Zac Taylor Changed the Culture of Cincinnati Football

[KillerGoose]

(12-22-2021, 03:53 AM)Savagehenry54 Wrote: Were you not paying attention when the Ravens, Steelers, Seahawks, Giants and hell even the Colts were winning the Lombardi's that New England didn't the last 20 years?

By the criteria you mention all of those teams are rt there in that same club house.  Dark horse shit.  Defense and a run game go a long way in the playoffs (and yes, the colts defense went bananas the year that Peyton won one in Indy...Bob Sanders in particular played like Jack Tatum used to when somebody owed him money...youtube Jack Tatum, it ain't pretty).

I didn't forget the Packers and Saints....they just dont fit the best side of my argument cuz Rodgers and Brees.  But we got Burrow soooo

I genuinely have no idea what you are trying to say. You mention "dark horse shit" so I am assuming you're saying that all of these aforementioned teams were also considered middling teams and rated out so by SRS? If so, that's not accurate. Cincinnati currently ranks 14th in the NFL by SRS (best SRS rating in the AFC North). Here are all of the Super Bowl victors since 2005 and their SRS rating...

2020 - Bucs (2nd)

2019 - Chiefs (4th)

2018 - Patriots (9th)

2017 - Eagles (1st)

2016 - Patriots (1st)

2015 - Broncos (9th)

2014 - Patriots (1st)

2013 - Seahawks (1st)

2012 - Ravens (13th)

2011 - Giants (12th)

2010 - Packers (2nd)

2009 - Saints (2nd)

2008 - Steelers (1st)

2007 - Giants (11th)

2006 - Colts (6th)

2005 - Steelers (6th)

So, in the past 16 years, there has been three teams win the Super Bowl that landed outside of the top 10 in SRS, which I think is pretty fair to call them dark horses. You mentioned the Seahawks, Colts and Steelers as well, all of which graded out as either elite or borderline elite teams in their respective season. 

Regarding defense and running game, the defense part is true but not so much with the running game. There is essentially zero relationship to victories and run game performance within the playoffs. I am using last years playoffs as an example here, and I'm aware that the dataset is small but I'm doing this as a quick example before work. I am using YPC as my metric here and I ran a regression on YPC and wins to try to find the relationship. Exactly 0% of the variation in playoff victories last year can be explained by differences in run game performance. You don't need a strong running game to do well in the playoffs, but you do need a strong QB OR at the bare minimum, strong QB performances.