 2.7 1 4 1 4 3 4 6 5
jax 2.7 1 1 2 2 1 2 2
buf 2.8 1 4 5 6 5 4 3
rav 2.8 1 1 4 2 2
chi 2.9 1 1 3 2 5 8 4 4
det 2.9 3 1 4 2 3 4 10 1
den 2.9 1 1 2 3 3 4 5 5 4
sdg 3.0 1 2 3 4 7 2 7 2
nwe 3.0 1 1 1 4 5 2 5 6 3
htx 3.0 1 1 1 1
ram 3.0 1 1 1 3 4 4 5 9
nyj 3.1 1 1 2 1 8 3 5 4 3
clt 3.1 1 1 1 3 2 3 2 5 6 4
nyg 3.3 1 2 7 4 3 6 4 1
atl 3.3 1 1 3 3 4 5 6 3 2
sfo 3.4 2 1 1 4 6 4 4 4 2
car 4.1 2 2 4 2 1
The first number is the average win difference that Yaguar explained. The following string of numbers are the number of times the given team has had each given win difference. Take the Cardinals, for instance. Six times, their record stayed constant from one year to the next, seven times it changed by one game (one way or the other), five times it changed by two games, and so on.
As could be expected, there are some similarities between this list and the other one. The Cardinals show as the most consistent on both lists, and Miami, Seattle, and Minnesota are near the top on both as well, while the 49ers, Colts, and Rams look inconsistent either way.
The Cowboys are an interesting case, though. They rank as one of the least consistent franchises by the other method and one of the most by this one. This means that they've experienced some high highs and low lows, but that they have transitioned gradually between them. Denver represents the other side of the spectrum: a team whose win totals have generally stayed within a comparatively narrow band over a long period (24 of their last 29 seasons have been between 8 and 13 wins inclusive), but have jumped around a lot within that band from year to year.
This entry was posted on Friday, April 6th, 2007 at 4:54 am and is filed under History. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.
Interesting couple of articles, and good comments in the last post, I always like reading the comments here. I like this version of consistency better than the last one, but there are still some problems... look at the second least consistent franchise, the 49ers (chart is linked). They take a hit for being really good in the years before and after the strike year, and for their recent string of suck-itude, but in the non-strike years from 81 to 98 they were the definition of consistency, at least 10 wins a season and only missing the playoffs once in 17 seasons.
If you look at the Eagles, the second most consistent franchise by this measure, they've got some pretty drastic swings over the years, but they tend to be two or three-year swings instead of one year at a time... you could compare a running average of the last two years vs. the following year , or you could pick any number of previous years to average... probably as fans, we base our expectations for the coming season on what's been going on in the last 2-5 years. Also, I think it's probably better to only count declines, or find a way to count unexpected wins differently from unexpected losses. If a fan says a team is inconsistent they probably mean they are "used to disappointment" from that team. When people talk about inconsistency following an unexpected winning season, they're talking about the expected dropoff the next year, not the wins they didn't expect this year. Imagine a consistently bad team has one year where they go 13 - 3, and then they go back to 6-10 the next year. If you count improvements and declines, in a way you are double-counting that spike, compared to a consistently good team that one year drops to 6-10 and stays in the cellar for the next ten years.