I’ve been out on a Batman hiatus (I’ve already seen The Dark Knight twice…lol…it’s that good), but I just saw this in the e-mail. Double D, one of our favorite commenters who always puts the “A” in Addict, sent in this on the Chiefs and the preseason…
The 1969 Chiefs (of Superbowl fame) tantalized their fans with a 6-0 preseason record. By contrast, last year’s 4-12 record was preceded by an 0-4 preseason.
Coaches, pundits, and fans will argue until they’re blue that pre-season wins/losses are totally meaningless as an indicator of what to expect during the regular season. They will tell you that the only value of the pre-season (aside from ticket sales & broadcast/advertising royalties) is that it provides coaches with a bit of film and a couple of stats that help justify why such and such rookie, veteran should be kept/cut.
Even if the playcalling is pure vanilla, I would still maintain that what a team does during the pre-season can be fairly good harbinger of things to come.
I believe that if the Chiefs do better than .500 this pre-season, that there is at least a 50-50 chance they make it into the post-season and that if they go .500 or worse, we will be about the same for the regular season.
Winning is part philosophy, part preparation, and part habit; talk amongst yourselves . . .
I think it depends on where a team is as far as its evolution is concerned. If the Colts or Patriots drop all four preseason games, it’s no biggie. But we’re a team that needs confidence, needs to experience winning. I do think for the Chiefs the 2008 preseason will be extremely important, possibly more important than for any other team.
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The preseason is not a valid indicator of the regular season to come by any means. The starters don’t even play for more than about a drive. Remember a couple years ago when the Raiders went 4-0 in the preseason and 2-14 in the regular season? Yeah..
ok, where is the other evidence? i see 2 different seasons, with 2 totally different team’s pre-season records….show me more, and ill believe it…BTW, glad The Dark Knight was good. i cant wait to see it.
One stat I am pretty sure of is that no team has ever made the playoffs going winless in preseason.
Correction. I believe the only team that has is the Colts in 2005.
I really don’t care what our record is during the pre-season. I just want the coaches to do their job and evaluate the players correctly. I want the best possible player we have on our roster. I’m just glad Herm is our coach, because he does know how to evaluate talent when it comes to defence. This is where we need to get better and start terrorizing apossing offences.
Herm is notorious for having “slow starts” at the beginning of the season. In my opinion, there is no excuse for a slow start. You can’t play catch-up in the 16 game NFL season very easily. But this is a young team, I’m pretty much expecting a rocky road at the start of the season anyway.
Instead of taking it on faith, I went to NFL.com, and looked up the correlation between winning/losing and making/missing the playoffs. I did not count teams that went 2-2 in the preseason, only winners and losers. Here’s the result of what I found.
53 teams had winning preseason records during that period. Of those 53 teams:
Winner in preseason and made postseason: 19
Winner in preseason and missed preseason: 34
So a winner in the preseason made the postseason 36% of the time during that time.
65 teams had losing preseason records during that period. Of those 65 teams:
Loser in preseason and made postseason: 12
Loser in preseason and missed postseason: 43
So a loser in the preseason made the postseason 18% of the time during that period.
So what can we conclude on actual facts. A winner is twice as likely to make the postseason. However, the chances of a winning record meaning regular season success only happen a little better than 33% of the time.
Now that your all bored with a ton of numbers, I’m done, and if you don’t believe me, go and crunch the numbers yourself.
Impressive stats thebryman, and your conclusions are sound. But on the basis of those numbers, I would say the most important thing about the preseason is getting your team ready to actually PLAY the regular season… and on that basis, one could infer Herm has not been getting it done that last few years. That said, I need to quantify what ‘being ready’ is, and it’s not necessarily measured in the w/l column.
There is no excuse for not having all of your offense installed or playing straight vanilla defense in the regular season, and that’s what’s been going on since Herm came to KC. As important as evaluating and developing the young talent is, you need to be doing that in the light of real league circumstances – otherwise the youngsters don’t really know what the job they’re expected to do ACTUALLY is.
This means your all your offense and defensive sets need to be installed by the end of the 2nd preseason game, and your starters need to be in place early enough to get 7-9 quarters playing time together in the preseason. I think Herm is going this direction this year based on his comments about starters during the OTA’s. But more than wins and losses, I want to see our guys play like they belong on the field during the first four games – and I want to see it in game ONE. These slow starts are my only serious criticism of Herm’s coaching since he came to KC.
its pretty obvious one here, you have to win in the preseason, i dont care what anybody else says, if you win in preseason that means you have good depth, that takes care of the starters not playing much comment, if you have good depth your production shouldnt drop a whole lot between starters and back ups, bryman showed us that preseason counts with his stats and im sayin without decent backups you will not win in the preseason, and you will not win in the regular season, if you can win with your 2nd string, you should have no problem kickin ass with your starters
It seems that the preseason is a good indicator in the way of predicting bad teams, because most often a team that loses is going to lose during the season, but winners are a lot harder to predict. I found a couple of 4-0 preseason teams that flamed out during the season, and other than the Colts, none that did anything after an ofer. I think the only undefeated preseason team to become the champs during that period was the Patriots.
I think it may vary depending on teams also, you look at the Cowboys of the 90’s, in 10 seasons from 90-99, they had a losing preseason 8 of the 10 years, and made the playoffs 8 out of 10 years, they missed once at 2-2, and once with a losing record. What that says to me, was that they took it easy with their stars during the preseason, and turned it on once the season started. I think the preseason is different to everyone. To a young Chiefs team, it would really help to get it going and build some confidence, whereas a team that is a perennial contender it is a good time to get some reps for the young guys.
Call me nuts, but I’d almost rather us lose a couple preseason games so that the younger guys realize that it’s only gonna get harder from there and they need to step it up. Maybe a losing preseason would motivate rookies and whatnot.
Just a thought.
Good point, SeanB. I do think a mix of success and failure would adequately introduce our rookies to the NFL. I think it would be fine for us to go 2-2 or 1-3, but I do think we need to win a game for sure. I also think how the starters and young guys perform might be just as important, if not more, than the final box score. Even from a confidence standpoint.
Couldn’t agree more.
Great comments all around. My take is that preseason can mean different things for different teams.
A coach that has already built a team and has an established track record of success is probably better off not worrying about wins in the preseason so much as “warming up” his veterans and making decisions about depth and long term development.
Players, on the other hand, typically want to come away with a win any time they set foot on a field because they are competitors and during the preseason, for many players, the stakes can be even higher because they are out there competing for NFL jobs.
For a team that’s in the process of rebuilding, like this year’s Chiefs, I believe this preseason can/should also be considered very important in terms of preparation, player evaluation/development, practicing (Chan’s) new plays in actual game settings and perhaps above all, how that final 53 man roster feels about their accomplishments and failures. I say one critical thing that absolutely needs to happen immediately, if not sooner, especially for Herm, Chan, Brodie and the offense, is learning how to win. After last season, even the veterans need swagger and the more they have of it going into the regular season, the better.
I also agree somewhat with SeanB’s point about it not necessarily being a bad thing if they lose. With a young squad like this, the last thing I want to see on Sept 7 is an overconfident Chiefs team going up to Foxborough. I would prefer however that they lose no more than 1 game for a couple of reasons: 1) I see no reason why they can’t beat at least 3 of the teams they’re facing (Arizona, Miami, St. Louis) and 2) swag-itude.