09-09-2022, 10:23 AM
(09-09-2022, 10:14 AM)SHRacerX Wrote: Have you seen the rest of the NFL? And they could be 11-5 and tank a game, a la Cleveland last year.
Top 5 defenses don't equal wins 100% of the time....just ask Carolina.
For sure. Offensive production is the most important indicator of success in the NFL. I started working on a machine learning project this off-season and my goal has been to predict NFL games. As I was studying the data, I found that if you take a teams offensive EPA per play (if you're not familiar, it is just an offensive efficiency metric) and simply compare it to the opposing teams offensive EPA per play, that delta allows you to predict the outcome of games almost as well as the Vegas line. From a win/loss standpoint, not spread. Not quite as good, but close.
TL;DR - Offensive production is the single most important metric to look at when assessing how good a team is in the vast majority of cases.
