We stress that one game is the smallest sample size and note that the 2010 Atlanta Falcons lost an overtime opener in Pittsburgh and were so daunted they won 12 of the next 13. But we also note that the Falcons’ narrow loss in New Orleans on Sunday lent sustenance to those of us who believe this will be a more difficult regular season.
En route to 13-3 and the NFC’s No. 1 seed, the 2012 Falcons were 7-2 in games decided by eight or fewer points. The rule of NFL thumb is that a team that wins a slew of close games in one season shouldn’t expect to win nearly as many the next time around. The Falcons themselves serve as a handy case study: They were likewise 7-2 in one-score games in 2010 and finished 13-3; in 2011 they were 4-3 in such games and went 10-6.
“It’s the socialism of football … it’s regression theory,” said Robert Weintraub, a Decatur-based author who writes for the steeped-in-stats website Football Outsiders. “That’s a fan-unfriendly concept. If you’re a fan of a team, you don’t say, ‘We shouldn’t have won those games and now we’re going to come back to the pack.’”
That is, however, the way the NFL tends to work. As convenient as it is for fans (and writers) to recall the 2012 Falcons as having been 10 yards from the Super Bowl, advanced-analytic types insisted those Birds were lucky to get that far. As Weintraub wrote in the 2013 Football Outsiders Almanac:
“We don’t forecast the Falcons to be one of the top Super Bowl contenders of 2013 because when you look at the numbers underlying their 13-3 record, the Falcons really shouldn’t have been one of the top Super Bowl contenders of 2012, either.”
Football Outsiders assessed the 2013 Falcons’ mean win total at 7.6, which was the lowest in the NFC South and the 10th-worst in the NFC. That sounded low a month ago and, to be frank, still does. But the combination of a more difficult schedule and the data-based expectation of fewer narrow victories wouldn’t seem to augur another 13-3, either.
But here we ask: Is it possible the Falcons have won so many close games not because of dumb luck but because they’re really skilled at winning close games? Are there teams that defy regression theory?
Said Weintraub: “The Patriots did in the early days of Tom Brady. They won so many close games that you’d think, ‘Someday it’s going to end.’ But it never did. Brady separated them from everybody else, with the exception of Peyton Manning.”
Which brings us to Matt Ryan. The Falcons are 27-11 in one-score regular-season games he has started and finished. (They’re 1-2 in the playoffs.) Said Weintraub: “Atlanta is in better position than most teams because of Ryan. He’s a smart situational player and has the physical ability to make different kind of plays. … There’s a reason why they’re not going 2-7 (in close games). That in itself puts Ryan on the next level below Manning and Brady.”
Still, we saw Sunday that a quarterback who has salvaged all manner of outrageous victories — Chicago in 2008, Carolina last season, Seattle in the playoffs — can’t work every wonder. A third-down pass in the end zone was dropped; a fourth-down pass was tipped. That’s the nature of the NFL: Final two minutes, game on the line, somebody wins and somebody else loses. Of the 13 games staged Sunday, 10 were decided by eight or fewer points.
Because the Falcons rarely squash even lesser opposition — in 2012, five of the seven one-score regular-season victories came against teams that finished 8-8 or worse — they leave themselves open to the vagaries of football more than some other heavyweights. (New England and San Francisco each had four one-score victories last season; Denver had three.) Said Weintraub: “The question you have to ask is why they play so many close games … (where) it can burst at any seam.”
Maybe it’s because they’re not strong enough along either line to put anybody away. Or maybe they just like to keep us entertained. On Jan. 13, the Falcons fell behind Seattle with 31 seconds remaining and won. The next Sunday they reached the San Fran 10 and — just as we told ourselves, “They’re going to win this game because they always win this game” — they lost.
Sure enough, they lost again Sunday. That doesn’t mean they’ll lose the next close game — if the NFL isn’t quite a coin-flip proposition, it’s not far off — but neither does it mean the Falcons should expect to keep winning so many of them. The fickle finger of footballing fate doesn’t point to the same sideline every time.
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