Welcome back, and keep the queries coming.
Today’s a double dip on my math skills.
The first question comes from David Essex in Denver.
Q: I had to laugh reading Jeff Legwold’s capsules of all 32 NFL teams. Based on his projected “bottom line” for each team, the league will collectively have 284 winners against 224 losers. I have a journalism degree, but still know that your “math” doesn’t quite work. I think you can subtract six to eight wins from your Broncos and Lions projections, but you’re still about 55 short.
And from Ken Staroscik:
Q: I noticed that for the 32 NFL teams you predicted that 19 teams would have winning records — two teams would break even (8 wins and 8 losses) — and that 11 teams would have losing records. That is a large difference between teams with winning and losing records, but I guess it could be possible if the league is quite unbalanced in the quality of the teams.
But here is what is not possible. In your predictions (of the season records) for the 32 teams, in the NFL you have the teams winning a total of 284 games and losing a total of 228 games. There is one advantage to your predictions. It makes for more happy fans of the different NFL teams. More winning records — how can you beat that?
A: Two words: My bad.
Or: Things happen.
Or, and my personal favorite: No excuses.
In short, I don’t have one. In trying to make my calls, talk to the football people around the league about what was going on with their teams, I simply didn’t make the math match what I believed to be the win potential of each team could be on the old predictions.
Individually, I can make the argument for what I said. Collectively, it didn’t add up, which is also why I don’t do my own taxes.
That’s on me.
And in the end, most preseason predictions are down the drain by Week 3. I asked a general manager the other day how games his own team would win this year.
His response: “I have no idea. But I hope it’s a lot.”
There you have it.
Jeff Legwold: 303-954-2359 or jlegwold@denverpost.com
