The first Monday night of the regular season gives us two football games to enjoy. At 7:00, the Bengals travel to Baltimore giving Cincinnati an immediate chance to prove that last year’s playoff berth was no fluke. At 10:15, the Chargers travel to Oakland and look to show that missing out on the last two postseasons was nothing more than a fluke.

Let’s start with the Bengals. In 2011, Cincinnati lost every game they played against playoff teams and won every game against non-playoff teams. The nine wins came against Cleveland (twice), Buffalo, Jacksonville, Indianapolis, Seattle, Tennessee, St. Louis and Arizona. On the other hand, the Bengals lost twice each to Pittsburgh, Baltimore, and Houston, and lost in Denver and San Francisco early in the year.

That is more an interesting bit of trivia than anything else. No team since the merger had ever done that before, and only two pre-merger teams managed to pull of that feat. ^[1]In the early ’50s, the playoffs consisted of just a championship game between the two division winners. In 1953, the 49ers lost both games division rival Detroit and to Eastern division champ … Continue reading For the Bengals, the odd split is more an embarrassing blemish that rival fans can point to than anything else. It’s not as if the Bengals can’t beat playoff teams, it’s simply that they didn’t. In 1969, the Cowboys went 0-3 against playoff teams and 11-0-1 against non-playoff teams; the next season, Dallas made the Super Bowl and in 1971 the Cowboys won it. Lombardi’s Packers pulled off the same feat in the middle of their great run: in ’63, Green Bay was 0-2 against playoff teams and 11-0-1 against non-playoff teams a year after having one of the most dominant seasons in football history. The Bengals weren’t a great team last year, but had they gone 7-2 against non-playoff teams and 2-5 in the regular season against playoff teams, would they — or rather, should they — be viewed as any better? Swapping a win against Pittsburgh and Baltimore for losses against say, Cleveland and Seattle?

The short answer is, ‘No.’ There have been 218 teams to finish a regular season with an 8-8, 9-7, or 10-6 record between 1990 and 2010. On average, those teams faced 6.2 playoff teams and 9.8 non-playoff teams, winning 2.4 games against the former and 6.6 wins against the latter group. And, on average, these teams won 9.0 games in Year N and 8.4 games in Year N+1.

I ran all sorts of studies to see if performance against playoff teams was predictive of future success. The answer I kept getting was “very, very slightly.” The simplest way to explain it was through a regression analysis I performed, which said that at 0-7 (in the regular season) against playoff teams, we would expect Cincinnati to get 7.7 wins in Year N+1, while at 2-5, the Bengals would project at 8.2 wins in 2012. It’s worth noting that the result was not statistically significant (p=0.22), and several of the other queries I ran showed similar or less strong results. At most, there appeared to be a minor indication that success specifically against playoff teams mattered for predictive purposes.

But there’s a much stronger effect at play, and that’s a team’s true ability. I re-ran the regression using two input variables: each team’s SRS rating from the year in question and their record against playoff teams. Doing so made the ‘record against playoff opponents’ variable became completely meaningless (actually, there was negative correlation, but it wasn’t close to statistically significant). Essentially, the reason the first study showed “some” effect was because the teams that played poorly against playoff teams also tended to have poor SRS ratings.

Unfortunately for the Bengals, that provides only more reason for concern. Cincinnati ranked 18th in the SRS last season, as they only outscored their opponents by 21 points despite facing the 24th most difficult schedule. Yeah, the Bengals struggled against playoff teams. But they also needed a last-minute field goal to beat Cleveland by three at home, and their other win against the Browns wasn’t very impressive. In a home games against the Curtis Painter-led Colts, Indianapolis trailed by only 3 with the ball with 3 minutes to go. There were only two games where the Bengals looked like one of the league’s top teams, in runaway wins against the Cardinals and Seahawks.

For Cincinnati, it’s the low SRS rating and not the record against playoff teams that is the true concern. Record against playoff teams is one of those stats that sounds like it means something but usually doesn’t. Last year, the Patriots defeated just one playoff team in the regular season, the .500 Denver Broncos. The Detroit Lions, Atlanta Falcons and Super Bowl Champion Giants also won just one regular season game against an eventual playoff team. The 2007 Giants went 1-5 against playoff teams in the regular season but then won 4 straight in the playoffs.
For the Bengals, the issue isn’t that they can’t be the good teams, but rather that they haven’t done it yet. And let’s not forget: in 2009, the Bengals went 10-6 and swept both the Steelers and Ravens, which kept Pittsburgh from reaching the postseason. Cincinnati followed that up with a 4-12 season, so it’s not like beating Pittsburgh and Baltimore is a sign that the Bengals are here to stay.

The Bengals simply need to get better. Being 18th in the SRS is a sign that you’re just an average team in the regular season, which isn’t a good formula for success unless you’re the Giants. To be fair, the Bengals were way ahead of the curve last year: Cincinnati’s best player and its quarterback were rookies last year, and we should expect them to be better as A.J. Green and Andy Dalton mature. But the questions from the media won’t go away until Cincinnati proves it can beat an elite team. Tonight, they get their first chance to do just that.

A different story in San Diego
The Chargers have been disappointing for years. In 2008, San Diego had 10.2 Pythagorean wins but only 8 real ones, sneaking into the playoffs once the Denver Broncos collapsed. In 2009, San Diego went 13-3 but lost to the Jets in their first playoff game. In 2010, the Chargers led the league in both yards and yards allowed but horrendous special teams and a lot of failures in high-leverage situations left them out of the playoffs. ^[2]According to Pro-Football-Reference’s expected points added statistics, the Chargers’ special teams performance in 2010 was the second worst over the last 11 years, trailing only the 2000 … Continue reading

Last year, San Diego’s offense ranked in the top quarter of the league in points, yards, first downs, net yards per attempt, and expected points added. But the special teams and defense were below average, and the team went just 8-8. In particular, the Chargers pass defense was miserable, ranking 28th in ANY/A allowed. The Chargers losing the division to the Broncos last year seemed so egregious that it felt inevitable that Norv Turner would get fired.

Consider that in games with larger than a one-score margin entering the 4th quarter in 2011, San Diego went 7-3 while the Broncos were 0-5. But in games where the margin was no greater than 8 points at the start of the 4th quarter, the Broncos went 8-3 while the Chargers went 1-5. That sort of 4th quarter disaster rarely strikes twice, unless we’re talking about the Chargers. In 2008, San Diego went 2-7 in those situations and in 2010 the Chargers were 2-5. But San Diego did win 6 of 8 such contests in 2010, meaning this is likely more random variation than anything meaningful. It’s cold comfort for Chargers fans, of course, but these things don’t tend to repeat themselves from year to year.

Since 2006, only the Patriots have a better points differential than the Chargers. Since 2009, the Chargers are 6th in points differential — and only 3 points behind the Steelers for 5th — but have zero playoff wins. San Diego is always one of the better teams in the league, making their two-year playoff drought particularly disappointing.

Even in a down season, Philip Rivers’ late surge gave him respectable end-of-year numbers. He ranked 11th in my QB rating system in 2011 after finishing 1st or 2nd each of the prior three years. Over the last four years, Rivers trails only Tom Brady and Aaron Rodgers in ANY/A. It’s the same story over the last three years and over the last two years. He’s an elite quarterback, and gives San Diego a chance to win every game they play.

One thing we know about the Chargers: they can finish strong. Rivers has an incredible 26-3 record in December/January, the best such record among all quarterbacks with at least 10 starts since 1950. But for San Diego, winning early and winning against their AFC West rivals have been the biggest stumbling blocks the last two years. Check out the points differentials for the AFC West teams in division games the past two years:

The Chargers have repeatedly shot themselves in the feet in these games. from Two years ago in Oakland, the Raiders blocked two punts, one for a safety and one returned for a touchdown, and Tyvon Branch scored a 64-yard fumble return touchdown in a game the Raiders won by 8 despite being outgained by 227 yards. In that game the two teams fumbled six times, and all six were recovered by the Raiders, including a goal-line fumble by Mike Tolbert. But Arrowhead Stadium has been even more cursed for the Chargers.

In week 1 of the 2010 season, Dexter McCluster returned a 94-yard punt return for what turned out to be the game-winning touchdown and Javier Arenas returned two punts for 60 yards in the second quarter, helping Kansas City win the field position battle before scoring its second touchdown. San Diego nearly doubled up Kansas City in the yardage department, 389-197, but lost the game played in driving rain, 21-14. Then last year, the Chargers were in position to take two kneel downs and kick a short field goal to win. Instead, Philip Rivers somehow fumbled the exchange from center, and Kansas City won in overtime. And, of course, San Diego was Tebowed last year.

Cincinnati gets a chance tonight to prove it can beat a team it’s not supposed to beat. In the late game, San Diego gets a chance to prove it can beat a team it’s supposed to beat. For both teams, these are key litmus tests to start the season and show that 2012 will be different than 2011.