Five things I hope to be wrong about, 2013 edition

[AgentDib]

Someone will jump in with the Vegas odds...and in advance, I ask you to resist that temptation. The Vegas odds are nothing more than a popularity poll...

A popularity poll is the one thing that Vegas SB odds cannot afford to be. You are not gambling against other people here but against the house. If the house was to offer a payout appropriate for low odds when the actual likelihood was much higher, they would have huge outstanding expected losses, and it would only be a matter of time before it caught up with them and they went bankrupt.

Betting markets are a coveted source of information for economic analyses specifically because when real money is involved people tend to put less weight on things like popularity.

and we know this team a heck of a lot better than the best line setter in Vegas.

The sort of fans who post on internet forums in the offseason do tend to be very informed about their teams, however, I would not want to pick against any of the professional odds makers. The ones who are still employed earn a lot of money because they are good at what they do, and have a wealth of guarded inside information about the effects of dozens of splits that most fans here would not really consider.

More importantly, only the initial odds are set by a small group of people. They are opened up to a pool of experienced gamblers who have the chance to make bets on any lines they disagree with (and move the lines slightly as a result), and then opened up to the general public where they move to reflect how the widespread public is betting. Perhaps counter-intuitively, opening up betting to a wider audience improves them further due to the phenomenon known as the Wisdom of the Crowd.

Wisdom-of-the-crowds research routinely attributes the superiority of crowd averages over individual judgments to the elimination of individual noise,[5] an explanation that assumes independence of the individual judgments from each other.[3][6] Thus the crowd tends to make its best decisions if it is made up of diverse opinions and ideologies.

Note that this functions primarily by eliminating "noise"... otherwise known as popularity.

 

[SharkHawk]

I'd LOVE it so much if we got into a tiebreaker with Green Bay, SF, Minnesota, Dallas, or NY that had to be decided by coin toss. I'd absolutely LOVE it. Two reasons why... 1- The conspiracy theories would be crazy. 2- The end result would be hilarious if we won a coin flip with Green Bay of all teams. The hate would never stop, and they'd become the most incredible whiners that ever lived for the rest of time.

I went to Green Bay and went to the Packers hall of fame once, and was openly talking Seahawks (this was in 1994). The people were so awesome. Nicest people ever, and coolest place ever. For me, it was like going to the football hall of fame. In fact, I have no interest in going to the "real" hall of fame after going to the Packer's version. It was awesome. Seeing the FIRST Lombardi ever (with a dent on the thing from somebody dropping it) was like looking at the holy grail for me. I even bought a Packers t-shirt and have voted for them openly. But after last year... I really think that city took a big dip in the ratings for me. It's a cool place. Only NFL City you can go to and have to swerve in downtown to avoid rabbits (not joking... it's true). I enjoyed my time there, and am only mad I wasn't there during football season. My friends who went to watch BYU play at Notre Dame have similar sentiments about the atmosphere and the people and how cool it was to be there. I feel that way about Lambeau. It's a special special place. But winning a coin flip tie breaker over them would be EPIC!

 

[Wartooth]

I think the Texans game will be the early test...
They can beat the Panthers...
They know how to beat the Niners...
Jags...
The Texans game will the benchmark...
If they go down to Houston, and put a whipping on the Texans...
I can envision the Number #1 seed...
And a real possibility to win the whole damned thing!
And Sharks loving talk of Green Bay and Lambeau...
It is magical, wife and I went to Favre's 'last' game their back in the 2005/06 season...
Packer fans were buying us beer, said they would cheer for the Hawks in the playoffs...
I doubt the welcome would be as warm now.

 

[volsunghawk]

#1: Seattle will not go "23-0."

You will not be wrong on this one. Even GOAT type teams lose a game here and there throughout the season. For a team to go undefeated through the regular season usually requires more than just being a great team. It requires bits of luck here and there, like an extraordinary level of health for your starters, an easier-than-average schedule, catching teams with key starters missing, etc. There's a reason that there have only been 2 undefeated regular seasons in the NFL in the last 70 years. The Seahawks winning the SB is a far, FAR more realistic dream than an undefeated season.

#2: The five 10am starts, plus drawing tough teams on the road, will cost Seattle the division (to SF).

If the Seahawks are the team we thought they were as they came into the last quarter of the 2012 season, with the defense playing strong and the offense really showing signs of elite ability, this will not be an issue. The fact is that the great teams overcome this kind of thing. The San Francisco 49ers won 10+ games every season from 1983-1998, and the only time they didn't win at least 4 games on the road was in 1991, the year Steve Young took over for Montana. Over that stretch, they played in 67 games with a 10am Pacific start and they won 50 of them. And it wasn't just with offense.. the 49ers were a top 10 defense in points allowed in all but 2 of those seasons.

Now, obviously, the Seahawks have a ways to go to prove that they are on the level of some of those 49ers teams, but do you really think this team is going to suffer the same effects that, say, the 2000 Chargers did? I know people like to point to win percentage of West Coast teams playing at 10am as evidence of the unfairness of the early starts, but that stat always seems to go back only about 10 years... ask yourself how good any West Coast team has really been in the last 10 years. I'd argue that from about 2003 to 2011, there weren't really any truly great teams in the West. Yeah, our '05 Hawks benefited from an easy schedule, but that team seemed more like a very good team taking advantage of a bunch of breaks, but still a team that relied on things going just so in order to make it as far as they did. The couple of very good Chargers teams from that period were also hampered by uneven coaching and an overreliance on offense. I don't think there was a team during that period that could match up with the 2013 Seahawks or 49ers.

#3: Colin Kaepernick takes another step forward, not a step back.

I think it's likely that Kaepernick will continue to develop as a passer (how much? who knows), but that defenses keying on the read-option will limit his explosive plays. He may end up a better QB after this season, but he might have been seen by the average fan to have taken a small step back.

#4: The KJ Wright to WILL experiment returns unsavory results.

Maybe so. I don't know what to expect from our LB corps this season.

#5: Chris Clemons isn't what he used to be, and will be sorely missed.

Again, maybe so. But I've gone into this season thinking that the additions to the line in McDaniel, Avril, Bennett, Williams, and Hill outweigh what was lost with Clemons' injury. That's not to say that Clemons isn't a loss, because he is our best pass rusher. But I think the line as a whole is improved, and that improvement may allow Avril (or whoever) to generate production similar to what Clemons gave us. And if Clemons can come back and give us, say, 90% of what he once could, that would be enough in concert with a better line and another rush threat.

 

[Anonymous]

Someone will jump in with the Vegas odds...and in advance, I ask you to resist that temptation. The Vegas odds are nothing more than a popularity poll...

A popularity poll is the one thing that Vegas SB odds cannot afford to be. You are not gambling against other people here but against the house. If the house was to offer a payout appropriate for low odds when the actual likelihood was much higher, they would have huge outstanding expected losses, and it would only be a matter of time before it caught up with them and they went bankrupt.

Betting markets are a coveted source of information for economic analyses specifically because when real money is involved people tend to put less weight on things like popularity.

and we know this team a heck of a lot better than the best line setter in Vegas.

The sort of fans who post on internet forums in the offseason do tend to be very informed about their teams, however, I would not want to pick against any of the professional odds makers. The ones who are still employed earn a lot of money because they are good at what they do, and have a wealth of guarded inside information about the effects of dozens of splits that most fans here would not really consider.

More importantly, only the initial odds are set by a small group of people. They are opened up to a pool of experienced gamblers who have the chance to make bets on any lines they disagree with (and move the lines slightly as a result), and then opened up to the general public where they move to reflect how the widespread public is betting. Perhaps counter-intuitively, opening up betting to a wider audience improves them further due to the phenomenon known as the Wisdom of the Crowd.

Wisdom-of-the-crowds research routinely attributes the superiority of crowd averages over individual judgments to the elimination of individual noise,[5] an explanation that assumes independence of the individual judgments from each other.[3][6] Thus the crowd tends to make its best decisions if it is made up of diverse opinions and ideologies.

Note that this functions primarily by eliminating "noise"... otherwise known as popularity.

One of you forgot to carry the 2 in the 3rd equation after the sequential differential monomer algorithm.

 

[Scottemojo]

1. Don't care. I kinda hope we drop a preseason game, the hype around here after last year's 4-0 preseason was dumb.

2. Might be true, you know I kind of think it is in fact likely Seattle will have to win road playoff games. I know our home record makes some not like that prospect, but if Seattle is a mentally tough team it won't matter. Recent history has been kind to Super Bowl winners who traveled in the SB run. Seattle was within 30 seconds of winning two road playoff games with a rookie QB. Make the playoffs.
Caveat: I don't want to play road games at Fedex's shit field.
3. I am not worried about Kap at all. Even if he gets better. That offensive line is a much bigger problem for us than that quarterback.
4. I don't expect them to try and fit any players into roles they can't handle, and it isn't as if his down field coverage can be worse than Leroy Hill's was. Which LB is coming out for the nickel is an important question, I heard the DC project 600 snaps for the nickel this year. If KJ stinks in coverage, he will go back to his old spot.
I am so damn curious about how this D will look more than anything. I am wondering if we will call this thing a 4-3 at all. Everything I hear sounds like some Rex Ryan Madness more than traditional 4-3 roles.

5. Chris Clemons was approaching the age barrier for his position anyway, and was unlikely to be signed beyond this year, IMO. Think about it, outside the GB game Clemons had 7 sacks. I still think the biggest problem Seattle had in the last 3 years is a lack of interior push from our DTs on pass situations. The loss of Scruggs had me more concerned than the loss of Clemons. I don't want to over value sacks, I feel the determining factor in us not winning the division last year was 2 road games where we had shitty interior push against bad/average offensive lines, the Lions and Dolphins. Our dismal 3rd down pass D last year was more tied to a comfortable pocket than anything else, IMO. The two plays that canned our season at the end of the Falcons game were snapshots of that lack of middle push.

We fix that middle push problem, and Avril, Irvin, Bennett, and whoever else can make up for the lack of Clemons.

 

[Largent80]

We have all salivated about opposing O-Lines missing key players, only to have their backup totally handle the pass rush.

Until pass rush problems get solved, we will be headed in the same direction as last year. And as Scott said, it starts in the middle. not the edge.

 

[SharkHawk]

I agree about the middle. Remember when Cortez was in Seattle... we did NOT have problems with our edge guys in those days. They looked great. He made Sinclair and McCrary into household names. I mean.... they were both good players, as was Phil Daniels. But McCrary and Daniels got ridiculously rich because of the "Cortez effect", as did Sam Adams when he played next to him in a 4-3. Playing next to a hall of famer certainly helps.

In contrast though... the Hawks in the earlier Catlin days were playing with Joe Nash in the middle, and Jacob Green and Jeff Bryant coming off the edge. Both of them were monsters and got into the backfield constantly. Green's speed and technique and Bryant's power helped to create gaps for Nash to shoot through (he was good at it too, as evidenced by his many blocked kicks and generating heat in the middle and controlling the run game from the inside very well). Those 3 guys also had the luxury of excellent linebackers behind them, and then young guys like Fredd Young and Rufus Porter that came along and generated tons of pressure from different looks.

We need to see pressure from the LB'ers and them controlling runners (no more getting GASHED! Remember what Atlanta did to us last year... Quiz couldn't be stopped and that was a serious problem). Bobby Wagner is a year older and wiser. That in itself will help a great deal in my mind. KJ is a year older and wiser as well. Our LBer depth actually is pretty darn good this year. That should help offset some of the issues and free somebody up to be available to run disguised stunts, delayed blitzes, etc. Remember how Lawyer Milloy was used as an effective pass rusher a few years ago. I think we'll see more of that kind of thing out of Chancellor and Bruce Irvin. We've got the middle guys in my view who should be able to create pressure up the gut. Maybe it's time to move Red Bryant back inside more often as well?

 

[Anonymous]

One thing is clear: we have got to get a pass rush from somewhere.

Question:
What if we were to make it more attractive for teams to think they can run up the middle more effectively? I mean, controlling the middle makes teams run around the edges, so controlling the edges keeps things up the middle, right?

Isn't the thought behind smaller quicker LB's is covering passes and the edges runs?

Am I smoking crack?

 

[Sarlacc83]

5. Chris Clemons was approaching the age barrier for his position anyway, and was unlikely to be signed beyond this year, IMO. Think about it, outside the GB game Clemons had 7 sacks. I still think the biggest problem Seattle had in the last 3 years is a lack of interior push from our DTs on pass situations. The loss of Scruggs had me more concerned than the loss of Clemons. I don't want to over value sacks, I feel the determining factor in us not winning the division last year was 2 road games where we had shitty interior push against bad/average offensive lines, the Lions and Dolphins. Our dismal 3rd down pass D last year was more tied to a comfortable pocket than anything else, IMO. The two plays that canned our season at the end of the Falcons game were snapshots of that lack of middle push.

We fix that middle push problem, and Avril, Irvin, Bennett, and whoever else can make up for the lack of Clemons.

I agree with this. When I was watching NFLN this morning, they were advertising their show about Warren Sapp. As we all remember, those early 2000 TB teams had great defenses, and Sapp's interior pressure and ridiculous DT sack numbers were a primary cause for the defensive success. Everyone talks about left tackles and sealing off end rushers, but if you turn the offensive line into a W instead of a U, there's going to be a lot more sacks for linebackers and the defensive ends due to the QB's repositioning.

 

[Hawks46]

#1. yeah
#2 I'm also worried about the schedule. A few things that temper my pessimism (and for those of you that know me from the boards....that isn't usual for me)...

A. We have confidence that we can win, no matter what the score is. Look at all the games we came back in last year, and either won or almost won. Our team has confidence in our QB and that's something we haven't had since Hass in his prime. That goes a long ways towards 2nd half effort.

B. Our young guys have grown up a bit. This feeds into the above point as well, but our younger players (especially on defense and the OL) will be able to diagnose things more quickly and earlier in the game. Sometimes rookies get fooled a few times early on in a game, but diagnose things better as they get real game experience. Not seeing certain formations on the field, certain personnel groupings, and playing against unfamiliar players can do that. I remember when playing, you didn't know exactly what guy's cuts, spin moves and game speed and quickness looked like until you played against him. Watching tape really doesn't help this all that much.

C. Familiarity in the scheme and players. Last year, most of our road woes came early in the season when Wilson was adjusting to the NFL and the scheme and players. We'll have more offensive continuity this year, and like you mentioned Kearly, offense seems to get going on the road first. So we played in a hole as our offense foundered early on in games in the early part of the season last year. I see that beeing different, and probably the only real difference to beating teams like Carolina, who are tough but just dont have the talent and depth our team does.

#3. Yea. I think Kaepernick is going to be good, for all the reasons you mentioned. Kap has good intangibles, he's a leader, that team follows him, and he's proven he can win. He's also proven he can come from behind, and he works his ass off. He's a bit of a goof, but Harbaugh won't let that be a distraction. All the hate on this site is, I feel, attributed to a growing fear that this kid will be a true game changer and very difficult to defend. We all hated Elway when we were in the AFC West, but that was because the Donkeys were never out of game with him in it, and you had to respect the man. And hate him cuz he beat us. A lot.

4. I don't get this either. WILL is usually better for speedier guys who play better in space, and KJ seems the opposite of that to me. Then again, SAMs are playing the TE more...and the league is become a lot more TE centric. It's possible they want Smith to cover the TE more and shade Wagner and KJ over a bit, or bring Kam down some. Pete's smarter than I am with defense, but with some tweaking it could make sense. Also, Irvin was a safety in high school, so if his coverage skills are still there, with his physical measurables, it could work out....most teams will probably think "blitz" every time they see Irvin is sitting at SAM. I trust Pete will make it work though.

5. I actually think this will work out for us. Rotating a more seasoned Irvin, Avril (who is experienced enough to make this work) or whoever else will probably be fine. The thing I'm liking is that we have Bennett on the other side. Clemons was opening stuff up for everyone else; if Bennett can be a force on the other side, it can help our LEO out as well. I can see us lagging a bit the first two games until guys really get it, but pressure up the middle would also mask a lot of this. Against SF, we may not want the LEO getting too upfied, too fast. Keeping Kap in the pocket is much preferable to him running around on the perimiter, either running or throwing ala Wilson.

 

[jewhawk]

#2: The five 10am starts, plus drawing tough teams on the road, will cost Seattle the division (to SF).

The five 10 am starts are obviously tough, but drawing tough teams on the road isn't really a disadvantage. It just means that San Francisco will have more games as a moderate favorite while Seattle will have more as either a slight or heavy favorite. Based on the opening lines against the AFC South, the estimated win probabilities for those games are:

Seattle:
@Houston -1 (53.3%)
@Indianapolis -4 (62.7%)
Tennessee -11 (80.7%)
Jacksonville -14 (86.1%)

San Francisco:
Houston -5.5 (67.2%)
Indianapolis -7.5 (72.7%)
@Tennessee -7 (71.3%)
*Jacksonvile -10.5 (79.7%)

*in London

Based on those odds, Seattle should sweep the AFC South 23.2% of the time to San Francisco's 27.8%. Seattle should go 3-1 against the AFC South 43.5% of the time to San Francisco's 42.2%. So the inter-conference schedule favors San Francisco slightly, but that is more a result of replacing a road game with a neutral one than getting Houston and Indy at home. It also factors in their benefit of getting Houston on SNF (east/central teams traveling west for night games have a similar disadvantage to west coast teams traveling east for morning games) and their road game at Tennessee being a 1:05 PST game.

Against the NFC South, Seattle (with a home night game against the central time zone Saints) actually has the favorable schedule based on the odds:

Seattle:
@Atlanta pk (50%)
@Carolina -3.5 (61.2%)
New Orleans -3.5 (61.2%)
Tampa Bay -7 (71.3%)

San Francisco:
Atlanta -3.5 (61.2%)
Carolina -6 (68.6%)
@New Orleans pk (50%)
@Tampa Bay -3 (59.7%)

Based on those odds, Seattle should sweep the NFC South 13.4% of the time to San Francisco's 12.5%. Seattle should go 3-1 against the NFC South 35.7% of the time to San Francisco's 34.7%.

I think our disadvantage of getting five 10 am starts to San Francisco's two and our eight road games to San Francisco's seven is negated by our second place schedule drawing Minnesota and the Giants to the 49ers' Green Bay and Washington. If we don't win the division, I won't use the schedule as an excuse.

Also, anyone who skipped over AgentDib's post on odds should go back and read it because it was spot on.

 

[FlyingGreg]

5. Chris Clemons was approaching the age barrier for his position anyway, and was unlikely to be signed beyond this year, IMO. Think about it, outside the GB game Clemons had 7 sacks. I still think the biggest problem Seattle had in the last 3 years is a lack of interior push from our DTs on pass situations. The loss of Scruggs had me more concerned than the loss of Clemons. I don't want to over value sacks, I feel the determining factor in us not winning the division last year was 2 road games where we had shitty interior push against bad/average offensive lines, the Lions and Dolphins. Our dismal 3rd down pass D last year was more tied to a comfortable pocket than anything else, IMO. The two plays that canned our season at the end of the Falcons game were snapshots of that lack of middle push.

We fix that middle push problem, and Avril, Irvin, Bennett, and whoever else can make up for the lack of Clemons.

Spot on. I couldn't agree more.

 

[sutz]

I have long been a proponent of having several average to good pass rushers versus having one superstar. Relying on one guy to do the job is risky, in that individual players can often be neutralized by schemes and disciplined play.

I rather like the concept of having 5 guys that can get you 8 sacks each (40) than only one guy that can get you 20 and a few others that just kind of add a few here or there.

I know it hasn't been done that much in the league, but I'm hopeful. So, if we can have 3 guys that can approach double digits, and throw in some DB blitzes and pick up a few more, we could get to that magic 40-45 range that you need to get to the playoffs. And then, when you get there, the top notch teams you meet will be lees able to blunt a major weapon by taking out one guy, like what happened to us in Atlanta last year. So, yeah, #5 is a major concern, but I like their approach, which at first seems scatter gun, 'throw a bunch of resouces at it,' but which just might be an actual plan that involves having more than one good pass rusher on the team. I like it.

 

[SharkHawk]

Did we have Kennedy, McCrary, Daniels, and Sinclair all at the same time? Those guys all picked up a lot of sacks at one point or another, if they were all on the field together it would make a lot of sense. Those defenses were scary.

The Catlin defenses were our very best and they had lots of guys getting sacks. That 1992 defense was really good despite how inept the offense and overall season record was. The defense was lights out. They had lots of guys just getting pressure consistently and piling up numbers in the exact way you're describing.

 

[Scottemojo]

I have long been a proponent of having several average to good pass rushers versus having one superstar. Relying on one guy to do the job is risky, in that individual players can often be neutralized by schemes and disciplined play.

I rather like the concept of having 5 guys that can get you 8 sacks each (40) than only one guy that can get you 20 and a few others that just kind of add a few here or there.

I know it hasn't been done that much in the league, but I'm hopeful. So, if we can have 3 guys that can approach double digits, and throw in some DB blitzes and pick up a few more, we could get to that magic 40-45 range that you need to get to the playoffs. And then, when you get there, the top notch teams you meet will be lees able to blunt a major weapon by taking out one guy, like what happened to us in Atlanta last year. So, yeah, #5 is a major concern, but I like their approach, which at first seems scatter gun, 'throw a bunch of resouces at it,' but which just might be an actual plan that involves having more than one good pass rusher on the team. I like it.

Truth.
The biggest improvement the Niners made this year is just what you said. Corey Lemonier and Tank Carradine to supplement their already good pass rush. But they have Justin inside making it easier for pass rushers. Our moves to get more pass rushers in free agency were similar, Bennett and Avril to supplement Clemons and Irvin. And now the pickup of the guy AZ cut, Schofield. With all those guys, I still don't know if we have a consistent inside pusher.

 

[Smelly McUgly]

Re: Pass rushers, I think that more important than anything is the versatility of the players that we have in the front seven. We have so many guys that we can throw at you from different places. Bennett is a plus-player inside and outside. Avril can play at LEO or standing up. Irvin can play at LEO or standing up. Schofield, if he makes the team, might be too lean for LEO, but then again, would you be surprised if they put him there along with at OLB?

I think that having a traditional 15-sack guy at RDE would be comforting because that's the tried-and-true way to get pass rush, but the game is changing so quickly all the time. I have a sense that confusion is becoming a bigger and bigger part of what teams want to promote. Teams not setting until just before the snap to hurt pre-snap reads on defense, the read-option on offense, more and more exotic blitz packages.

I think Seattle, if we are lucky, will be at the forefront of a NFL revolution that will focus on creating looks through being versatile in terms of what (and how many) defensive sets they can run and how they can pop players into different positions and confuse a QB that is expecting certain players to line up in certain places.

Or I could just be a homer.

 

[kearly]

1. Don't care. I kinda hope we drop a preseason game, the hype around here after last year's 4-0 preseason was dumb.

I prefer the term "stupid fun" personally. Like the Three Stooges movie.

Your point on interior rush remains, but for the record, we generated pressure on Stafford. He was just out of his skull good/clutch that day. Many other QBs would have taken 5 or 6 sacks that game.

I'm not saying our interior rush was great, but it was basically at the same level it had been at for years and years, a level that wasn't far off from the league average. It wasn't until the Falcons game that our interior rush was unquestionably a source of alarm, IMO. Getting our interior rush where a lot of the dreamers want it, that's going to be very, very tough, and I think very unlikely to be achieved on the cheap. Even if we had drafted Datone Jones in the 1st round, I would have felt that we had maybe a 50/50 shot of making a major positive difference. It is just so difficult to achieve. There are far fewer teams with good interior rush than there are with franchise QBs. Pete's raging hard on for run defense doesn't make the task any easier, either.

Also, I am not comforted by the Leroy Hill comparison. Hill was always a poor pass defender, and when Seattle moved on from him this offseason it felt like a load off the shoulders. I was really looking forward to replacing Hill with a speedy weapon, one with far superior coverage skills. Instead, we replaced him with someone who will perpetuate the same problems. Maybe Pete corrects the mistake, but he played Mebane out of position for an entire season before snapping out of it, so I'm not expecting correction mid-season. It's pretty obvious to me that Wright is a situational type of linebacker with massive "splits," one who thrives as a SAM on obvious rushing downs but is often a detractor otherwise. Until Seattle uses him that way they will receive less than optimal results, barring a revelation from Wright this season.

 

[kearly]

Seattle:
@Houston -1 (53.3%)
@Indianapolis -4 (62.7%)
Tennessee -11 (80.7%)
Jacksonville -14 (86.1%)

San Francisco:
Houston -5.5 (67.2%)
Indianapolis -7.5 (72.7%)
@Tennessee -7 (71.3%)
*Jacksonvile -10.5 (79.7%)

*in London

Based on those odds, Seattle should sweep the AFC South 23.2% of the time to San Francisco's 27.8%. Seattle should go 3-1 against the AFC South 43.5% of the time to San Francisco's 42.2%. So the inter-conference schedule favors San Francisco slightly, but that is more a result of replacing a road game with a neutral one than getting Houston and Indy at home. It also factors in their benefit of getting Houston on SNF (east/central teams traveling west for night games have a similar disadvantage to west coast teams traveling east for morning games) and their road game at Tennessee being a 1:05 PST game.

Good post, but I don't agree with the percentages. Seattle and SF will probably win roughly 75% of their games next season, and that's factoring the tough games with the easy ones. The easiest game Seattle plays all year is probably Tennessee at home. How can they only be 80% win probability when Seattle figures to have something like a 75% win probability for the season overall? Also, I do not think that if the Seahawks and Titans played in Seattle 100 times, that Tennessee would walk out with 20 wins. No way. Ditto Jacksonville at SF.

I don't know where you got those percentages, so I can't do the math myself, but I'm guessing that if you added them up you'd have Seattle and SF as 10 win, maybe 11 win teams. That feels like an undershoot for the two best NFL teams playing schedules that are easier this season. Some of those percentages feel overly conservative. I assume those percentages are based on historic rates at those betting lines. But judging win probably based on a betting line is probably a mistake when two teams are extremely mismatched. The real betting line for Tennessee at Seattle should probably be -20 or -25, something like that, but of course a gambling service would never offer a line like that.

Some of the percentages look right, others look way off to me.

 

[jewhawk]

I don't know where you got those percentages, so I can't do the math myself, but I'm guessing that if you added them up you'd have Seattle and SF as 10 win, maybe 11 win teams. That feels like an undershoot for the two best NFL teams playing schedules that are easier this season. Some of those percentages feel overly conservative. I assume those percentages are based on historic rates at those betting lines. But judging win probably based on a betting line is probably a mistake when two teams are extremely mismatched.

I used the percentages from the chart here that converts point spreads to win probabilities. I think you're underestimating the variance in the NFL where bad teams beat good teams every week. It's also worth noting that things change so much year to year that opening point spreads at the beginning of the season are somewhat deflated until there's a clearer picture of how the teams will be this year, so you're right that the early lines seem conservative based on how good we think the Seahawks will continue to be. If the Seahawks and 49ers pick up where they left off last year and the weaker teams on the schedule don't improve, then those lines and corresponding win percentages will be higher by the times those games are played.

I also don't think the schedule will be easier. All four NFC South teams could be tough, Houston and the Giants/Redskins should still be good, and the Colts should improve from the 6-7 win team they really were last year. Winning 12+ against our schedule is certainly possible, but if the season could be played out 1000 times I would expect our average to be about 10.5-11 wins.

The real betting line for Tennessee at Seattle should probably be -20 or -25, something like that, but of course a gambling service would never offer a line like that.

Actually, they would. If week 6 comes around, Seattle is still playing at the historically great level they were the second half of last year, and Tennessee is one of the league's worst teams, the line could be close to 20. The Patriots were 21 point favorites against the Colts in the Suck For Luck year. They were also favored by 20 or more in four games in 2007. Based on the chart, a 20 point favorite should expect to win 93.1% of the time. Even if the Seahawks continue at last year's second half level, I would expect even a bad NFL team to get 7 wins out of 100 in Seattle.


Regardless, this discussion is kind of a sidetrack from the point of my first post that facing the Texans and Colts on the road and the Titans and Jaguars at home isn't a disadvantage from the other way around. It's just a difference of being moderate favorites in all four games versus small favorites in two and heavy favorites in two. You're right about the five 10am games being a disadvantage, but we have the advantage of playing Minnesota instead of Green Bay. Overall, I don't see the schedule favoring the 49ers in a way that would expect to impact the standings much at all.