Ok. Here's my initial work on an application which will analyze a franchise file, and compare certain stats and numbers against typical NFL numbers.
This first piece looks at:
1. Average wins by division champions
2. # of "cellar dwellers": teams with < 4 wins
3. # of blowout games, margin of victory > 27 points
4. # of shutout games, one team didn't score
These will hopefully be helpful in figuring out the parity in a league, i.e. how much of a gap separates the upper and lower echelon of teams.
As an example, here's output of the previous season in my franchise:
Code: Select all
Results
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Average wins by division champ: 11
(NFL average : 11.25)
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# of teams with < 4 victories : 3
(NFL norm : 3)
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Number of blowouts (28+ points: 11
(NFL norm : 22)
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Number of shutouts : 3
(NFL norm : 9)
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The NFL numbers, at this stage, are just hard-coded, but in the long run we'd want to have them fed in from a .CSV file, so that they can be customized as desired. The blowouts/shutouts came from a stat in ESPN magazine from last year; the division wins and cellar dwellers are based upon looking at standings for the past four or five years.
This app would ideally be run on a franchise file at the conclusion of the regular season, anytime prior to starting new season, but it's looking at regular-season results only. There's also nothing coded to prevent it from being run during any week in the season, but of course that wouldn't give much in the way of useful info.
Analyzing my own league's results: looked at the past three seasons, and the division wins average/cellar dwellers are pretty much consistent with NFL, but the # of blowouts are about half the NFL norm, and there are significantly fewer shutouts (3, 1 and 4 over the past seasons.)
I'd be curious to know what other franchise owners might get with these numbers? Or if maybe my criteria aren't all that conclusive, and/or need to take different things into account?