Predicting Season Win Totals -- Bounce Theory & Draft PicksLet's borrow from horse racing for a moment though and see how well the "Bounce Theory" applies to NFL teams! The theory goes that when a horse, or in this case a team, performs above its previous level it's likely to regress backwards. The corollary is that when a horse performs badly (and is not injured) you throw out the race and assume it will revert back to its usual level. We'll calculate by how many wins a team improved or declined in the prior season from two years back and track current season win results:
ANALYSIS: These numbers are quite revealing. The optimal conditions for a "bounce" are when a team has shown a dramatic change in performance and the theory goes (for many reasons) that the next performance will revert closer to the norm. Well, for NFL squads that jumped up by 3 or more games in the prior year, they have gone 42-31 as UNDER plays in the following season, whereas NFL teams that were 3 or more games worse in the last season are 41-27 as OVER plays.
So the Bounce Theory is confirmed: teams with dramatic changes from one season to the next in total wins do tend to revert in the subsequent year, at least in so far as versus the season win total expectancy placed on them by the linemakers.
Who are the bounce teams in 2006? Glad you asked, and we have a much larger crop than has been typical of "extreme changers" --
Improved by 3+ games (lean to Under)
Declined by 3+ games (lean to Over)
ANALYSIS:
You might think draft picks would be worth relatively minor consideration, and by this simplistic look yes they are. It used to be that no first round picks was a bad thing for a team's upcoming season prospects on the over/under at least, but given the extremely skewed nature of NFL 1st round picks (guaranteed bib bucks) it's probably no surprise that this has changed of late. Indeed scholarly papers have been written that make the case a top pick is actually a bad thing! (and if you are the 49ers having been forced essentially to pay Alex Smith more than established all-pro players before he's achieved anything as a pro you can figure out why...).
The other idea with draft picks might be to look at the position of the player picked in the first round:
Now classification of position is sketchy at times and yields some strange splits...for instance
CB - 63% over (12-7) ...so grouping positions together some might make sense, eg DB's are 28-25 over total. Regardless the samples make this more for entertainment than for serious analysis.
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