Milhouse
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no. I have never heard an announcer use a cliche.
Will Thursday Night Football hurt the NFL!?
- Thread starter THE DEUCE
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no. I have never heard an announcer use a cliche.
Shorty
Boomer Boy
It is what it is.
I understand that my argument is more subjective than based on analytical evidence. Therefore, I will try to prove with statistics how Thursday night games are not competitive based on the final score compared to the average final score of NFL games on Sunday and Monday. Below, I found a website that tracked the final score of all the NFL games since 2002. Also, I posted the link below, and the quote is from the website.
"Since 2002, the most common margin of victory in the NFL has been 3 points with 418 games out of 2,668 games."
http://www.sportingcharts.com/articles/nfl/what-is-the-most-common-margin-of-victory-in-the-nfl.aspx
I have previously stated that I believe any NFL game decided by at least 2 TDs in the NFL is considered a blowout. In fact, just over 56% of NFL games since 2002 have been decided by 7 points or less, 67% of games have been decided by 10 points or less, and roughly 85% of the games have been decided by 14 points or less (see website above). However, when you look at the final scores of Thursday night there are significant statistical differences in both games decided by less than 7 points and games decided by more than 14 points.
In the chart below, I placed every Thursday night game decided by less than 7 points in the first column, and games decided by more than 14 points in the second column. The first number shows how many games that year were decided by that column's point total, and the second number is the percentage. Also, it should be noted that from 06-11 there were only 8 games played per year, whereas from 12-13 there were 13 games played per year, and as for 2014 only 5 games have been played thus far. I think that the data speaks for itself. Only 40% of the games played were decided by a TD or less compared to 56% when games are played on Sunday. However, what I have been trying to explain throughout this entire thread is backed up by the data when roughly 50% of the games played on Thursday have been decided by 14 points or more. What makes this significant is that on Sunday only 15% of the games have been decided by 14 points or more.
<7 >14
06 2 25% 2 25%
07 3 38% 3 38%
08 3 38% 3 38%
09 5 62% 2 25%
10 3 38% 4 50%
11 3 38% 3 38%
12 4 30% 8 61%
13 8 61% 3 23%
14 0 0% 5 100%
Total 39.24% 49.37%
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DeacKillsaDevil
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Haven't read this entire thread but I think we could have an over saturation of the market. That and the games this year have been absolute blow outs and unwatchable unless you're a fan of the winning team.
DeacDaddy
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Good analysis. Don't know if it means anything or not until we have a greater sample size this season perhaps. But it's a good continuation of the discussion VaDeac and I were having in another thread. Love to have your thoughts, Va. Again don't know that margin of error proves anything yet or not, but it is interesting to note. I predict we will continue to see more 2+ TD margins. But who knows.
Agree completely. The NFL is such a behemoth that I would love to see them get a pure money grab decision wrong in a very public and uncomfortable way.
To me, again, margin of victory is not evidence that lack of preparation and rest is the cause of the crappy games. A lopsided game, to me, says that one team was, perhaps, adversely affected by the short week and the other team was not. Whose fault is that? I'd argue it's the fault of those coaching staffs.
I'd still rather look at dead ball penalties or injuries as evidence that short weeks are detrimental. Anything else is, IMO, hard to control for.
Bama's research (thanks for it BTW) is most interesting in the percentage of a Thurs blowouts compared to Sun blowouts.
I guess it comes back to one's philosophy of a blowout. A blowout, to me, isn't by definition a badly played game. Rather, it's a game in which one team played poorly and the other played well (simplistic, yes, but not far off). And given that both teams are playing under the effects of a short week, I have a hard time blaming a short week for universally poor play, when in fact only one team played poorly.
In short, I still think this years Thursday results are a product of #smallsamplesizedeac and more a result of the NFL scheduling the Thursday games poorly.
I'd still rather look at dead ball penalties or injuries as evidence that short weeks are detrimental. Anything else is, IMO, hard to control for.
Bama's research (thanks for it BTW) is most interesting in the percentage of a Thurs blowouts compared to Sun blowouts.
I guess it comes back to one's philosophy of a blowout. A blowout, to me, isn't by definition a badly played game. Rather, it's a game in which one team played poorly and the other played well (simplistic, yes, but not far off). And given that both teams are playing under the effects of a short week, I have a hard time blaming a short week for universally poor play, when in fact only one team played poorly.
In short, I still think this years Thursday results are a product of #smallsamplesizedeac and more a result of the NFL scheduling the Thursday games poorly.
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DeacDaddy
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I'd say game planning/coach preparation is part of the short week variable. Teams just can't prepare as well and so you end up with a worse viewing experience because you're not seeing each team at its best. But yes,need more of a sample size and need to keep studying injury and penalty stats.
Re the point differential,if every Thursday night game were 14+ pts different from here on out, would you see that alone as an indicator of a lower quality trend?
Re the point differential,if every Thursday night game were 14+ pts different from here on out, would you see that alone as an indicator of a lower quality trend?
I just edited my post to hopefully make it more clear.
And now I'm editing this one for the same reason.
I think we have different definitions of quality of play. Again, I see a blowout as two different levels of QOP on the same field. You can't blame the short week for low QOP when one team has a high QOP.
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DeacDaddy
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Y. Maybe it's just semantics, but I would say any Thursday game in which one team plays poorly, leading to a lopsided loss that is more common than in other days' NFL games,is a low quality game, because I would rather see those same two teams play on Sunday or Monday when each team is at its full physical and game planning strength.
That being said,I still watch Thu night football because I love football and probably wouldn't see those two teams on Sun afternoon, since I don't have Sunday Ticket or Red Zone channel. It's one more game to watch even if the quality is lower. The NFL knows that there are millions of ppl like me and that is why Thu night football exists.
That being said,I still watch Thu night football because I love football and probably wouldn't see those two teams on Sun afternoon, since I don't have Sunday Ticket or Red Zone channel. It's one more game to watch even if the quality is lower. The NFL knows that there are millions of ppl like me and that is why Thu night football exists.
Oh no doubt. The games have sucked due to lopsided scores, regardless of the cause. I actually consider myself somewhat fortunate to have a crappy cable plan without NFLN so I haven't had to subject myself to them.
Normally, when using statistical analysis you only need a minimum sample size of 30. Personally, I believe that this a very decent sample size based on 78 games played over 8.25 seasons. However, I would agree that the data I analyzed was based on combining two different groups of data. From 06-11 there were only 8 games a season, and were from NFL Weeks 10-16. Whereas, from 12-13 were from Weeks 2-15, and 14 is only the first 4 weeks of the current season. The data from 06-11 is skewed based on that these games occurred later in the season when the players are already "banged up"; whereas, the data from 12-13 contains weeks from the beginning of the season when players are fresher. But, I can counter my latter argument/variable because 2014 only contains the first 5 weeks of the season, and the margin of victory in all the games has been larger than 2 TDs.
I do agree that we need more data/seasons that contain 15 weeks/the entire season before we can make some more conclusions. However, I will not concede the argument that Thursday night games have no effect on the players, and thus an effect on the quality of the game as well as the final score based on the following. From the 02 season through last season, only 15% of NFL games were decided by 14 points or more. However, almost 50% of all Thursday night games have been decided by 14 points or more, and there is a definitive trend of this scoring margin when 6 of the 9 seasons have had at least 38% of the games showed the same scoring margin.
I also wonder how many of the teams playing on Thurs nights all these years were coming off bye weeks (so they had longer than normal to prepare). I think the answer this year is "few if any" but taken over the life of the study there may have been some, idk. (And I feel like college teams that play on a Thurs are often coming off bye weeks.) I wonder if it's enough to strengthen an argument either way.
I agree with you that it is very difficult to define poor quality of play. My original argument was that Thursday night games are very poor in the quality of play when compared to Sunday or Monday night games based on 2 variables, (1) lack of recovery time for players and (2) lack of time for coaches to put together and implement a game plan. However, some people did not believe these were factors. Then I tried to argue that just by watching the game anyone that has a basic understanding of football could see with there eyes that the majority of Thursday night games had poor quality of play. Sure there were the occasional good game, aka 2007 when New England on their way to 16-0 barely squeaked by the Giants. Therefore, I tried to gather some quantitative data, and make an argument based on numbers rather than subjective variables. As a result, I found that 85% of NFL games played since 2002 had been decided by 14 points or less, and when analyzing the final score of Thursday night games I found that roughly 50% of all Thursday night games had been decided by 14 points or more.
There was a discussion about this earlier on this thread, and it was agreed by all that any NFL team that plays on Thursday should be coming off a bye. However, the only problem with this is that byes dont start until Week 4, and that leaves games played on Weeks 2-4 that will have teams playing on a short week. The obvious solution is to not start playing Thursday night games until the week after byes start, but I doubt that the NFL would give up the revenue generated from the missed games. Anyway, I do believe that if the two teams that played on Thursday night had a bye the previous week, then the quality of plays would be much better.
DeacDaddy
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I know what you are saying. I guess my answer would be that in the NFL, every team has talent somewhere on its coaching staff and among its players. There is clearly more parity than in college FB, obviously, even if discrepancies are still quite evident. But those discrepancies are magnified on a short week, leading to worse games. ATL & GB would have won on Sunday, but perhaps the TB & CHI coaching staffs and players could have made up for more of their shortcomings with increased prep and recovery time.
I realize that the flip side of that argument is that ATL & GB would get that much better as well on a longer week, but I am conjecturing that the percentage of improvement is greater for the weaker teams in question.
Yeah I totally get down with this hypothesis.