Polaris":2p4ebjg1 said:
Popeyejones":2p4ebjg1 said:
Schatz is with a straight face seriously trying to suggest that for game that's 31-0 at halftime the first and second halves are independent events?
That's complete and total nonsense and Schatz is smart enough to know it's complete total nonsense.
Agreed that this was a game between two good teams and a closer final score was more likely than a one-sided final score (we could have gotten to that just using the betting line), but it does annoy the dogcrap out of me when analytics people say things that they know not to be true.
Did you read that link? It didn't seem to me that Schatz was saying anything of the sort. All he was saying was:
1. It was a close game against two pretty evenly matched team when you looked at the whole picture with the home team finally getting an edge. I don't think this point is in dispute.
2. Seattle's plays were more efficient when viewed play by play than Carolina's was. Even the raw box score hints at that (yards per play, number of plays, total yardage, etc). It indicates that as poorly as Seattle started the game, things aren't quite so bad as we might remember. I think that's an interesting and darkly humorous result. It doesn't mean Seattle wins or should have won or anything like that, but it IS interesting and compelling data for the future.
Yeah, I read the link. TBF I probably should have included the passage from the link that got under my skin. :lol:
It's basically summed up by this sentene at the link: "Everything Seattle did in the second half is just as important as what Carolina did in the first half."
That's kinda true in one sense, but in the sense Schatz is using it, it's not true. He wants to treat the first and second halves of that game as independent events, and it's just preposterous to do so. To make that claim would be to claim that 1) halftime adjustments don't exist, and 2) teams play the exact same way if they're up or down by 31 points as they do when a game is tied at zero. Both of those assumptions are batty.
The simple way to look at this is that the "efficiency" measures Schatz is relying on make sense in a 0-0 game, but don't make sense in a 31-0 game, as in a 31-0 game in the second half in many ways (just as an example) a four yard gain that stays in bounds and keeps the clock running is more efficient than an 8 yard gain that goes out of bounds and stops the clock, just as a pass play of lesser yards that's more likely to be completed and wiith practically no chance of turnover if MUCH MORE EFFICIENT in holding the lead than a pass play of more yards with a slightly higher chance of incompletion (stops the clock) and a slightly higher chance of turnover (the death knell of protecting a lead; the risk just isn't worth it to further the lead).
I'm not saying any of this to knock Seattle AT ALL, but there's a reason why big leads at halftime are almost never ever reproduced in their size after halftime, and it's not just regression to the mean. It's because teams are rational, and play differently once they're up big ("efficiency" changes from yards per play to things like lowest-rate-of-turnover-per-play and highest-rate-of-clock-run-between-play).
My beef is with Schatz pretending otherwise, as he already knows that the first and second halves of games aren't indepedent events, particularly for a game like that one.
Again though, to be clear, I'm beefing with the math, not with the Seahawks ultimately getting that game MUCH TOO CLOSE FOR COMFORT from Panthers' perspective. :th2thumbs:
