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Q: Every year I see numerous games where one team for all intents and purposes, doesn't show up! I mean they don't play anything like their capability. It happens to both favorites and underdogs. Obviously if you can know this in advance it's a great betting situation. Do you think it occurs to just particular teams, or is it the overall situation and so it could happen to anyone?
A: We would agree that after the fact it's pretty easy to identify games where one team or another was "not at their best" and perhaps didn't give it the full 'college try'...however, in the NFL you have many games where a team is motivated, but just happens to have everything go wrong on a given day!
Clearly though teams do at times suffer from what might delicately be called a "loss of confidence". Carolina had very suspect motivation in their last two games, losing twice at home by scores of 7-30 (Arizona), and 6-38 (New England). Or how about New Orleans -- after losing to the Rams in week 14, they closed out the season as follows: 21-48 (at Tampa Bay), 10-40 (at home vs Washington), 0-38 (at home against San Francisco)!!! That would appear to us to be three games in succession where the Saints mailed it in.
One way to define a bad effort, other than scrutinizing each game in turn, would be to set a benchmark versus the spread. We tallied all the cases where a team lost against the spread by 15+ points (eg more than the standard two TD deficit), only including the regular season games:
| Team
| "No-Shows"
| Ave
Pts For
| Ave
Pts Agn
|
| New Orleans |
5 |
12 |
36 |
| Atlanta |
4 |
7 |
30 |
| Carolina |
4 |
9 |
36 |
| Denver |
4 |
13 |
27 |
| Detroit |
4 |
5 |
34 |
| Indianapolis |
4 |
14 |
41 |
| Minnesota |
4 |
12 |
37 |
| Washington |
4 |
8 |
33 |
| Baltimore |
3 |
14 |
24 |
| Buffalo |
3 |
4 |
31 |
| Miami |
3 |
3 |
29 |
| Tennessee |
3 |
13 |
34 |
| Cleveland |
2 |
11 |
31 |
| Dallas |
2 |
3 |
33 |
| Jacksonville |
2 |
14 |
28 |
| N.Y. Giants |
2 |
16 |
32 |
| Philadelphia |
2 |
12 |
17 |
| St. Louis |
2 |
24 |
29 |
| Seattle |
2 |
9 |
27 |
| Arizona |
1 |
14 |
34 |
| Cincinnati |
1 |
0 |
24 |
| Green Bay |
1 |
13 |
35 |
| Kansas City |
1 |
7 |
27 |
| N.Y. Jets |
1 |
24 |
45 |
| Oakland |
1 |
31 |
34 |
| Pittsburgh |
1 |
3 |
21 |
| Tampa Bay |
1 |
3 |
27 |
| Chicago |
0 |
- |
- |
| New England |
0 |
- |
- |
| San Diego |
0 |
- |
- |
| San Francisco |
0 |
- |
- |
ANALYSIS: To consider any game where a team lost to the spread by 15+ as a "No Show" is unduly harsh -- there are as we alluded to many cases where a team was all out but just had a bad outcome (or low return on their investment of energy). After all, a team can be blown out while giving their all. However, when a team has a few too many games in a season like this we could peg some of them to poor mental attitude.
In 2001 the "king slacker" award appears to belong to New Orleans, with a bunch of squads on their heels for second place. Of course, looking at 2000 would have shown a very different story for the Saints, which may suggest that a team that comes out of nowhere one season, can fall back dangerously the next with dire results (look out New England?)
This answer scratches the surface though of the real dilemma -- how to identify a poor performance ahead of time. For more on this you will need to refer to our upcoming "quantifying motivation" series where we put the theories to the test!
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