SB Nation User Blog: WolfpackSteelersFan

BTSC 2009 Community Mock Draft - Pick #24 by the Atlanta Falcons: Clay Matthews, LB, USC

WolfpackSteelersFan — Sun, 12 Apr 2009 22:47:41 -0000

Many thanks to WolfPackSteelersFan for the insightful writeup and selection for his (current) hometown team, the Atlanta Falcons. One of the reasons our draft has gotten so many good writeups and such solid analysis in my opinion is the fact that many of us are spread out over the country near or in the markets of the teams we volunteered to write for. Good stuff. Next up? Here We Go and the Miami Dolphins. - Blitz-

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Well, I have to say it's a little more difficult to mock pick for a team at pick number 24 than it was last for the Falcons at pick number 3. But, I have decided to follow a formulaic approach. First off, I got some ideas for the Falcons' draft needs from this post at The Falcoholic, SB Nation's Atlanta Falcons blog. The post gave input of Falcons fans as to what they thought were the biggest needs. As I already thought, most believed that the greatest needs were on defense, particularly OLB, DT, and SS, not necessarily in that order. Although the Falcons had an excellent season last year, I saw their game against the Vikings and their defense was gashed by Adrian Peterson. Were it not for several timely turnovers (from a Falcons perspective), the Vikes probably win that game going away, instead of losing as they did. So, clearly, their biggest needs are on defense. In fact, the offense was quite good last year. Their rushing offense was, I believe, number 1 in the league, with Michael Turner leading the way. And, Roddy White really helped Matt Ryan have one of the best rookie seasons any QB has ever had. White has clearly developed into an elite WR.

Having established the areas of greatest need, I next needed to simulate a draft board. Since I'm not a professional scout, and my internet access is limited now, I decided to use Scout.com's NFL Draft player rankings. So, based on these rankings, I decided to track if any player was enough of a value to take even if he did not fit one of my top needs. If I had my choice, I'd take an elite DT, but BJ Raji and Peria Jerry came off the board early. So, a couple of weeks ago, I began thinking of taking either Clay Matthews or Brian Cushing.

Cushing is already taken, and for a little while it was looking like I might go with Michael Oher, as he was rated number 12 on my board, and may have been too great a value to pass up. The Falcons did take Sam Baker last year, but he had some injury problems, and the Falcons could use more quality depth on the OL (who couldn't? :) ). But, as I expected, he went to the Eagles at 21 (perhaps less likely now that they have Jason Peters). But, anyway, none of the other remaining best players in this value range: Knowshon Moreno, Chris "Beanie" Wells, Percy Harvin, Tyson Jackson, Vontae Davis, James Laurinaitis, or Hakeem Nicks were rated much higher than my choice. Laurinaitis and Jackson may help on defense, but they are in positions of lesser need than my choice: Clay Matthews, LB, out of USC. Laurinaitis is a MLB only, and drafting Jackson would represent giving up on Jamaal Anderson a little too soon (i.e. chasing one perceived draft mistake with another high pick). Other remaining players, like Nicks, Moreno, or Wells, would be in positions of strength for this team.

Therefore, I went with Matthews. Most of my reason for choosing him here came from input I gained watching Mike Mayock on the NFLN's Path to the Draft and NFL Total Access. Matthews is very versatile. According to his profile on Scout.com, he can play all 3 LB positions, has great tackling technique, and is very fast and athletic. His weaknesses are size and ability to shed a block. Again, I think there biggest need is at DT this year, but the only 2 DTs with first round value are gone already. Therefore, I think this team goes with a value pick at a position of need and looks to fill the DT need in later rounds (perhaps a Ron Brace).

BTSC 2009 Community Mock Draft Team Selections

#1) Detroit Lions - Jason Smith, OT, Baylor
#2) St. Louis Rams - Michael Crabtree, WR, Texas Tech
#3) Kansas City Chiefs - Aaron Curry, LB, Wake Forest
#4) Seattle Seahawks - Eugene Monroe, OT, Virginia
#5) Cleveland Browns - Brian Orakpo, DE/OLB, Texas
#6) Cincinnati Bengals - Jeremy Maclin, WR/KR, Missouri
#7) Oakland Raiders - B.J. Rahi, DT, Boston College
#8) Andre Smith, OT, Alabama
#9) Everette Brown, DE, Florida State
#10) San Francisco 49ers - Malcolm Jenkins, CB, Ohio State
#11) Buffalo Bills- Aaron Maybin, DE, Penn State
#12) Denver Broncos- Michael Johnson, DE, Georgia Tech
#13) Washington Redskins - Matthew Stafford, QB, Georgia
#14) New Orleans Saints - Peria Jerry, DT, Ole Miss
#15) Houston Texans - Rey Mualuaga, LB, USC
#16) San Diego Chargers - Evander 'Ziggy' Wolf, DE, Missouri
#17) New York Jets - Brandon Pettigrew, TE, Oklahoma State
#18) Denver Broncos - Mark Sanchez, QB, Southern Cal
#19) Tampa Bay Buccaneers - Brian CushingLB, Southern Cal
#20) Detroit Lions (from DAL via R. Williams trade) - Josh Freeman, QB, Kansas St.
#21) Philadelphia Eagles- Michael Oher, OT, Ole Miss
#23) - Minnesota Vikings, Eben Britton, OT, Arizona
#24) New England Patriots - Vontae Davis, CB, Illinois

A Statistical Analysis on the Greatest Defenses in NFL History

WolfpackSteelersFan — Sat, 28 Feb 2009 20:58:17 -0000

Some of you who have been on the site for a while remember my statistical analyses on QBs, RBs (Part 1, Part 2), and WRs from last year. Well, recently, we had a Ravens fan arguing that the 2000 Ravens unit was the greatest defense in the history of the National Footall League. Sure, that's to be expected of partisans of Baltimore much like there was plenty of talk amongst Steelers faithful this year that the 2008 Steelers defense was the greatest to ever take the field. And if you were a fan of the Chicago Bears, particularly one who was old enough to vividly remember the dominating fashion in which the 1985 defense suffocated opponents, then your vote probably would go there. And on and on.

That got me interested in looking into a comparative analysis of a number of the greatest defenses in NFL history. If there was ever a time to do it, now is the time considering the great performance this year's Steelers defense registered. There are a handful of defenses that are generally argued as the greatest defensive statistical seasons, so I thought I would focus on those. I also wanted to include a couple of other great defensive seasons to add depth and context to the comparative analysis.

The best ever? Let's try to find out after the jump.

The seasons that I will analyze in this post are:

1973 Los Angeles Rams
1976 Pittsburgh Steelers
1977 Atlanta Falcons
1985 Chicago Bears
1991 Philadelphia Eagles
2000 Baltimore Ravens
2008 Pittsburgh Steelers

I think it's fairly obvious to most NFL fans that the '76 Steelers, '85 Bears, and '00 Ravens are the defenses most commonly discussed by pundits as the contenders for the greatest ever. However, I also included the '73 Rams and '91 Eagles because they were the teams that were mentioned throughout the course of the 2008 season as the Steelers continued to hold opposing offenses under 300 yards of total offense for the first 14 contests of the regular season. The '73 Rams were the only team to hold every last opponent under 300 yards each week (14 games), while the '91 Eagles were the last to hold 15 of 16 opponents below 300 yards total offense prior to Dick LeBeau's defense doing so in 2008.

I also included the '77 Falcons because they only gave up 129 points that season. I had never heard of this season until the NFL Network had a show that included the '77 Falcons "Grits Blitz" defense as one of the top defenses in NFL history. But, I believe they had the fewest total points allowed in a 14 game season, which obviously merits their inclusion in this analysis.

To begin, it makes the most sense to look at the raw numbers of each of these defenses. The following chart is not an exhaustive list of statistics, but rather, it includes what I thought were the most pertinent statistics. Sacks are not included because the league did not officially track them for all of these years, and more importantly, they were not included in the data that I got from pro-football-reference.com.

**RAW DATA OF BEST SINGLE SEASON DEFENSES**
	YDS	PTS		TOTAL	TOTAL	PASS	PASS	PASS	RUSH	RUSH	TOTAL
TEAM	Rank	Rank	G	Points	Yards	Yds	TD	Int	Yds	TD	FR
1973 Los Angeles Rams	1	4	14	178	2951	1681	10	20	1270	5	18
1976 Pittsburgh Steelers	1	1	14	138	3323	1866	9	22	1457	5	24
1977 Atlanta Falcons	2	1	14	129	3242	1384	9	26	1858	5	22
1985 Chicago Bears	1	1	16	198	4135	2816	16	34	1319	6	20
1991 Philadelphia Eagles	1	5	16	244	3549	2413	16	26	1136	4	22
2000 Baltimore Ravens	2	1	16	165	3967	2997	11	23	970	5	26
2008 Pittsburgh Steelers	1	1	16	223	3795	2511	12	20	1284	7	9

It's nice to have all this data in one place, but it's far too early to make any sort of conclusions based on it. Basically all this tells us is that the defenses we're looking at are good. Very good. Those pass and rush TD numbers are ridiculous in most instances. Still, beyond the simple truism that these Ds were stingy, it's hard to make any sort of insightful and convincing comparisons, primarily because three of the teams played 14 game schedules, while the other four played 16 game schedules.

And that's before mentioning changes in the way the game has been played on the offensive side of the ball, and the rule changes facilitating a trajectory towards more entertaining, offensive-oriented contests. For that reason, I wanted to look at the data on a per game and per play basis. You can see that data below, as well as the Offensive Ranks for each of these teams. I included the Offensive Ranks because the efficiency of a team's offense (particularly rush offense) is widely believed to impact the defense. A good offense keeps the defense off the field more, which keeps the defense fresher and limits the opposing offenses' opportunities with the ball.

**PER GAME AND PER PLAY DATA**

**WITH TEAMS' OFFENSIVE RANKS ADDED**
	TOTAL	TOTAL	TOTAL	PASS	PASS	RUSH	RUSH	O_Rank	O_Rank	O_Rank	O_Rank
TEAM	Pts/G	Yds/G	Yds/Play	INT/G	TD/G	Yds/Rush	TD/G	Points	Total	Pass	Rush
1973 Los Angeles Rams	12.7	211	4	1.43	0.71	3.5	0.36	1	1	13	2
1976 Pittsburgh Steelers	9.8	237.4	3.8	1.57	0.64	3.2	0.36	5	9	22	1
1977 Atlanta Falcons	9.2	231.5	3.7	1.86	0.64	3.7	0.36	25	25	27	17
1985 Chicago Bears	12.4	258	4.4	2.13	1	3.7	0.38	2	7	20	1
1991 Philadelphia Eagles	15.25	222	3.9	1.63	1	3.0	0.25	18	26	22	21
2000 Baltimore Ravens	10.3	248	4.3	1.44	0.69	2.7	0.31	14	16	22	5
2008 Pittsburgh Steelers	13.9	237	3.9	1.25	0.75	3.3	0.44	20	22	17	23

As in my previous statistical comparisons, I have sorted the teams according to each of the per game and per play statistics as well as for their team's offensive rank. For interceptions and fumble recoveries per game, I sorted so that defenses with higher numbers would rank higher. For Pts/G, Yds/G, Yds/P, TD/G, and Y/A, I sorted so that those defenses with higher numbers would rank lower. The idea being that defenses that give up more yards are worse, but those with more fumble recoveries and interceptions are better. I also sorted the offensive rankings for each team so that a defense with a higher offensive ranking would be given a lower ranking in this table. Again, the idea here is that a defense with a better offense does not have as hard of a job, but a defense with a worse offense would have a harder job. (Please Note: This table is not saying that the 2008 Steelers had to top rated rush offense. It is saying that the defense is ranked 1st in terms of having the worst ranked rush offense of any of the defenses in this analysis) Again, as in my other posts, I took an average of the teams' rankings to see each defense's average ranking. The table is shown below.

**DEFENSES' RANKINGS: PER GAME, PER PLAY AND OFFENSIVE RANKINGS**
	TOTAL	TOTAL	TOTAL	PASS	PASS	RUSH	RUSH	Pass+Rush	Offense	Offense	Offense	Offense
Team	Pts/G	Yds/G	Y/P	TD/G	INT/G	TD/G	Y/A	FR/G	Pts	Total	Pass	Rush	Average Ranks
'73 Rams	5th	1st	5th	4th	6th	5th	5th	5th	7th	7th	7th	5th	5.17
'76 Steelers	2nd	5th	2nd	1st	4th	4th	3rd	1st	5th	5th	3rd	6th	3.42
'77 Falcons	1st	3rd	1st	1st	2nd	3rd	6th	3rd	1st	2nd	1st	3rd	2.25
'85 Bears	4th	7th	7th	7th	1st	6th	2nd	6th	6th	6th	5th	6th	5.25
'91 Eagles	7th	2nd	3rd	6th	3rd	1st	7th	4th	3rd	1st	4th	2nd	3.58
'00 Ravens	3rd	6th	6th	3rd	5th	2nd	1st	2nd	4th	4th	2nd	4th	3.50
'08 Steelers	6th	4th	4th	5th	7th	7th	4th	7th	2nd	3rd	6th	1st	4.67

Based on just this data, we would conclude that the rankings of these defenses should be as follows:

1977 Falcons
1976 Steelers
2000 Ravens
1991 Eagles
2008 Steelers
1973 Rams
1985 Bears

However, now we're getting into what I think is the most important data in this analysis. I have compiled the offensive rankings of each of these teams' opponents, and then I created a table showing a distribution of the strength of offenses that each of these teams have faced. As shown below, the table gives a count of the number of top 3, top 5, top 10, top half, bottom half, bottom 10, bottom 5 and bottom 3 offenses that each defense faced in its season. I decided to break it down by top half and bottom half (as opposed to, say, top and bottom 15) because the number of teams in the league has increased at various times. The 2000 Ravens were the only team that had an odd number, so I gave them the benefit of having anything in the top 16 out of 31 being a top half offense.

**DISTRIBUTION OF OPPONENTS' OFFENSIVE RANKINGS**
	1973	Rams	1976	Steelers	1977	Falcons	1985	Bears	1991	Eagles	2000	Ravens	2008	Steelers
	Pts	Yards	Pts	Yards	Pts	Yards	Pts	Yards	Pts	Yards	Pts	Yards	Pts	Yards
Top 3 Offenses	1	0	1	1	0	1	0	1	3	2	0	0	1	1
Top 5 Offenses	1	1	2	1	2	3	2	2	4	4	0	0	2	2
Top 10 Offenses	4	4	5	6	3	4	4	5	7	6	2	2	4	4
Top Half Offenses	4	4	8	8	4	6	7	8	7	7	5	6	8	7
Bottom Half Offenses	10	10	6	6	10	8	9	8	9	9	11	10	8	9
Bottom 10 Offenses	8	7	5	4	7	8	6	6	7	6	8	8	6	4
Bottom 5 Offenses	5	6	2	3	3	3	1	2	3	4	5	5	5	4
Bottom 3 Offenses	3	3	1	1	2	2	1	2	3	3	5	4	4	4

Just a cursory review of this data seems to favor the '76 Steelers, '85 Bears, '91 Eagles, and '08 Steelers because the other three teams faced 10 or more opponents in the bottom half in either points or yards, or both. But, it's still hard to draw really solid conclusions from the data. So, I decided to borrow an idea (or at least something similar to it) that I've seen at pro-football-reference.com's blog. I decided to develop what I'm calling the Opponent Offensive Factor. It is nothing more than the equation shown below.

T3*10 + T5*5 + T10*2 + TH - BH - B10*2 - B5*5 - B3*10

where

T3 = Number of Top 3 Offenses Faced
T5 = Number of Top 5 Offenses Faced
T10 = Number of Top 10 Offenses Faced
TH = Number of Top Half Offenses Faced
BH = Number of Bottom Half Offenses Faced
B10 = Number of Bottom 10 Offenses Faced
B5 = Number of Bottom 5 Offenses Faced
B3 = Number of Bottom 3 Offenses

The resulting numbers don't really have a quantifiable defined meaning, but what they do give us is an idea of how tough each defense's overall offensive schedule was relative to the other defenses. Because of the multipliers, the number of top 3 offenses has a weight of ten times that as the number of top half offenses. This means that top 3, 5 and 10 offenses are counted more than once, but that's fine, because it is the same for every defense that is being analyzed here.

So, using this simple equation, I came up with the following Opponent Offensive Factors for each of these defenses (both for offensive points rankings and offensive yards rankings).

**OFFENSIVE OPPONENT FACTOR**
	Points	Yards	Points	Yards	Points	Yards	Points	Yards	Points	Yards	Points	Yards	Points	Yards
	'73	Rams	'76	PIT	'77	ATL	'85	CHI	'91	PHI	'00	BAL	'08	PIT
Opp Offensive Factor	-54	-67	2	-4	-39	-20	-11	-12	3	-12	-93	-81	-49	-42

Based on these numbers, we can rank the teams in terms of which had the toughest offensive schedules, as determined by the final offensive ranks that each team played. The rankings are:

1976 Steelers
1991 Eagles
1985 Bears
1977 Falcons
2008 Steelers
1973 Rams
2000 Ravens

Also, if we were to group those defenses who played similar levels of offensive schedules, it would make sense to me to break them up into 4 different groups:

'76 Steelers and '91 Eagles - These are the only two defenses with a positive Offensive Opponent Factor, indicating that they are the only teams with at least as many good to really good offenses on their schedule as bad to really bad offenses.
'85 Bears - I almost included them in the first group, but they didn't have a positive Points Offensive Opponent Factor in either yards or points, unlike those in group 1.
'77 Falcons, '08 Steelers, and '73 Rams - Each of these teams had Offensive Opponent Factors significantly below zero, which indicates that either most of their opponents were in the bottom half offensively (Rams) or they had more teams in the bottom 3 and bottom 5 than the in the top 3 or top 5 (Falcons and Steelers)
'00 Ravens - This indicates that for the Ravens, most of their opponents in the bottom half and they had more teams in the bottom 3, bottom 5, and bottom 10 than in the top 3, top 5 or top 10.

At this point, looking at the ranking lists that we have so far, the front runner for greatest defense of all time appears to be the 1976 Steelers. Their composite ranking in per game, per touch, and offensive statistics is second to the 1977 Falcons, but they also had more games against better offenses than the Falcons. Also, as we're getting ready to see, they played in a tougher average offensive season than the Falcons.

Before I end the analysis, I also wanted to look at one more thing: the average offensive stats for each of the years that we are looking at. The table with those statistics is shown below.

**AVG OFFENSIVE STATS FOR RELEVANT YEARS**
Year	Games	Points	Pts/Game	Yards	Yds/Game	Plays/Game	Yds/Play	1stDown/G
1973	14	272.3	19.45	3994.3	285.31	62.2	4.6	16.57
1976	14	268.1	19.15	4237.9	302.71	65.67	4.6	17.66
1977	14	240.5	17.18	4000.7	285.76	64.77	4.4	16.88
1985	16	344.5	21.53	5271.1	329.44	65.55	5	19.18
1991	16	303.8	18.99	4908.6	306.79	60.76	5	17.75
2000	16	330.8	20.68	5110.8	319.43	62.96	5.1	18.42
2008	16	352.5	22.3	5235.8	327.24	61.87	5.3	18.42

To make it a little easier to analyze, I ranked each of the years in each category. The resulting table is shown below.

**RANKING OF AVG OFFENSIVE STATS**
Team	G	Pts	P/G	Yds	Y/G	Plays	Y/P	1stD	AVERAGE RANK
1973 Rams	14	5th	4th	7th	7th	7th	6th	7th	6.14
1976 Steelers	14	6th	5th	5th	5th	5th	5th	5th	5.14
1977 Falcons	14	7th	7th	6th	6th	6th	7th	6th	6.43
1985 Bears	16	2nd	2nd	1st	1st	1st	3rd	1st	1.57
1991 Eagles	16	4th	6th	4th	4th	4th	4th	4th	4.29
2000 Ravens	16	3rd	3rd	3rd	3rd	2nd	2nd	3rd	2.71
2008 Steelers	16	1st	1st	2nd	2nd	3rd	1st	2nd	1.71

As we would expect there is a trend showing increases in offensive numbers as the years go by. One thing that is especially interesting, though, is that there appeared to be a peak in offensive production in the mid-'80s, as the year 1985 ranks in the top 3 in all offensive categories, with the highest average offensive rank of any of these years. There was a decline in offensive production in the '90s, followed by a resurgence of offense in the '00s.

At first that surprised me, but then I thought back to the '80s, and I remembered the Bill Walsh offenses, the Dan Marino Dolphins, and the Run and Shoot offenses that the Oilers and Lions used. That would explain the offensive peak in the '80s. The year 1985 was also the one with the most plays, which would also fit in with the style of Marino and the Run and Shoot teams. In addition, the NFL made some rules changes in the '90s to shorten the game, which resulted in fewer plays per game. They also made rules changes to favor offense, and have continued to do so, in the '90s and '00s. The resulting increases in points, yards, yards/play, and first downs after the '90s are to be expected. The resulting decrease in number of plays is also to be expected with the rules changes intended to keep most games under 3 hours.

Now, back to the defensive analysis. Based on these numbers, offensive production clearly increased in the '80s, '90s, and '00s. In particular, the years 1985 and 2008 are very similar in overall offensive production. In the '80s, it was probably more due to innovations brought on by the rules changes of 1978 (the 5 yard contact rule). In the '00s, it was probably more due to the continued rules changes to favor WRs over DBs. Not only has the NFL continued to change rules to favor the offense since 2000, they have also continued to increase the emphasis of calling pass interference to officials with each offseason. Anyway, regardless of the reasons, it's clear that 1985 and 2008 are the two years from our analysis in which offensive productivity were the greatest.

If you made it this far, I'm sure you're wondering what conclusion can we really draw from all of this data? Pure defensive numbers combined with the strength of offensive opponents gives the edge to the 1976 Pittsburgh Steelers. But, when looking at the average offensive statistics from each year, it's clear that offensive production as a whole has been higher since the '80s. Of the '70s, 1976 was the highest in terms of average offensive output, which means we can safely conclude that the 1976 Steelers were the best defense of the '70s. But were they the best of all time?

Having eliminated the ~~'73 Rams~~ and ~~'77 Falcons~~ from the discussions, let's see if we can determine which of the post '70s teams can be eliminated as well. Of the remaining teams, the 2000 Ravens had the best raw numbers. But, IMO, their argument for best defense of all time is severely weakened by the extreme weakness of their offensive opponents. Their one clear argument for best defense is points given up in a season (33 fewer than the next closest 1985 Bears). But, looking at their Opponents Offensive Factor, they played the worst offensive schedule of the 4 remaining teams, by far. So, I would eliminate the ~~2000 Ravens~~ from consideration.

Next in the raw numbers statistics comes the 1991 Eagles. They have many arguments to support them as the best of the remaining 3 defenses. They were the only defense (post '70s) to have a positive Opponent Offensive Factor. In fact, not only did they play a very balanced schedule in terms of top half and bottom half offenses, but they played 3 games against top 3 scoring offenses and 4 against top 5 offenses (both scoring and yards). Both of these are more than any other defense.

Add to this the fact that the 1991 Eagles offense ranked 26th in yards and 21st in rushing yards, and the 1991 Eagles accomplishments become even more impressive. The only possible knock on them in this analysis is that the year 1991 had the 4th overall average offensive statistics.

That brings us to the 1985 Bears and the 2008 Steelers, 7th and 5th place, respectively in terms of raw statistics. But, they also played in the top 2 seasons in terms of average offensive output (1985 1st and 2008 2nd). The Bears had a better Opponent Offensive Factor, which means that they faced a tougher offensive schedule than the Steelers. But, they also had the number 1 ranked rushing offense for their season, while the Steelers rushing offense ranked 23. As discussed earlier, this means that the Steelers offense was less likely to provide the defense with help in terms of limiting the opposing offenses' opportunities. So, it seems that for every reason to argue for one, there is a counter-argument to argue for the other.

Having looked at everything, and kicked it around for a while, I would say that the two greatest defenses of all time are the 1976 Steelers and the 1991 Eagles. Neither team won a championship that year, which of course is going to be a knock on them, but both played considerably tougher offensive schedules than the others, based on the Offensive Opponent Factors. And being that it was the days before the 1993 Collective Bargaining Agreement that brought Free Agency to the game, the Steelers defense did win championships with many of those 1976 defensive players.

Regardless, I would actually give the '91 Eagles the nod, because they had a much less competent offense to complement them, particularly rushing the football, the safest and most tested way to keep your defense fresh, off the field, and limited in their exposure to the extremely capable offenses of professional football. Even though they gave up the most points per game in this analysis, their rush offense was terrible. Given the number of top 5 offenses that they faced, and their lack of a good rushing attack to keep those offenses off the field, the fact that they gave up the most points in this analysis doesn't bother me much.

In fact, after checking, I discovered that their offense had 43 giveaways that season. So, not only did the offense not help in terms of limiting offensive opponents' opportunities, it actually gave the opponent's more offensive opportunities. I was not able to find how many of them lead directly to points, but when you turn the ball over that often, it's amazing that they only allowed 244 points.

After looking at all of this, although I would favor the Eagles in this analysis, there are so many valid arguments for the 1976 and 2008 Steelers, as well as the 1985 Bears, that I would not argue strongly against any of them. I do believe, though, that the data does pretty well rule out the 1973 Rams, 1977 Falcons, and 2000 Ravens. All three played over half their schedules against bottom half offenses. Granted, the Offensive Opponent Factor for the 2008 Steelers was among the bottom three. But, when reviewing the data more closely, there are several points that argue in their favor.

First, they played in one the top two seasons in terms of average offensive performance, second only to 1985.
Second, while their Opponent Offensive Factor was low because they had an above average number of bottom 5 and bottom 3 offenses, they also had an above average number of top half offenses and average numbers of top 10, 5, and 3 offenses.
Third, like the 1991 Eagles, they had a bottom 3rd rush offense. And, as we Steelers fans were well aware this season, the offense often went through long periods of stagnant production.
Finally, I think we can safely say that 2008 was a season in which officiating and rules favored the offense over defense more than any other year in history. So, the 2008 Steelers defense certainly had several obstacles to overcome.

With all of that said, I'm certainly interested in hearing any feedback you have.

2008: The Season that Was . . . .

WolfpackSteelersFan — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 16:36:29 -0000

Bumped. I was excited when I got an email from him letting me know he was writing this and one other thing that I'm sure we'll all enjoy soon enough. Great stuff from WolfpackSteelersFan, one of BTSC's truly great participants. -Blitz-

*********************

I know everyone is all excited about Free Agency and thinking about our team needs for the Draft. But, I wanted to write up a season recap. I'll be honest, before the AFCCG, I was so nervous and worried about losing to the Ravens that I was ready and really looking forward to the Mock Drafts, etc. It helped me keep from stressing out to much. But, now that we've won the Super Bowl, I'm not quite ready to let go of the 2008 season. Thankfully, Mike Tomlin was already thinking about being behind for next year the day after the Super Bowl, but as a fan, I can think back to the championship run without adversely impacting the team going forward. :)

So, I've been thinking about this past season and all that happened. It certainly wasn't an easy year to be a Steelers fan. But, in the end, it was obviously a very rewarding year. In Mike Tomlin's second year as a Head Coach, the Steelers went 12-4 in the regular season. Six of their wins were by 7 points or less, while three of their losses were by 9 points or less. So, this has been a season of tight, intense football games.

When I think back to the beginning of the season, and our expectations/projections, I think most of us expected the Steelers to win anywhere from 8 to 13 games. We looked at the toughest schedule in many years, and it looked like the Steelers would be running a gauntlet. Then came Week 1 against the Texans, and the game was a dominating win for Pittsburgh. We started harkening back to 2005 when we had destroyed Tennessee in Week 1, and started talking about hopes that this would lead to a repeat of our Super Bowl XL victory. Then we entered a tough 4 game stretch.

The Browns provided the stiff competition that Browns fans hoped they would, but Big Ben continued his dominance in the state of Ohio. The Eagles blitzed the crap out Ben, and put a big hurt on him. Again, like 2001, we lost game 3, to have a 2-1 record after 3 games. The Ravens seemed to have the game in hand, until we saw Pittsburgh score 2 TDs in about an 11 second span. Then, we saw a game where the Steelers dominated the Jags in every category but the scoreboard. Thankfully, Big Ben pulled us through, and he won what I believe (someone correct me if I'm wrong) was his first victory after throwing over 40 passes. This, to me, was the first hint that Ben may be up to carrying the team on his back this year.

Having gone 3-1 in this 4 game stretch, we got a couple weeks to rest (one Bye week, and a week against the Bungals minus Carson Palmer). Sandwiched between our games against Cincy, we had another very tough 4 game stretch, in which the Steelers went 2-2. Against the Giants, the game was in control until our long-snapper went down, forcing Deebo into LS duty. His snap over the punter's head was the turning point that gave NY the opportunity to steal a win. Next week, in D.C., the Steelers D ended Jason Campbell's streak of games with no interceptions. While Ben struggled in the first half and went out with an injured shoulder, Byron came in and had a great second half. Along with a dominating D (7 sacks and 2 INTs), Leftwich helped put the game away with his solid play. Next came a loss the Colts on two fluky plays (one INT turned TD where Ike had the ball go off his hands, and one horrible pass from Ben that got the Colts back in the game to end the first half). The D was still able to keep the Colts under 300 yards total offense (for the 9th straight week). Then came the game against SD, where we all were thankful for the win, but we wondered where the heck was our goal-line offense. There was also some wonder about the officiating on the final play being overturned incorrectly.

After taking down the desperate Chargers, the Steelers beat up on the Bungals again, and then destroyed the Matt Cassel led Patriots. Prior to the Steelers game, Cassel had back to back 400 yard games (the first Pats QB to do so). The Steelers held him to 169 yards passing with 0 TDs and 2 INTs. At this point in the season, the Steelers were in the home stretch. Wins over Dallas and Baltimore would clinch the division and a first round bye.

The game against Dallas was another excrutiating afternoon game. The offense could not seem to get a thing going for 3.5 quarters, and Romo and company seemed to have things in hand with about 10 minutes to go. But, once again, the D held just enough to give Ben a chance. Down by ten, Big Ben was able to drive us down for 10 unanswered points before big play Deshea took a pick-6 to the house to complete the comeback. In some ways the game next week in Baltimore seemed very similar. It was another defensive struggle with the Steelers down late in the game. Again, with the game on the line, Big Ben drove the offense down the field for the go-ahead TD, a controversial Santonio Holmes TD catch to win the game, the division, and the first round bye.

With two weeks left, the Steelers had a chance to take home-field advantage away from the Tennessee Titans. However, a series of mistakes and sloppy play from various players doomed Pittsburgh to their only loss of greater than 9 points. At the time, I thought that they had just hit a wall considering the extremely tough stretch of games up to that point in the season. The following week was blowout win against the hapless Browns, who were down to their 4th or 5th starting QB that season, both Quinn and Anderson having already been consigned to IR. The only thing interesting about the game was Roethlisberger's concussion, which was certainly a serious concern at the time. The end of the season left us pleased but concerned about the health of our QB, among a few other players.

For the regular season, there were a few significant accomplishments that I wanted to highlight, some of which were discussed at different times throughout the season:

Went undefeated against the AFC North (particularly 4-0 against the Browns and Ravens)
Eliminated any "bad losses" similar to the Jets, Cards, and Broncos losses from the previous season
Finally won a 4 pm game (Tomlin had been 0-fer in 4 pm games until defeating the Chargers, IIRC)
Defeated the hated Cowboys and Patriots
Finally knocked off the stinkin' Jaguars
Had one of the greatest defensive seasons of all time, holding 15 of 16 opponents to under 300 yards total offense

Having completed a very tense but in many ways very satisfying regular season, the Steelers prepared for the playoffs. Their offensive gameplan for the Divisional Round game against the Chargers was the best all year. The defense may have let up some at the end, but they still held the Chargers to under 300 yards total offense. It certainly didn't hurt holding the ball the entire 3rd quarter. Then, in the AFCCG, we saw round 3 verses the Ravens. For most of the first half, it looked like the Steelers would win going away. Then a couple of bad plays, and one horrible pass interference call, and the Ravens were right back in it. In the second half, it was more tense, and when the Ravens got to within 2 points, I was starting to think this was a replay of the '94 game against the Chargers. Thankfully, a Raven made a huge mistake late to pin them deep in their own end, and then Woodley and Troy made huge plays on back to back plays, sealing a trip to Super Bowl XLIII. In his second year as HC, Tomlin finally brought a championship to Heinz Field. As he said about many games this year, including the SB win, it wasn't pretty. We don't go in for style points, but he and all of the players showed great resilience and found a way to win.

I won't recap the SB, since we had plenty of recap right after the game.

I know this was pretty long, and I'm not sure it's as polished as I hoped. But, anyway, I enjoyed sort of reliving the season, even if just for the time it took me to write this. Hopefully, you all will too.

Pro-football-reference.com blog " The Best Defense of All Time: Methodology Discussion

WolfpackSteelersFan — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 22:24:38 -0000

Pro-football-reference.com blog " The Best Defense of All Time: Methodology Discussion

I thought this would be of interest to us, with the focus on our historically great D this year.

Pro-football-reference.com blog " Marvin Harrison - Peyton Manning = Keyshawn Johnson?#comment-96492

WolfpackSteelersFan — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 21:04:41 -0000

Pro-football-reference.com blog " Marvin Harrison - Peyton Manning = Keyshawn Johnson?#comment-96492

I know this isn't Steelers related, but I thought this anlysis might interest some of the old timers who liked my analyses on the top RBs, WRs, and QBs of all time.

Scout.com: The night of The Silverback

WolfpackSteelersFan — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 14:56:01 -0000

Scout.com: The night of The Silverback

Here's a great story story on James Harrison that I ran across on an NC State website. The connection? Mike Archer, NC State D Coordinator, who used to be on Cowher's staff. Sounds like the veteran LBs showed that Steelers family spirit that we all love so much.

ESPN - Team Preview: Pittsburgh Steelers - NFL

WolfpackSteelersFan — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 20:03:04 -0000

ESPN - Team Preview: Pittsburgh Steelers - NFL

I know we've previewed the team probably much more in-depth than this site, but I thought I'd share it, in case anyone wanted one more site to preview the Steelers.

What's the best College Football Conference?

WolfpackSteelersFan — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 22:46:55 -0000

Well, it's been a while since I posted any statistical analyses, but here's one I've been curious about researching for a couple of years. With excitement ramping up for the upcoming college football season, I thought it was the right time to post this analysis of how the top conferences stack up against each other. If any new BTSC readers enjoy this post, you may want to review my RB Analyses (Part 1 and Part 2), WR Analysis, or QB Analysis.

For years now, I've been hearing the SEC touted as the best college football conference, particularly by fans/alum of SEC schools. Being from an ACC school and spending the early part of my life in northwestern PA, I'm not one to just agree that the SEC is axiomatically the best conference without question. So, I wanted to research the conferences to see how each one really stacks up against another. Now, before I get into this, I'm going to say that I really wanted to get more details particularly about each conferences' non-conference schedule, but for the most part I'm forced to rely on a couple of ratings systems that I have found on the web, plus a few other websites with articles and statistics about how the conferences rate against each other.

The majority of my analysis is based off of data that I got off of Jeff Sagarin's rating website and Teamrankings.com, a website created by Mike Greenfield, as well as little bit of data pulled from this Stewart Mandel article on this very topic.

My basic approach here was to determine the overall conference rankings based on Sagarin's rating system and the system used at Teamrankings.com, and see how dominant or balanced the conferences have been. I was able to gather data for the last ten years from Sagarin's site, but only for the last seven years from Teamrankings' site. I also reviewed the relative values assigned to each conference for the years to determine if there was a large or small relative disparity between the conference values. For example, one year the top conference may have a large margin of superiority over the next best, while in another year, the top conference's margin may be much slimmer.

So, let's start looking at the data from Sagarin's and Teamrankings sites and then we'll take a look at Stewart Mandel's article and data. First, we'll look at the Sagarin data:

Sagarin Conference Overall Rankings by Year

Sagarin Conference Rating Values by Year

Just a quick perusal of these tables indicates that the SEC has indeed lived up to its hype each of the last two years, finishing as the top conference each year, and also posting 2 of the 3 highest overall ratings values in the last ten years. However, the 8 years prior to 2006 indicate that the Conference relative strength has fluctuated between various different conferences. In fact, prior to 2006, three other conferences had finished at the top twice, which is twice as often as the SEC in that span. Also, the number of the ACC, Big 10, Big 12 and Pac-10 had finished in the top 3 was also right on par with the SEC in that span.

With that, let's take a look at the data from the Teamrankings website. First we'll look at the Overall Ratings just as with the Sagarin. Then, we'll take a look a conference Strength of Schedule and Non-League Rating (or rating versus their non-conference schedule).

Teamrankings.com Conference Overall Rankings by Year

Teamrankings.com Conference Ratings Values by Year

Looking at these tables, the SEC's argument appears even stronger, as Teamrankings.com ranked them the top conference for 4 out of the 7 years for which the data was available from the site. Unfortunately, we don't have the data from 1998-2000 to see if it also correlates with Sagarins' rankings. From looking over the data from both sources, there are some differences in the conference rankings, but, there are only 3 instances where the conference ranking differed by more than 2 between Sagarin and Teamrankings for a given year. There were 7 instances (out of a total 42) where the rankings differed by more than 1. So, with a couple of large discrepancies in 2002 and 2004, overall the rankings from both sets of data are consistent with each other. Based on this level of correlation, it seems safe to say that for at least two of the three years from 1998-2000, Teamrankings.com would have similar rankings as Sagarin. If that is the case, then we are again left to conclude that the SEC has been the dominant conference in the last two years, but prior to that, multiple conferences laid claim the title of the country's best football conference.

I didn't want to just look at overall rankings, because, I believe that what really determines relative strength between conferences is their non-conference strength of schedule and how they fair against that competition. Sagarin did not have that data broken out at all, and Teamrankings.com only had overall strength of schedule and non-conference Ratings. I was hoping to get to compare actuall non-conference strength of schedules, but I decided that this would have to do. So, here are the rankings and ratings values of each conferences overall strength of schedule and non-league (or non-conference) rating.

Teamrankings.com Conference Strength of Schedule Rankings by Year

Teamrankings.com Conference Strength of Schedule Values by Year

Teamrankings.com Conference Non-League Rankings by Year

Teamrankings.com Conference Non-League Ratings Values by Year

Looking at these numbers, what do they really tell us. While the SEC has the highest non-league rating 4 out of 7 years, it only has the strongest overall strength of schedule in one of those years (2nd in the other 3). Here is where it would be really nice to know exactly how the nonconference strength of schedules stack up. And that is where the data that I pulled from the Stewart Mandel article comes in. In his article, which I would recommend reading BTW, he looks at various different values to determine relative rank between the conferences. But, in my opinion, the best to measure each conference is through their non-conference results. So, from all of the measures that Mandel used, I pulled his Non-Conference RPI values for each conference and put it into a table format, shown below.

Nonconference RPI Values from Stewart Mandel article

Unfortunately, he did not break out his data year by year, so there we can't do a direct comparison, but this data is still worthwhile. According to this data, the Pac 10 has consisently, for the last 10 years played the toughest competition outside of their conference. For the years 1998-2003, the Big Ten and ACC both had better results against better competition than then SEC. Since then, both conferences have dropped in their non-conference achievements, being passed by the SEC and Big 12.

After looking at all of this data, what can we conclude with certainty? I would argue that the only thing we can really conclude is that the SEC has been the dominant conference for the last two years. However, prior to that, they were ranked 5th or 6th for the years 2004 and 2005 in both Sagarin and Teamrankings.com. And, going back to the 6 years before that, they were consisently a top 3 conference (certainly more consisently than any other conference). No conference really stood out as being dominant for any stretch between 1998 and 2005. According to Mandel's article, the Big 10 was the best conference from 1998-2003. But, according to the Sagarin data, the Big 12 did better, ranked in the top 2 for 4 out of the 5 years, while the Big 10 dipped as low as 5.

So, again, after looking at all of this data, the only thing really clear is that prior to 2006, conference strengths were pretty cyclical. In fact, the only conference that had very little change in their ranking was the Big East, who finished in last place every year until 2006. In the last two years, the SEC as clearly dominated, moreso than any other conference at any point in the past 10 years. And, that is probably to be expected when, according to Mandel's article their coaches' salaries have risen an average of 75% in the last five years. The average salary in the SEC is now $1.85 million, with 3 coaches making more than $3 million/year. So, for the foreseeable future it appears that the SECs recent dominance will continue.

With that said, I will say that, if you meet an SEC fan who tells you it's always been that way, you can know from multiple sources, that's just not the case. And if the Big 10 and Big 12, which were the dominant conferences not even a decade ago, start paying big money for the best coaches, they may catch up quite quickly.

Well, any thoughts? Hopefully, all of the tables are not too much data to digest all at once.

ESPN Readers vote Terry Bradshaw best Steeler ever

WolfpackSteelersFan — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 17:27:06 -0000

I was just checking out some finals on ESPN.com, when I stumbled upon this page, showing how voters chose the best players of each NFL franchise's history. I was actually just going to throw it up as a FanShot, but then I stumbled on this excellent entry at Hogs Haven discussing the Redskins' choice in this very poll, so I decided to write up a FanPost on the Steelers' choice, as well as throw out some other points of interest (to me at least).

Before I get into the Steelers' choice, I wanted to point out that the Ravens' choice for greatest player ever was Matt Stover. Apparently, he's a great kicker, but how was he even on the list? Anyway, if I had to guess, it would be that Browns fans highjacked this poll to annoy Ravens fans. Or maybe they just love Stover more than Ray Ray.

Anyway, on to the Steelers choice. As my title already gave away, the Steelers' choice for greatest player of all time was Terry Bradshaw. The other choices in the poll were Joe Greene, Jack Lambert, Franco Harris, Jerome Bettis, Mike Webster, Lynn Swann, Jam Ham, Mel Blount and John Stallworth, ranked in that order. First of all, I love Terry, but I would have had to vote for Joe Greene. Everyone that I've read or heard discussing the building of that 70's dynasty always points to Greene first, from Chuck Noll to Dan Rooney to Terry Bradshaw himself. In his autobiography from the 80's, Terry called Greene "the cornerstone of a dynasty." IIRC, that was the title of the Joe Greene section from the chapter on their dynasty. Without his domination in the first two SBs, the Steelers probably don't win them, certainly not that first one. Bradshaw also said that winning that first SB gave him the confidence that he needed to perform so well in the following SBs.

I'm also surprised that the poll did not include Hines Ward, since he owns every receiving record for the team, or Ernie Stautner, the only player whose number is officially retired. Anyway, I thought I'd include our own poll here at BTSC to see how it lines up with the ESPN version. I'm including Ward and Stautner, too. Let me know your thoughts on this as well.

Poll

Who do you think is the greatest Steeler of all time?

Terry Bradshaw

5 votes

Joe Greene

39 votes

Jack Lambert

16 votes

Franco Harris

2 votes

Jerome Bettis

4 votes

Mike Webster

4 votes

Lynn Swann

1 votes

Jack Ham

1 votes

Mel Blount

1 votes

John Stallworth

1 votes

Ernie Stautner

1 votes

Hines Ward

5 votes

80 votes | Poll has closed

Top 10 Rivalries in NFL History (Steelers in two of them)

WolfpackSteelersFan — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 21:47:19 -0000

Top 10 Rivalries in NFL History (Steelers in two of them)

NFL Video Galleries