Division

Can Tampa Bay Win the NFC South With the Worst Passing Attack?

by Chase Stuart on August 13, 2013

For sportswriters, Freeman is writer's block antidote.

I was not a big fan of Josh Freeman as a prospect — he was a mediocre college quarterback — but I think he can be a very good NFL quarterback. I wrote six paragraphs explaining why I liked Freeman in March, and nothing has changed since then. In the past few weeks, friends-of-the-program Bill Barnwell, Mike Tanier, and Danny Tuccitto have all weighed in on Freeman’s up-and-down 2012 campaign. Doug Farrar, with the help Joe Bussell (@NFLosophy), an Operations Assistant and Coordinator with the Bucs from July 2009 through January 2012, provided another interesting take on the Tampa Bay quarterback last week.

Much has been said about Freeman, so I think we’re officially at the “wait and see” point in the game. This may be the year he quiets all the doubters, or 2013 could be another setback season (see 2011). But here’s one thing we do know: in a division with Drew Brees, Matt Ryan, and Cam Newton, Freeman is widely considered the worst starting quarterback in the NFC South. Freeman ranked 16th in Adjusted Net Yards per Attempt last year, but that was still behind Brees (6th), Ryan (7th), and Newton (11th, which ignores the 741 rushing yards and 8 touchdowns he provided on the ground).

For the sake of argument, let’s say that Freeman is again the least valuable quarterback in the NFC South. What does that mean for Tampa Bay’s odds of winning the division? The Bucs had the league’s top rush defense in 2012, and traded for Darrelle Revis, signed Dashon Goldson, and drafted Mississippi State cornerback Johnthan Banks in the offseason. With Doug Martin and the return of guards Davin Joseph and Carl Nicks, the running game should be among the league’s best. You could argue that Tampa Bay could win the division without any improvement from Freeman, if the rest of the team is productive enough.

That made me wonder: how often does the team that ranked last in the division in Adjusted Net Yards per Attempt end up winning its division? As it turns out, pretty infrequently. Since 1950, only nine teams have pulled off that feat, with nearly half of them coming since the league moved to a four-teams-per-division-for-each-division format in 2002.
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Tagged as: Buccaneers, Division, RPO 2013

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More division wins than non-division wins

by Chase Stuart on April 5, 2013

in Checkdowns, Data Dump

The Rams finished with the best division record in the NFC West last year at 4-1-1, but St. Louis went only 3-7 in games against non-NFC West opponents. The Jaguars were 0-10 in non-division games last season, but beat both the Colts and Titans to finish 2-4 against the AFC South. Since the merger, three teams have won six more games against division rivals than against non-division opponents. Two of those teams did so in 1998, when the Cowboys went 10-6 thanks to a 8-0 record against the NFC East and a 2-6 mark against the rest of the league (in the playoffs that year, Dallas lost to an NFC East team, a choke that was presumably not Tony Romo’s fault). Over in the AFC, the Titans finished 7-1 against the AFC Central and 1-7 against the rest of the NFL. Technically, the ’82 Dolphins went 7-1 against the AFC East and 0-1 against Tampa Bay during the strike-shortened season, so they fit the criteria, too.

In the new eight-division, four-teams-per-division format, each team plays six games against division opponents and 10 games against non-division opponents. The table below shows all teams since 2002 that won more at least 1.5 more games against division rivals than non-division opponents:
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Tagged as: 49ers, Division, Falcons, Rams

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