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ShareThisThe WCB Tournament, second round, part I
Here were the opening round results and the first round results from the Tampa/New Orleans and the Los Angeles/Houston regions.
Now, we move to the second round with some fantastic matchups. There weren't many huge upsets in the first round (1991 Buffalo as a #13 seed and 1999 Jacksonville as a #12 were the two lowest to advance), which may just mean that they are due in this round. Today, we will hit the second round games in the Tampa and New Orleans regions.
#12007 New England Patriots vs. #9 1966 Dallas Cowboys
Wes Welker had a big game in the slot for New England, and they win comfortably again.
#4 1990 San Francisco 49ers vs. #12 1999 Jacksonville Jaguars
The Jacksonville Jaguars are the early Cinderella story, following up the win over the 1974 Raiders with a convincing win across the bay against the 49ers. Joe Montana throws 3 interceptions, and San Fransisco is held to 162 total yards, while Taylor and Stewart combine for 192 rushing yards.
Jacksonville 26, San Fransisco 10
#3 2005 Indianapolis Colts vs. #6 1997 Green Bay Packers
In a 3-6 matchup that many might not see as an upset, the Packers go into the RCA Dome and win. The play of the game comes right before the half, when Holmgren decides to go for it on fourth and inches at the two yard line with 19 seconds left and no timeouts. Levens scores on the play, and the Packers go on to pull away in the fourth.
#2 1969 Minnesota Vikings vs. #10 1996 Denver Broncos
Denver manages only 107 yards of total offense for the game, but turns two second quarter Joe Kapp interceptions in Viking territory into 10 points. Minnesota manages only field goals, and with the score at 10-9, gets the ball back at the Denver 37 with just over three minutes left. The offense squanders the opportunity again, going backwards, and leaving Fred Cox to try a desperation 57 yard field goal that misses.
NEW ORLEANS REGION SECOND ROUND
#1 1998 Minnesota Vikings vs. #9 2000 Tennessee Titans
The first top seed has fallen as the Titans overcome a sluggish first quarter to take a lead at the half. It stretches to 23-13, but then the Vikings get a touchdown from Moss and a defensive stop. Getting near field goal range, Cunningham throws an interception to Samari Rolle with 39 seconds left.
#4 1967 Los Angeles Rams vs. #5 1984 Miami Dolphins
The Fearsome Foursome frustrated Marino early, intercepting him at the goal line on Miami's best drive, to create a 10-0 halftime score. Miami gets it going in the third, taking the lead with two touchdowns, but the Rams' ground game is the difference as Les Josephson and Dick Bass put up over 280 combined rushing yards against a leaky Dolphins defense.
#3 1994 Dallas Cowboys vs. #11 1998 New York Jets
The new OT rules have not been implemented for the WCB tournament, and Dallas takes the kickoff in overtime and wins with a field goal. Curtis and Emmitt both struggled to get anything going on the ground, and Testaverde outplayed Aikman, but the Cowboys do just enough to send the Jets home and make Chase Stuart cry.
#2 1976 Pittsburgh Steelers vs. #7 2006 Baltimore Ravens
In a game that lived up to its defensive billing, Pittsburgh wins the turnover battle and scores the only offensive touchdown, and then the Steel Curtain came down in the second half, setting up a "What Could Have Been" regional semifinal between two dynasties.
This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 30th, 2010 at 11:22 pm and is filed under Insane ideas, Totally Useless. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.
Aaron Schatz of Football Outsiders.com will love that Tennessee win over the 1998 Vikings. His DVOA measurements ranked the 2000 Titans as the 6th best team from 1995-2007. To my, and I'm sure many of his readers surprise, the 1998 Vikings weren't in his top 10.
He will probably use this "game's" outcome to boost his point about how accurate his data is.
But hey, it's all good.
That 1996 Bronco win over the 1969 Vikings was a real stunner.
I, somehow, feel ashamed that I'm sitting here all day hitting F5, to see how the Broncos will do. This is so nerdy and so out of touch with reality that it, somehow, becomes extremely interesting. It's like those 80ies all-text computergames...
As a Packers fan, it's nice to see the Packers win and both Vikings teams lose. It's also interesting that next round we get the 96 Broncos vs the 97 Packers. Maybe it's time for a little revenge there.
Following the previous two comments, I'm not terribly huge on the single elimination style of the tournament. I love the idea, and would totally attempt something on a much larger scale(I mean, next year there will be 1280 teams that have played in the Super Bowl Era) if I thought more people would pay attention. But I think this is a bit damning to the image of some of these teams for those that would love to see this played out.
Granted, this isn't for anything special, not even much for bragging rights and perhaps shouldn't have any time added to it. And you're obviously trying to emulate a particular system. But these are supposed equal teams. You'd simply get better results from more than one test.
Vikings fans are going to be upset--'69 and '98 out at the same time.
And the '96 Broncos remain alive!
Re Comment 5: Don't ruin a fun, goofball offseason activity by confusing it with serious research.
Re Comment 1: Ditto.
No research done. It's just a comment that may have taken maybe 3 or 4 minutes to write. Believe it or not, you can have fun while thinking about things anyway. Just a general comment on the nature of the engine that's being used, where the 2008 Lions can beat the 2007 Patriots.
But the simple fact that I acknowledged that I know what it's going for and that I like the idea should be enough to show I can appreciate it.
And I only said something because it seemed like, from the first post, that they may mess around more with the site in the future, in which case, they probably should consider using a larger set.
I still think the 76 Steelers are going to win it...they lost to one of the more underrated teams ever (Oakland, who surely would have won multiple SB's were it not for Pittsburgh standing in their way every year) in the AFC Champ game, banged up and missing Franco Harris and Rocky Bleier. Still the closest any team has come to a Three-Peat (copyright Pat Riley) .
The '97 Packers didn't beat the 0-10 '97 Colts in Indianapolis, surrendering 37 points in the process.
There's no way the beat the '05 Colts.
@Mike: IIRC, FootballOutsiders has speculated in the past that their formula isn't correctly giving the '98 Vikings credit for their ability to consistently hit long passes, something DVOA tends to assume is a somewhat fluky thing. I don't remember all the details.
Joshua: Here is what Aaron Schatz wrote that I'm guessing is what you remember: "The other issue is long plays. The Vikings led the league with 52 plays of 25+ yards. They had 22 offensive plays of 40+ yards; no other team had more than 16 plays of that length. Long plays like this are discounted in DVOA, because as plays get longer and longer they actually have a diminishing value when it comes to determining future performance. Often the difference between an 80-yard play and a 40-yard play isn't that the first offense is better; the difference is that the first team was on its own 20 and the second team was on the opponent's 40. But with a high-powered offense led by some rookie receiver named Randy Moss, perhaps the 1998 Vikings were the exception to this rule."
I was not reading FO that long ago (the article was in 2005), so I had to go look and see.
I feel like Robert De Niro in the movie 'Casino' telling his slots manager Joe Bob Briggs that "it cannot happen, would not happen." I'm referring to the '96 Broncos upsetting the '69 Vikings at the Met in round two. Cannot happen, would not happen.
If you take a look at the nine home games (inclduing postseason) played in the 1969 season Minnesota went 9-0 and were only seriously contested in one of those games - against the Rams - but still won 23-20. The 1970 version also went undefeated at home with a 7-0 record, including a vengeful 27-10 victory over the Chiefs, but were upset by the Niners in the playoffs on a frigid day where Viking players did not have heaters and San Francisco players did.
This is pure folly, I know, but what a dishonor to that 1969 team. I don't know that I'd run more simulations as much as I would check what is being fed into the computer.
Re: 1998 Vikings. I wouldn't throw out long plays for that team. Remember Super Bowl XXII in the second quarter? It got so routine that Washington was going to score and score big and often that every time Doug Williams dropped back to pass I told everyone in the hotel room not to leave because they would miss a TD.
The '98 Vikes were like that, except they did what the '87 Washington team did in the second quarter for a whole season. They really lit it up.
Their defense was suspect, though, so an upset of that team would not be out of the question.
Thanks again for all of this. I have a comment and a question.
-It seems that John Elway's stat line for every game has been along the lines of 9/15 for 107 yards and 1 TD. I just find it surprising that he is throwing that few passes in the games.
-Would it be possible to get a "bracket view" of this entire tourney? I'm a visual guy, and it would be nice to look at that.
Patrick W, remember that the '96 Broncos didn't exactly suck. In fact, I'd argue they were better than any team the '69 Vikings actually played in Minneapolis.
@Shattenjager that's it precisely, thanks.
Not a knock on '96 Denver at all. A neutral field I'd be more accepting, but at Met stadium, uh-uh.
First thing to say is I am really enjoying the series, a great bit of fun and it is always a good thing to think about some of the greatest teams ever.
I have two comments to the people complaining about modern teams beating the greats of yester year, eg '69 Vikes. One is the whole thing is just a bit of fun, it could never be more while we do not know how the site simulates games. Two, I guarantee that if we had a time machine the '96 Broncos would kill the '69 Vikings or any other team from that era, in fact I would take the '08 Lions against the '69 Vikes.
The Vikes biggest OL was 255Lbs and their DL were all about the size of modern LBs. Late 60's/early 70's teams would just not be able to stand up physically to a modern team.
Re: #19: Yes, of course any team now would destroy a team playing back in 1969. Players today are bigger, stronger, faster, quicker, on better diets, full-time athletes, etc.
I assume the WhatIf simulations and PFR seedings are based on something else than just handing the recent teams - the 2007 Patriots (or 2008 Lions for that matter) - the benefit of the doubt against a team that played 40 years ago. How fun would that be?
I'm merely trying to point out what looks odd or surprising. I base my observations mainly on how a certain team performed during its period against its caliber of competition and then making a judgment of both teams. The 1969 Vikes were 9-0 at home and annihilated Cleveland, then a perennial playoff team, by 51-3 in the regular season and then 27-7 in the NFL title game. A year later, in 1970, the Vikes crushed Dallas 54-13 at the Met and the Cowboys almost won the Super Bowl that year.
So given that the first two rounds of these games were to be played (simulated) with the highest seed being at home I felt it was shocking, to say the least, that Minnesota lost at home. Given that the '96 Broncos lost three of their games on the road, including a December 41-6 drubbing at GB I thought a simulation might have picked up on something like that and factored it in, among other things.
A neutral field would be a different story, though.
I agree, Patrick. It's not like the Broncos outplayed the Vikings though. It's a very fluky win, at best. If you take 10 of those boxscores - I'd guess the Broncos win 1 or 2 of them. Still, it's very much an upset.
Well, it would probably be interesting to see how the machine was built and the data it's fed. And realistically, there are days where luck is biased. And that's what it takes for the 2008 Lions to beat the 2007 Patriots - which, for me, happened as the 95th simulated outcomes, with at least a dozen blowouts, including 1 80 point loss. The Lions went to win 22 to 20.
But with teams so nearly evenly matched, the above is probably around a 1 in 5 outcome. Can't really knock them.
Re #19: Sure, if you simply stuck the '69 Vikings in a time machine and dropped them off in 2010, even teams like the Rams and Lions would likely beat them easily, but how come people don't usually ask things like "what if a teen-aged Alan Page was exposed to the same exercise and nutritional guidelines that today's players are? Would he have been even greater?"
Actually, maybe Page isn't the best example, since it's long been known that he has a love for long-distance running and in 1979 became the first active NFL player to complete a marathon. In fact, some believe it contributed to the Vikings (foolishly) releasing him in 1978.
Of course any modern athlete is superiour to the athletes of the past. Just as in pretty much every field.
Low level grandmasters would beat time machined Lasker in chess.
Anyone with a physics degree probably could outshine time machined Newton/Leibnitz combined.
Churchhill would only be an average leader by today's standards.
Adam Smith would not be a significant player in Economic Theory
Boyle would not be able to keep up with modern chemists
Sun Tzu would never make it as a general in a modern military
The fastest man to have died, brought back in his prime to modern times, would have difficulties making a college track team, same with strongest, most agile, or any other category.
If Archemedies actually knew solution to the second part of his cattle problem, he would still be a top notch mathimatcian if time machine'd
However, these people were not irrelivant, they were viewed as greats in their fields because they progressed their fields so much durring their time, or were so good compaired to their contemporaries that they were insperational figures, or at least vastly entertaining figures. Thus look not at how teams and players would do now, but rather what they were, and what they accomplished, durring their time.
And remember that to look at a historical figures and ask how they'd compair to today without consideration to their contemperaries and accomplishments, is to admit that all of history is crap until the end. For even the players of today you talk about as the greatest, time machined 20 years in the future, would probably be completely irrelivant, and thus why bother watching at all until the end approaches, as Brees would be no more relevant than Joe Kapp if we time machined them both to 2050.
Also, i like the knock out format, shows just how much winning the superbowl is a game of chance as much as a game of skill.