skyking162

I’ve heard a number of “professional” sports analysts throw out a “meaningful” football “stat” over the past week, including Mike Greenberg and Tom Jackson. Their claim is that being able to run the ball is much more important than passing, because teams that have a 100 yard rushers tend to win games, while teams with 300 yard passers tend to lose games.

Now, I don’t discount the premise that running is more important than passing (although I think I remember an article at footballoutsiders.com that blew that myth to pieces), I just think their 100/300 stat is ridiculous. In fact, I’ve made fun of it a few times in my AP Stats class already under the heading “selective sampling”.

It’s the fourth quarter. Your team is up by 10 points. You can choose to pass the ball, risk an interception, and stop the clock with each incomplete pass. Or, you can run the ball, run down the clock, and limit the opportunities the other team has to make up the 10 points. Hmm, let’s run the ball. If, on the other hand, your team is losing, you’re best option is to pass the ball - it takes up less time and has a bigger payoff (at this point, the risk is worth it).

It’s not the 100 yard rushers that win the game, it’s winning the game that creates the 100 yard rushers. I bet that if you counted 50 yard rushers and 150 yard passers in the first half, the big passing performances would do just as well, if not better, than the 50 yard rushers.

Popularity: 3% [?]

This entry was posted on Monday, September 26th, 2005 at 12:09 pm and is filed under Other Sports. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.