Part V -- Coaches and the Preseason
A popular theory with handicappers regarding the preseason games is to focus on the coaches and back the ones who have a good historical record in the exhibition season. The question we will try to answer here is whether in fact a coaches previous preseason record is of much help in predicting the outcomes of future preseason games.
To begin with, we are using for our data sample, the preseason games played from 1997 to 2001 (a five-year span). The next step is to classify coaches by their past results -- for the 1997 season analysis we considered a coach's record in the previous two years, but thereafter we use the cumulative record from 1995 on heading into the season. We broke out the coaches by the following winning (straight-up) percentages:
- Excellent -- 65%+ win rate
- Good -- 50% to 64%
- Poor -- 36% to 49%
- Bad -- 35% or less
- New -- the first season with a new team
Below are the results against the spread by Coach class:
(neutral site games were excluded)
| Coach Class |
Overall
W-L |
Win% |
Favorite
W-L |
Win% |
Underdog
W-L |
Win% |
| Excellent |
39 - 37 |
51% |
28 - 27 |
51% |
11 - 10 |
52% |
| Good |
74 - 81 |
47% |
38 - 45 |
45% |
36 - 36 |
50% |
| Poor |
40 - 33 |
54% |
15 - 17 |
46% |
25 - 16 |
60% |
| Bad |
56 - 71 |
44% |
21 - 38 |
35% |
35 - 33 |
51% |
| New |
79 - 66 |
54% |
25 - 34 |
42% |
54 - 32 |
62% |
So at a glance it appears there is some predictive value in a coach's historical preseason record. The top group hits 51%, the bottom group hits 44%. Meanwhile, newcomer coaches lend a hand to a team's preseason chances.
It's not a particularly smooth correlation, since the Poor group has fared better than the Good group, but there are some obvious comments to make:
- Coaches with BAD preseason records, are bad bets as favorites. Consequently playing against them may be a good idea (38-21 for 65%).
- For some reason, coaches with POOR records have been strong bets as underdogs (25-16 for 60%), possibly because they are under-rated as a result of the coach's history.
- Teams with new coaches have been outstanding as underdogs, but below average as favorites.
At this point we are looking at coaches in isolation, rather than comparing the two coaches in a given match-up. The logical step if one believes there is some predictive value in a coach's preseason history would be to say "what if I back only the Excellent preseason coaches when facing coaches with bad preseason records?"
The answer is you would have done very well!
- Excellent vs Bad: 14-7
Of course that's a mere handful of games and could easily look different over a larger backdrop of years. Nonetheless, it would seem wise to keep in mind the coach's history when laying down a preseason wager.
Here's the 2002 NFL coaching class groups--
- Excellent: Billick (Baltimore: 81%), McGinnis (Arizona: 75%), Shanahan (Denver: 71%), Belichick (New England: 66%)
- Good: Coughlin (Jacksonville: 62%), Reeves (Atlanta: 57%), Cowher (Pittsburgh: 56%), Martz (St. Louis: 55%), Williams (Buffalo: 50%), Vermeil (Kansas City: 50%), Edwards (Jets: 50%), Sherman (Packers: 50%), Davis (Cleveland: 50%)
- Poor: Wannstedt (Miami: 44%), Fisher (Tennessee: 44%), Jauron (Chicago: 41%), Holmgren (Seattle: 41%), Reid (Philadelphia: 36%), Mariucci (San Francisco: 36%)
- Bad: LeBeau (Cincinnati: 25%), Fassel (Giants: 25%), Mornhinweg (Detroit: 25%), Haslett (New Orleans: 25%), Campo (Dallas: 20%)
- New: Dungy (Indianapolis), Schottenheimer (San Diego), Gruden (Tampa Bay), Fox (Carolina), Callahan (Oakland), Spurrier (Washington), Tice (Minnesota).
Some of the "new" coaches are of course NFL veterans, but for this analysis we treated every coach as new when getting a fresh start. A case in point is Mike Shanahan, who was 1-7 in preseason during his two years as head coach of Oakland, but 22-9 since landing in Denver.
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