Stoney's He-Man Steeler Haters NFL Playoff Thread ... No Yinzers allowed

I meant between a touchdown to win and a fg to tie.

 

No argument there. Let's not forget, also, field goal to win if Dallas fails on the 2-point try.

 

DQ, a question for you if you're around (and it might be very stupid because of numerical illiteracy on my part), that I was thinking of, based on the question of how LIKELY GB was to win, if the catch wasn't overturned:
We have some win expectancy models based on historical data. They tell us that if Bryant's catch was upheld, a team in Dallas' situation could expect to win 55% of the time. Since this was compiled over a large N, that seems like saying, the average team, playing another average team, would win in that situation about 55% of the time.

But we know these aren't average teams. And we know, roughly how they compare to average. The game was mostly going to be about Dallas' D stopping GB's O. And DVOA tells us, if I'm reading it right, that GB's O performed about 24% better than an average offense would, given the situations they faced, throughout this season. While Dallas' D was about 4% worse.

Could we use those numbers to produce a more meaningful win probability for this specific game than the historical average?

 

The other factor is that with a lead, the Dallas corner is probably more conservative rather than desperately trying to make a play and giving up the big play that gave GB a huge chunk of the yardage.

 

That is part of why this argument that Green Bay would have won anyway is shaky at best. Sure, it looked like the Cowboys couldn't stop the Packers in that fourth quarter, but it takes only one big play to ruin a drive.

Of course, the entire thing is unnecessary because the officials got the call right.

 

Which is why you can't speak about it definitely. Only in terms of probability, or probably a rough probability range. What are the odds they'd win in that situation?

 

It was the Cowboys in January, man. The odds of the Packers winning were 200 percent.

 

Hehehehe

 

Football move is incredibly flawed.

Bryant was controlling the ball and everything it did for 12 feet, and his knee hit the ground. When you control every motion of the ball, that's catching the ball.

It's a bad rule.

It's a catch by common sense, but it is not a catch by rule.

 

Exactly, change the rule.

 

Sure, you could definitely do that. I am not familiar with the ins and outs of those numbers, but stipulating that they're ballpark correct, that suggests that Green Bay would have been more likely than not to have gone on and won the ballgame. How much more likely, exactly, I don't know. You've got two sources of variance -- Green Bay's offensive prowess and Dallas's defensive issues -- and off the top of my head I don't know the procedure for converting those into a single probability difference. It's not as simple as it might look, but I'm certain it could be done.

 

You guys make the game so fun!