I love stats. Mike Ditka said that stats are for idiots and others have stated that you still have to play the game. Whatever. Stats are facts. This guy had more rushing yards than that guy. Fact. You cannot dispute that because we have access to all the stats nowadays.

Who was better, the '10 Packers or the '11 Packers? Let's completely disregard what happened in both sets of Playoffs. Let's just look at regular season. The '10 Packers had a 10-6 record and didn't even win the division. Actually, even worse, they barely made the Playoffs.

The '11 Packers had a 15-1 record and apparently dominated everyone else. Or did they?

Looking at the actual numbers, even without knowing what happened in the Playoffs, I would have put my money on the '10 Packers. Why?

Offense
2010 Aaron Rodgers 28 TDs passing, 4 rushing (32 total TDs) vs 11 INTs.
2011 Aaron Rodgers 45 TDs passing, 3 rushing (48 total TDs) vs 6 INTs.

Advantage clearly 2011 Rodgers and it's not even close.

2010 Rushing 24th in yards
2011 Rushing 27th in yards
Negligible advantage to 2010 team

Defense
2010 - #2
2011 - #19

There's your answer folks. I put up another thread in the NFL section listing every single SB winner up until 2010 and the vast majority of SB winners had a D ranked in the top 6 with a pretty high percentage with the #1 or #2 D. That's no coincidence.

Now looking even closer, what went wrong with the 2011 Defense? The 2010 D picked off 24 passes and recovered 32 fumbles. The 2011 D picked off 31 passes and recovered 14 fumbles. There's part of it there. 56 takeaways in 2010 vs only 45 in 2011.

But looking at the rushing and passing D numbers, I really think this is what killed the 2011 team. The 2010 team was ranked 18th against the rush in yards but 3rd in rushing TDs, meaning while it may have given up yards, it didn't give up points on the ground. The 2011 team was pretty much the same, 14th in yards but 6th in points.

Passing though, here's where the team sucked. In 2010, the team was 4th in TDs allowed but in 2011, it was 27th in TDs allowed. How did that happen?

It happened because of several reasons but I'm convinced the biggest reason came down to one thing - the inability to put the opposing QB on his back.

2010 we sacked the opposing QB 47 times. That's almost 3 a game. CM3 led the assault with 13.5 sacks. Next was Cullen Jenkins with 7 sacks and next was BJ Raji with 6.5 sacks. That's 13.5 sacks from right up the middle. If anything, that's a QB's worst nightmare as when the pocket collapses and a would be sacker is coming around the OT, if you see it happening, you step forward and release the ball. When the pressure comes from right up the middle, there's nowhere to go.

Fast forward one year. Cullen Jenkins making the big bucks on another team and he hasn't been replaced. CM3 is on every QB's mind so he gets double teamed. So does BJ Raji who becomes almost useless as a pass rusher when he's doubled. So of our top 3 pass rushers of 2010, one is gone and the remaining two combine for a measly 9 sacks in 2011.

So much for the defense as opposing QBs can pick apart the secondary because they have the one thing that they didn't have in 2010 - TIME.

I've said it before and I'll say it again. Saying that football is a game of inches is a misnomer. It's a game of seconds. One full extra second for an opposing QB will ruin a once dominant defense.

If the Packers want to win the Super Bowl in 2012, #1 - keep 🇦🇷 upright and #1b (I say #1b instead of #2 as it's just as important) - put the opposing QB on his back.

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Thanks for the writeup, Zombie. I really hope Ted Thompson uses the draft to address the pass rush (as almost everyone else does), and I have seen that there is a good amount of depth in those areas in the crop coming up this year. I'd love to have seen/see a FA signing to get a veteran either at OL or a pass rusher opposite CM3, but I'm putting little stock in that happening.

In the end, there was a lot of breakdown on the defensive side of the ball this year in communication and tackling. Without those things getting better having or not having a pass rush won't matter because some of those communication breakdowns are so big some kids from my school could hit those receivers.

We are a great team with a ton of talent in all 3 phases, but we have to prove that talent each game.

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Thanks Zombie. It ain't rocket science. We all know what we need, and we're one or two players away. Not that we couldn't use some depth at many positions, but we're very, very close even the way we are.

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another reason was the d going for the big hit instead of tackling and wrapping up the man. never was this evidenced more than in the playoff loss to the giants.

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Looking at the past 5 Super Bowl winners (Giants, Packers, Steelers, Saints, Giants), the most important things to win, in order

1) Franchise QB (5/5)
2) Ability to get pressure (5/5)
3) Above average secondary (4/5)
4) Stop the run (4/5)
5) Protect your QB (2/5)

All logic says 5) should be higher but it isn't. The last 3 Super Bowl winners have had offensive lines that are clearly below average. The numbers might change if I took a bigger test group but for the last 5, it's like that.

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Green Bay Packers....

 

Dear Slayer,

I agree with your conclusion. However: i. statistics are measurements of facts, not the facts themselves. ii. the value of statistics comes from the quality of inferences one makes from them, not from the statistics themselves.

Signed,
Iowa Pedant


Dear VR,

1. What is MOV? Bad labelling. Tsk tsk.
2. Surely you aren't claiming accuracy to seven decimal places. (I'll never forget one piece of advice given to me by my dissertation advisor: "Always remember to round. Failing to do so shows intellectual laziness, a lack of quantitative understanding, or both.")

Signed,
Iowa Pedant

p.s. It is a pretty graph, though.

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Dear Pedant


A simple deduction of the acronym MOV when pertaining to football leaves even the most base of fans with Margin of Victory.

By the way, “labelling” is spelled with only one L at the end…NSD would be so disappointed…not to mention your students

Accuracy to only seven decimal places IS the equivalent of rounding to an Engineer.

Anyone advising to “round down” is not only being inaccurate, but displays a significant character flaw in regards to precision in ones work, a lack of veracity and a total disregard for reality.

But then again, when one resides in the Ivory tower, reality really is a foreign concept.

Signed
Your Purple Amigo

What went wrong in 2011 for the Green Bay Packers? Piece of cake. The Chiefs scored points against the Packers in the regular season and the Giants scored more points than the Packers in the playoffs.

Now my theory isn't as well written as zombieslayer's but hey I came up with it all on my own! 😛

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Dear Purple Amigo,

1. A diagram should stand alone. It should not require the user to consult accompanying text or experience.
2. Either spelling of labeling/labelling is actually allowed, contrary to all the spell-checkers derived from Microsoft Encarta or whatever tech weenie decided that OED stands for Original Equipment Douchebag or some such, rather than The Oxford Dictionary of the English Language on Historical Principles. And my students would never notice: they're more likely to spell it labbeled. Or complain about losing points for something as irrelevant as labelling/labeling.
3. Only bad engineers. Good engineers don't bother worrying about that many decimal points.
4. Got me on "round down." My bad.
5. No disagreement re: ivory tower and reality. (Though, to be precise, I don't personally reside there; I'm merely a too-frequent visitor.)

Best regards,
Pedant
p.s. Precision is not required for pedantry. Only pretentiousness.

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