chris98251":2g5bhb3r said:
Losing to the Rams and controlling the ball and getting the yards on the ground was an anomaly, 99 percent of the time you win with that formula, the turnover and on side attempt skewed things.
Interestingly enough I did a quick query of teams that have over 250 rushing yards in a game and gave up 30+ points along the way.
From 2012 to 2018 only 7 games qualify across the NFL.
2018:
SEA / 36-31 Loss
2016:
BUF / 34-31 Loss in OT
MIA/ 34-31 Win in OT (yes it was the same game)
2014:
SF / 35-38 Loss in OT
2013:
DEN / 34-31 Loss in OT
TB / 44-32 Win
2012:
CAR / 44-38 Win
I also looked at games where a team gave up 30+ points and had less than 250 yards passing - over 400 games qualified and strictly looking at W/L percentages, a team that gave up 30+ points and got less than 250 yards passing won around 5% of their games in that situation.
I further restricted to look at teams that got over 200 yards rushing in a game, gave up 30+ points and had less than 250 yards passing.
16 games qualified and Losers outweighed the Winners 11-5.
I opened the Passing Yards a bit to <300 and that increased the data size to 25. Losers still outweighed winners 15-10.
Finally I went all the way back to >250 yards rushing and giving up =< 30 points. 36 games qualified and Winners outweighed Loser 33-3! (And if you look at games where a team got 450 yards passing and gave up 30 points it's 10-3 Winners over Losers)
Obviously we are dealing with smaller than small sample sizes here but some of it at least makes some sort of sense - giving up 30+ points seems bad no matter how good your rushing offense is. And it seems worse if your passing game sucks on the same day. In fact, that Overtime Buffalo game Vs. Miami is the only game that qualified under the conditions of >250 yards rushing, >300 yards passing and giving up 30+ points across 2012-2018 season. And only Buffalo did. And they lost.
I will reiterate again that sample sizes are small in some situations so drawing a conclusion is murky but across the board it seems like giving up 30 points is bad.