Are the Steelers actually bad against lousy teams?

[hawaiiansteel]

Are the Steelers actually bad against lousy teams?

By cassidy977 on Nov 17 2014



It seems all anyone in Steeler Nation can talk about lately is the way this team chokes against the NFL's dregs. I'm right there with you -- it feels like a trend, and it bugs me too. But it also strikes me as a little suspect.

Under Mike Tomlin, the story goes, the Steelers always lose to inferior teams. One BTSC poster was peddling a phantom 5-13 record in such games that he claimed came from Tomlin's Wikipedia page (a pretty easily refuted fiction, it turns out). A half-dozen other numbers have gone around the message boards -- often with fine-print about opponents' records "when they played the Steelers." (If that doesn't seem suspect, ask yourself how the 2004 Lions, Cowboys, and Redskins felt, losing to the Packers -- a 1-4 team that rebounded to 10-6. Each of those teams can claim they lost to a team with a losing record "when they played," and the Lions and Cowboys can even say they lost to a team with "two wins or less, when they played.")

I felt like I needed to know the real numbers. So I did the math.

METHODOLOGY:

Looking at the Mike Tomlin years (2007-present), I tracked the Steelers regular season W/L record against teams that finished the year at .500 or better, and .499 or worse; then I made an extra note of how they did against teams that finished at .250 or worse (the equivalent of a 4-12 record). I'm counting the opponents' FINAL records only, not the record "when they played."

I also did an extra little breakdown of how those numbers looked from 2007-2011 (the championship years of the Tomlin era) and from 2012-now (the reloading years). I've chosen to include this year, 2014, even though we don't have the final records tabulated yet. I initially didn't want to do that, but everyone is concerned about this team, so I'm going to count them. It will not be hard to subtract those numbers, if you're so inclined.

I'm also only including regular season. If we're really interested in how this team performs against losers, the playoffs won't tell us much. And besides, I want to be as rigorous as possible on Coach Tomlin. Much of the vitriol is aimed at him, and I don't want to be accused of spinning the numbers in his favor (adding to his win-column overall), so I'm cutting no breaks.

Finally, I've only calculated the Tomlin era, but I considered looking at the Bill Cowher years too. I know Chuck Noll had an outstanding record against losing teams, but then again, he was Chuck Noll. I suspect Cowher's record looks a lot like Tomlin's. Please feel free to add Cowher's numbers up yourselves.

I'm counting ties as losses in opponents' records, FYI. All info below is verifiable from espn.com or any other sports website.

THE NUMBERS:

Below is a series of charts that I'll summarize up here (I'm including the raw data because I want to end this game of people listing shady numbers as though they're facts). On to the summary:

Since 2007, overall

Steelers overall record: 77 - 45 / .631

Record against winning teams (.500+): 36 - 29 / .554

Record against losing teams (-.499): 41 - 16 / .719

Record against awful teams (-.250): 21 - 6 / .778

From 2007-2011

Steelers overall record: 55 - 25 / .688

Record against winning teams (.500+): 25 - 18 / .581

Record against losing teams (-.499): 30 - 7 / .811

Record against awful teams (-.250): 15 - 2 / .882

From 2012-present

Steelers overall record: 22 - 20 / .524

Record against winning teams (.500+): 11 - 11 / .500

Record against losing teams (-.499): 11 - 9 / .550

Record against awful teams (-.250): 6 - 4 / .600

SOME TAKEAWAYS:

* Tomlin's teams utterly dominated the NFL's bottom feeders when they were a championship caliber team. 15-2 is outstanding in any era. It's not quite as impressive as the 59-1 record Chuck Noll's teams amassed from 1972-79 against "weaker" teams, but did anyone expect the 2007-11 Steelers would surpass those teams' dominance? An .882 mark is awesome.

* During that same 1970s stretch, Noll's teams compiled a .517 record (29-26-1) against winning teams. Tomlin's teams have been more competitive by a comfortable margin in comparative games. Again, I'm not so interested in claiming that this era's Steelers could play with the best team ever assembled, but let's acknowledge for a second how damned good this team has been over the last eight seasons. (Note: the two stat claims about Chuck Noll come from the PG blog -- here's the link. I did not add those numbers myself.)

* As you'll see below, of the six losses to bottom-feeders in the last eight years, only this season's Bucs game was played at home. All the others were away games, including the Jets game last week. I don't know that that makes a huge difference -- I've often thought home field advantage was overstated. But in home games against lousy teams, the Steelers were 11-0 heading into this year (and 11-1 now). That makes the home loss against Tampa look like an aberration to me. Historically they're just about perfect.

* Finally, the team's record against the awful squads this season (2014) is 1-2, which is troubling, but doesn't come close to verifying a trend. Forget for a second that one of those teams (the Jets?) might very well go on a run and finish with a respectable record. Taking just 2011-12, the record against awful teams is 5-2, or a .714 winning percentage, which is pretty good. Also, even counting this season, the Steelers winning percentage against the NFL's bottom feeders during this rebuilding stretch is still .600 -- or better than the record against winning teams during the Super Bowl stretch (.581). Now, I'd prefer they go 10-0 against the dregs, as I'm sure you all do too. But this myth that they always lose to JV squads is clearly just that: a myth.

FINAL EVALUATION:

The Steelers played a crappy game against New York. There are reasons for this: their two best players accounted for four turnovers, the defense allowed a big play early, and the coaches got conservative twice inside the 5. But this game appears to be more of an anomaly than a trend. Nothing in the recent history of this team says that the Jets game is more indicative of the character or quality of this team (coaches, players, schemes) than the blowouts against Indy or Baltimore.

We can be upset that they folded against the Bucs and Jets. We can be frustrated as to why they beat the Jags by eight when they're capable of blowing out the Colts and Ravens. We can still blame the coaches for lack of preparation, or blame the players for lack of leadership (something I'm surprised to have seen so little of), or blame the officials for sketchy calls, or blame dumb luck and superstition and whatever else.

But what we can't do is claim that the Tomlin-era Steelers tend to roll over against bad teams. It's just simply not true. It might feel true, but that's not the same as being true.

[URL]http://www.behindthesteelcurtain.com...st-lousy-teams[/URL]

[Discipline of Steel]

(I'm including the raw data because I want to end this game of people listing shady numbers as though they're facts).

LOL! A fact (derived from the Latin factum) is something that has really occurred or is actually the case. The usual test for a statement of fact is verifiability ...

[Steelhere10]

Where did you get those facts, they simply can't be true. Lol you probably won't get any replies in this thread. They will read it and move on.

[papillon]

I think using the final record is what helps bring the Steeler winning percentages up. If you play a 1-4 team and lose you've lost to a .250 team, but they could go on and end up 9-7 or 10-6 then that doesn't factor in to losing to a bad team. At the time of the loss the team was bad, they happened to get better as the year went on.

I think the reason we, as fans, think the Steelers play poorly against bad teams is that we see an opportunity to improve their position (see Tampa and the Jets this year), but they fail to do so against what the fans believe is an inferior team and we get frustrated. Plus when they beat a bad team no one notices or cares because they expect it.

Certainly they have lost to poor teams, but not nearly as often as we think.

Pappy

[NorthCoast]

Yea.... but those facts don't pass the eye test.......

[JAR]

Haters gonna hate this post

[WindyCitySteel]

I call BS on the OP. It's all about when you play a team. Identities and rosters change over the course of a season. The Steelers lose to teams who were playing badly entering the game too often.

These are the losses to .200 and below teams.


2014: 0-3 Bucs, 1-8 Jets
2013: 0-3 Vikes
2012: 0-2 Raiders, 1-4 Titans, 2-8 Browns
2009: 1-11 Browns
2007: 1-8 Jets


Now, throw in the losses to bad teams that were above .200, but bad nonetheless.


2014: 0-3 Bucs, 1-8 Jets
2013: 0-3 Vikes, 2-4 Raiders
2012: 0-2 Raiders, 1-4 Titans, 2-8 Browns, 4-8 Chargers
2009: 1-11 Browns, 2-7 Chiefs, 3-8 Raiders
2007: 1-8 Jets


Twelve losses to craptastic teams on Tomlin's watch. Three of those games were against teams with 3 or less games played, so you may be able to argue sample size. After all, the Cowboys were 0-2 in 1993 before turning it around and winning the Super Bowl, so you probably couldn't call their first win a bad loss for their opponent.


Not the case with these dregs. The 0-3 Bucs are now 2-8, the 0-3 Vikes finished 5-10-1, and the 0-2 Raiders finished 4-12. The Vikings dropped to 1-7 before getting their next win, the Raiders dropped their next two after beating the Steelers and won a single game the rest of the year.


Even when they've beaten these ham and eggers, it has involved several narrow escapes. During the Steelers last playoff run in 2011, aided largely by a paper soft schedule, the Steelers "imposed their will" on these bottom feeders:


23-20 over 0-2 Indy, who dropped to 0-13 and finished 2-14
17-13 over 1-5 Jax, who dropped to 3-9 and finished 5-11
14-3 over 4-8 Cleveland, needing a late TD to ice it. Browns finished 4-12.
13-9 over 4-11 Cleveland three weeks later.


This season, they needed a late pick six to beat miserable Jacksonville by 8 points and a furious rally to beat 2-7 Tennessee with a rookie QB, by three points.

[WindyCitySteel]

And see this link for more futility against sub .500 teams.

[url]http://www.cbssports.com/nfl/eye-on-football/24814979/steelers-titans-15-things-to-know-about-week-11s-mnf-game[/url]

[Steelhere10]

Those same jets loss to the Pats by 2 pts with Geno S. Starting and it took a block fg at the end. And the media say the pats are the best in the NFL. Denver who is ranked third just lost to the Rams. My point is a win is a win. Every team struggle at some point.

[Steelhere10]

But hey it just happens to the Steelers BTW the Titans beat the Chiefs who is also considered one of the best.