I do not know how I missed this post on the Dallas Morning News blog, but I have to share it with you. The well-respected people at footballoutsiders.com punched their numbers like they have expertise in doing and came up with some pretty scary sums for the Dallas Cowboys.
First off, the experts are asked if Roy Williams is truly a better No. 2 receiver. Not really, they said. He has only caught 44 percent of the 39 passes thrown to him in Detroit. It must be noted, and they do, that he had Jon Kitna and Dan Orlovsky as quarterbacks. He was 57th in the league though. Patrick Crayton, on the other hand, was 22nd in the league. Miles Austin was even better. These guys were good enough for the Cowboys when they had the potent offense last year. Now they are not? I am no fan of Crayton, but I just think trading for Roy Williams was not a necessity. Not now.
Secondly, an eerily close to what actually happened, the outsiders predicted how well Brad Johnson would perform based on his history. He’s had years where he threw very few interceptions and others where he has thrown too many. They predicted that the Cowboys would have a lot of stalled drives by sacks because he wouldn’t be able to avoid the defense. Boy, were they spot on with that one. Plus, he threw three interceptions.
But what might worry fans the most is their prediction that the Cowboys only have a 35-percent chance of making the playoffs. Here is a snippet from the piece:
We know that, on average, teams that are 4-2 after six games win an average of 9.5 games. Teams with four wins in their first six games have a 62.5% chance of making the playoffs.
Using this model, we can denote the relative importance of a game contextually; if the Cowboys win this week, for example, they’d be 5-2 through seven games; teams with that record in the past have averaged 10.2 wins per season, and make the playoffs 76.7% of the time. That would mean that a win against St. Louis would boost the Cowboys’ playoff chances by 13.2%.
On the flip side, a loss to the lowly Rams would hurt the Cowboys’ chances dramatically. Teams that are 4-3 through seven games average only 8.6 wins and make the playoffs less than half the time, at 49%. That would cause the Cowboys’ expectations of making the playoffs to fall by 13.5%.
You can read the post here.
Tags: brad johnson cowboys, dallas cowboys miss playoffs, dallas cowboys playoffs, playoffs cowboys, roy williams cowboys
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