Part I -- Preseason "GAP" comparisons

The first thing that came to mind when we thought about this thorny issue -- since our approaches for the regular season, heavily dependent on statistical analysis, don't seem likely to do the job for the scrimmages -- is grouping team's by their prior season records. The theory here is that teams with lousy previous year performance might be more interested in posting some W's in pre-season, whereas the teams coming off strong seasons could really care less about the outcome of the exhibitions.

Pulling our quantifying motivation table structure out of the subscriber area, we elected to categorize teams as follows:

• Good -- teams with a 10 or more wins in the prior regular season
• Average -- teams with 7 to 9 wins
• Poor -- teams with less than 7 wins

The pairing that jumps off the page is of course the "Average home team vs Poor away team" match-up, where remarkably the poor team has covered 80% of the time (24-6)! That's certainly an unlikely record based strictly on randomness, but how to explain such an extreme mark? The average teams may overlook a lowlier opponent, while the poor side might feel a win to be a mark of improvement to the next level in the NFL scheme...eg "if we are going to move up this season, we'll need to knock off teams like X."

Average home teams have had the better of it against average opponents, but a 61% win rate over a slim 39 game sample hardly gives us reason to believe.

The next thing you might say is, well what about breaking it out by the specific weeks (conventionally labeled week "zero" to week four)? The drawback to this is our already small sample size gets even smaller, but we went ahead and ran it anyway and rather than give you the full tables, we'll summarize the interesting findings:

Week 1 - Poor prior season teams are 1-11 against the spread at home against poor or average away teams!

Week 2 - Poor prior season teams are an amazing 22-6 (78%) versus the line against good or average teams, and in match-ups between two poor clubs, the home team has got the cover 7 out of 10. Interestingly the poor sides are especially strong as road warriors, 13-1 versus good/average home teams.

Week 3 - In what some people consider the most serious week of play, Good teams have knocked off the Poor teams to the tune of a 9-4 spread mark.

Week 4 - nothing stands out as too strong.

Another area to explore is favorites/dogs. The following table reflects games where the home team was favored by three or more points (eg at least a field goal) --

We already know about the Average-Poor clashes, but of interest is that Average teams at home favored by a field goal are a respectable 21-11 (65%) against the line versus average/good away teams. Also of note is that Poor teams at home favored by 3+ points are a mediocre 16-26 (38%) suggesting that the public may be overplaying the "they will want the win more" sentiment. For those wondering whether "home dogs" have the same value in pre-season that they do in the regular season, the quick answer is no: home teams getting 3+ points are en even-steven 12-12, and 28-23 overall.

Finally, we know that a lot of people are looking to play the over/under totals as well, so running the same "GAP" breakouts but against the total instead of the spread, we arrive at the following:

No category in the above seems strong enough to really warrant further investigation.

We believe some of the GAP data conclusions are worth looking for in the 2002 action --

• Play POOR away teams against AVERAGE home teams
• Play AGAINST Poor home teams in week one versus average/poor away teams
• Play POOR teams in week two, giving the edge to the home side when both clubs are POOR
• Lean to AVERAGE home teams favored by 3+ points when facing good/average opposition
• Lean AGAINST Poor home teams when they are favored by 3+ points