Angus
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August 21, 2007
The one big preseason week
The Unofficial Scorer
by Zachary Levine
I wrote during training camp about how meaningless preseason games are toward predicting regular season success.
Here comes the big but:
BUT, the second-to-last game, which the Texans play Saturday against Dallas, is more effective than the rest of the preseason.
Teams, in general, use Games 1 and 2 (or 1, 2 and 3 if they play on Hall of Fame weekend) to sort out personnel and the last game to avoid injuries. But it's Game 3 that gives a look at the "real" teams.
The Texans will treat this weekend's game no differently, playing the starters up to three quarters, as John McClain wrote.
Obviously, we will learn a lot more about the starters individually and the units by seeing them in more reps against the Cowboys' 1's. But what can we learn about the team as a whole?
Consider the following numbers all taken since the league expanded to 32 teams upon the Texans' 2002 arrival:
• Teams that ended up with winning regular season records went 116-108-1 (.518) in all other preseason games. However, that percentage rose to 42-30 (.583) in the second-to-last games.
• Teams that ended up with losing regular season records went 102-113-1 (.475) in all other preseason games. However, that percentage fell to 29-41 (.414) in the second-to-last games.
• Teams that won their second-to-last preseason game went 675-605 in the regular season.
Despite this last figure's being statistically significant, don't overreact to the result. The 2004 Patriots and the 2005 Colts went 14-2 despite losing the penultimate preseason game. Last year's Raiders won and went 2-14.
But, and this is back to the big but, don't underestimate it either. These deviations are pretty noticeable and with pretty good sample sizes. We will know more Sunday morning than we do today, not just about the individuals, but about this team's chances.
http://blogs.chron.com/unofficialscorer/
The one big preseason week
The Unofficial Scorer
by Zachary Levine
I wrote during training camp about how meaningless preseason games are toward predicting regular season success.
Here comes the big but:
BUT, the second-to-last game, which the Texans play Saturday against Dallas, is more effective than the rest of the preseason.
Teams, in general, use Games 1 and 2 (or 1, 2 and 3 if they play on Hall of Fame weekend) to sort out personnel and the last game to avoid injuries. But it's Game 3 that gives a look at the "real" teams.
The Texans will treat this weekend's game no differently, playing the starters up to three quarters, as John McClain wrote.
Obviously, we will learn a lot more about the starters individually and the units by seeing them in more reps against the Cowboys' 1's. But what can we learn about the team as a whole?
Consider the following numbers all taken since the league expanded to 32 teams upon the Texans' 2002 arrival:
• Teams that ended up with winning regular season records went 116-108-1 (.518) in all other preseason games. However, that percentage rose to 42-30 (.583) in the second-to-last games.
• Teams that ended up with losing regular season records went 102-113-1 (.475) in all other preseason games. However, that percentage fell to 29-41 (.414) in the second-to-last games.
• Teams that won their second-to-last preseason game went 675-605 in the regular season.
Despite this last figure's being statistically significant, don't overreact to the result. The 2004 Patriots and the 2005 Colts went 14-2 despite losing the penultimate preseason game. Last year's Raiders won and went 2-14.
But, and this is back to the big but, don't underestimate it either. These deviations are pretty noticeable and with pretty good sample sizes. We will know more Sunday morning than we do today, not just about the individuals, but about this team's chances.
http://blogs.chron.com/unofficialscorer/