Part VI -- "Revenge" Matchups
An idea submitted by one of our subscribers was to investigate whether teams playing for real in the prior season has any effect on the outcome of preseason games. The logical supposition might be that the team which lost the prior year meeting would have a higher level of interest in showing well in the preseason game.
On the other hand, the counter argument is that the team which won would want to reassert its dominance and/or the teams involved would neither of them want to give away anything in terms of new wrinkles in the game plan in a meaningless scrimmage. Another point to consider is that preseason games generally will feature opponents outside the team's conference and division and so will not be setting the stage for a regular season meeting too often.
The simplest way to get to the heart of the matter however, is to go to the numbers! We'll layer the notion of "revenge" on top of our G-A-P classification system:
- 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
Home Team that lost to away team in prior season
| Home |
Away |
Home Won
(vs Spr) |
Away Won
(vs Spr) |
Overall
Win% |
| Good |
Good |
5 |
3 |
62 % |
| Good |
Average |
3 |
3 |
50 % |
| Good |
Poor |
1 |
1 |
50 % |
| Average |
Good |
4 |
2 |
66 % |
| Average |
Average |
4 |
5 |
44 % |
| Average |
Poor |
1 |
8 |
11 % |
| Poor |
Good |
1 |
3 |
25 % |
| Poor |
Average |
5 |
5 |
50 % |
| Poor |
Poor |
4 |
6 |
40 % |
| Total |
|
28 |
36 |
44 % |
Nothing much to speak of there. Breaking it out by favorite/dog status is more interesting -- home underdogs have been 10-5 with revenge over the last six years of preseason play. Home favorites with revenge have been a miserable 18-31, including 4-12 as small favorites (1 to 2.5 points).
Let's turn it around and look at Away Teams with revenge:
Away Team that lost to home team in prior season
| Away |
Home |
Away Won
(vs Spr) |
Home Won
(vs Spr) |
Overall
Win% |
| Good |
Good |
4 |
1 |
80 % |
| Good |
Average |
4 |
3 |
57 % |
| Good |
Poor |
0 |
3 |
0 % |
| Average |
Good |
4 |
3 |
57 % |
| Average |
Average |
2 |
10 |
17 % |
| Average |
Poor |
6 |
1 |
84 % |
| Poor |
Good |
3 |
3 |
50 % |
| Poor |
Average |
4 |
0 |
100 % |
| Poor |
Poor |
11 |
3 |
79 % |
| Total |
|
37 |
26 |
59 % |
Much better results, but of course the sample as a whole has a heavy skew towards the away sides. Aside from a very strange set of outcomes in the "average versus average" class, the key zone is a game with at least one poor side and the other team being an away/poor prior year class -- in those instances, the away team playing with revenge is 21-4.
The underdog/favorite breakout shows away revenge-seeking teams as underdogs are 36-24, while as road favorites they are just 1-2.
The conclusion to all this? Well, we're on shaky ground in that we don't have a lot of history to go on, but in simple terms when you have a preseason clash between teams that met in the prior season (regular or playoffs):
- Prefer revenge-seeking teams as underdogs [46-29 for 61%]
- Go against revenge-seeking teams as favorites [19-33 for 37%]
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