Professional Football Researchers Association Forum

TanksAndSpartans wrote:I should be the last one talking about the '70s, but isn't the argument that the '72 team had a weak schedule?

I was a fan of the '84 team and while it was a great personal achievement for one player, it was a one dimensional team and the Super Bowl pretty much set the tone for the team for many years.

Didn't some Dolphins say the 1973 team which went 12-2 was better than the undefeated 1972 team?

I should be the last one talking about the '70s, but isn't the argument that the '72 team had a weak schedule?

I believe they did. (I don’t have any numbers in front of me to verify that though.) I’ve always found “strength of schedule" to be a bit of a flawed stat.* Since a hypothetical 14-0 team is playing against teams from the rest of the league that have a combined record of 14 games under .500. (since they can’t play themself) The reverse would obviously be true. I would bet the Browns of the last few years had one of the “hardest” schedules in the league.

* ...unless you’re comparing teams with identical records.

ChrisBabcock wrote:

I should be the last one talking about the '70s, but isn't the argument that the '72 team had a weak schedule?

I believe they did. (I don’t have any numbers in front of me to verify that though.) I’ve always found “strength of schedule" to be a bit of a flawed stat.* Since a hypothetical 14-0 team is playing against teams from the rest of the league that have a combined record of 14 games under .500. (since they can’t play themself) The reverse would obviously be true. I would bet the Browns of the last few years had one of the “hardest” schedules in the league.

* ...unless you’re comparing teams with identical records.

You should remove those 14 games in which those teams play Miami, so that you are really looking at a teams record in which they play the rest of the league except for the team in question, in this case, Miami. This is easy to do, you simply reverse the WLT record of the team in question (Miami), and subtract if from the schedule they played. For example, if the opponents of the 1973 Dolphins are as follows (regular season record, followed by the Dolphins record against them):

Buffalo (9-5, 2-0)
New England (5-9, 2-0)
NY Jets (4-10, 2-0)
Baltimore (4-10, 1-1)
Pittsburgh (10-4,1-0)
Cleveland (7-5-2 which we'll simplify to 8-6-0, 1-0)
Oakland (9-4-1, 0-1)
Dallas (10-4, 1-0)
Detroit (6-7-1, 1-0)
San Francisco (5-9. 1-0)

We'll start with Buffalo; reversing Miami's 2-0 record to 0-2 and subtracting from Buffalo's record (9-0, 5-2), the Bills were 9-3 in games in which they did not play the Dolphins. The divisional teams, the teams they play twice, these results will each be doubled, so the 9-3 for Buffalo will become 18-6. Doing this same procedure for all the teams:

Buffalo 18-6
New England 10-14
NY Jets 8-16
Baltimore 6-18
Pittsburgh 10-3
Cleveland 8-5
Oakland 8-4-1
Dallas 10-3
Detroit 6-6-1
San Francisco 5-8

Adding the wins, losses and ties together, you would get: 89 wins, 83 losses and 2 ties, which we'll simplify to 90 wins and 84 losses, or a .517 winning percentage that the 73 Dolphins opponents had in games in which they did not play the Dolphins. If you just do it by adding their WL records together, you get a winning percentage well below .500, which leads you to believe they played a weak schedule, which they did not. The 72 Dolphins, on the other hand, played one of the half dozen weakest schedules of any team since the 1970 merger.

I've been skeptical of the "Strength of Schedule" argument since the 1980's.
The same thing was said of that era's 49ers and it was a load of crap (imho). I saw virtually all of those Niners games and the reason they were 8-0 (in 1984, or 7-1 1989, etc) in the (5 team) western division was because they beat every team in their division. Usually soundly. And some of those were good teams.

But that is beside the point.
1. I was being flippant for the sake of a joke but
2. Either way, I would take the 1972 or the 1973 Dolphins (and probably the 1971 Dolphins, too) over the 1984 Dolphins in a simulation game based on their actual statistics.

Both Dolphins eras featured excellent offenses but the 1970's defense would (imho, easily) tilt the balance in favor of the earlier teams. In addition, (and also imho) the 1984 offense was somewhat one dimensional which is something you cannot say about the Csonka/Warfield Fins.
Take away Marino from the 1980's Dolphins and you have a mediocre team (although Woodley did take them to the super bowl in 1982...). But take away Griese from the 1972 Dolphins and Morrall gives you 17-0.

Again, I don't mean to demean or slander the 1980's Dolphins.
They were a very good team with a pretty good defense and the second best QB of the era.

I just personally prefer the 1970's version.

JuggernautJ wrote:I've been skeptical of the "Strength of Schedule" argument since the 1980's....

But I do like Rupert's formula!
As best I can follow it, that makes sense to me.

I wonder how all NFL champions would stack up in that rating system?
Who won the title against the most difficult opposition?

Rupert?

I liked the logic behind the formula too, but can't drop the Dolphins stuff when it comes up even though I try not to be the one bringing it up

I watched all the 80s Dolphins games I could and I actually preferred the pre-Marino era. Don't have anything to back this up except my own experience, but the defense and running game seemed to get worse once Marino took over at QB. Not saying there is any cause effect between Marino and the defense (although I've heard it argued drives that didn't eat clock because of the lack of a run game put them back on the field too quickly), but I did get the sense the run was de-emphasized.

JuggernautJ wrote:the second best QB of the era.

Who do you have as best QB of the era? Montana/Elway? Hard to go against Montana, but going back to the other discussion, was Marino the better "pure passer"?

TanksAndSpartans wrote: Who do you have as best QB of the era? Montana/Elway?

I'm sorry. What part of 49ers fan did you not get?

Like I said, I watched virtually all of those games and there's only one Joe .

JuggernautJ wrote:

JuggernautJ wrote:I've been skeptical of the "Strength of Schedule" argument since the 1980's....

But I do like Rupert's formula!
As best I can follow it, that makes sense to me.

I wonder how all NFL champions would stack up in that rating system?
Who won the title against the most difficult opposition?

Rupert?

That will take some time, because I don't have an excel spreadsheet with division record for teams for each season, which would make this very easy; I would have to manually input the data which would take a couple days . I have a strength of schedule database, but it is standard strength of schedule. I have it on all teams from 1933-2017 so there is some interesting things to be found in the data. Here goes:

The highest Strength of Schedule (SOS) which is aggregate winning percentage of all opponents, of any team any season, is a tie between the 1944 Card-Pitt and the 1944 Brooklyn Dodgers, both of whom had an SOS of .660, meaning their average opponent had a winning percentage of .660. Third, and this should probably be no surprise if you think about it, is the 1975 Cleveland Browns at .648, because they were in the same division with the 12-2 Steelers, 11-3 Bengals and 10-4 Oilers and played two games against each of them. Also in the top 10 was the 1973 49ers at .622, who faced the 12-2 Rams and 9-5 Falcons twice each, along with 12-2 Miami, 10-4 Pittsburgh, 7-5-2 Denver, 10-4 Washington and 12-2 Minnesota.

Weakest schedule of all time? 1975 Vikings with an SOS of .332, as they only played two teams above .500, Buffalo and Washington, and Detroit was the only .500 team they played. They were followed by the 42 Redskins (.353), 45 Redskins (.354), 42 Bears and 41 Giants (both at .356), and 1970 Dolphins at .362. Next is the 1999 Rams, then the 1970 Colts, 72 Dolphins, and the 79 Bucs round out the top ten.

Among Championship/Super Bowl winning teams, the highest is the 1979 Steelers at .527, which makes sense if you think about it. They had a competitive division, as they were 12-4 with Houston at 11-5 and Cleveland at 9-7. They also played 9-7 New England, 7-9 Buffalo, 5-11 Baltimore, 7-9 Kansas City, along with 12-4 San Diego and 10-6 Denver. In addition, they played the NFC East, which was 11-5 Dallas and Philadelphia, 10-6 Washington and 5-11 St. Louis. It was a really difficult schedule, as only four games were with teams who were more than a game below .500.

Second on the list is the 2008 Steelers at .525, followed by 34 Giants (.522), 2010 Packers and 2011 Giants (.519), 1940 Giants (.518), 2007 Giants (.516) and 2014 New England (.514).

At the bottom of the list of Champs, the aforementioned 42 Redskins, 99 Rams, 70 Colts, 72 Dolphins, 37 Redskins, 45 Rams, 41 Bears, and 71 Cowboys.

Thanks, Rupert!
I find that all very interesting.

SixtiesFan wrote:

TanksAndSpartans wrote:I should be the last one talking about the '70s, but isn't the argument that the '72 team had a weak schedule?

I was a fan of the '84 team and while it was a great personal achievement for one player, it was a one dimensional team and the Super Bowl pretty much set the tone for the team for many years.

Didn't some Dolphins say the 1973 team which went 12-2 was better than the undefeated 1972 team?

You could make that case, though perhaps the 1973 team was slightly worse offensively they certainly marched through the playoffs and Super Bowl with 0 adversity or tense moments while the 1972 team, while dominant, probably should've lost a regular season game or two. And their ride through the playoffs was a lot bumpier.

The 1973 team should've been 13-1 but I think they treated the 2nd to last game of the season vs Baltimore as a pre season affair. I think holding off the Steelers late fury took a lot out of them