By most accounts, the Detroit Lions had a pretty dreadful preseason. The question is, does it even matter?
Last Thursday, the Detroit Lions lost their fourth and final preseason game to the Cleveland Browns. When newly crowned Lions backup QB Josh Johnson was brought to the turf by since-waived Browns LB Anthony Stubbs as time expired, the sack not only sealed the victory for hometown Cleveland but also a winless preseason for the boys in Honolulu Blue and Silver.
The game was one in a series of uninspired affairs. Against the New England Patriots fans were treated to some truly offensive line play from the turnstile-like (mostly backup) guards and tackles. They allowed nine sacks, including five on their first thirteen passing plays. Poor QB Tom Savage left the game with a concussion after spending most of the first half running for his life. It was a rough start to say the least.
The following tilt against the Houston Texans wasn’t much better. Texans starting QB DeShaun Watson had his way with the Lions defense, completing his first four pass attempts for 13, 13, 12 and 18 yards. If there was a song running through Watson’s head as he carved up the secondary, it was most likely MC Hammer’s “U Can’t Touch This,” not “Got Me Under Pressure” by Houston’s own ZZ Top.
In the third game, the proverbial “dress rehearsal” if you will, we finally got a look at starting QB Matthew Stafford. He’d been bubble-wrapped throughout the summer even more so than usual with extended practice breaks and, up to that point, no preseason action. He played sufficiently well, going 12-19 for 137 yards and a touchdown toss to rookie RB Ty Johnson. The real takeaway from the game, though, is who was taken away from the rotation. The Lions lost both their starting C Frank Ragnow and MLB Jarrad Davis to injury, with Davis expected to miss extended time.
Not to be all negative, the preseason did provide a few highlights. The aforementioned Johnson had a few nice carries in the Pats game. Rookie defensive back Will Harris had a nice scoop and score on a fumble recovery against Houston. CB Justin Coleman forced a fumble of his own against Buffalo which hopefully bodes well for the Lions future ability to force turnovers as they were seemingly averse in 2018. Toss in Stafford’s performance, some nice play from LB Jalen Reeves-Maybin and a 61!!! yard FG from Mr. Reliable, Matt Prater and you have a couple cheerable moments.
But there weren’t many, which should come as no surprise when you’re talking about four losses with a combined score of 105-62. The question is, does any of this even matter? League-wide, it appears that coaches are getting wise to the high risk/low reward nature of exposing starters to potential harm in “meaningless” games. For the Lions, the injuries to Ragnow and Davis, not to mention a season-ender to WR Jermaine Kearse, serve to reinforce that notion. What’s left is a showcase for hundreds of fringe players fighting for their professional lives, utilizing watered down playbooks in front of half-empty stadiums.
And yet, 0-4 still feels ominous just the same that 4-0 might feel encouraging. To see if there is any merit to those feelings of presumed correlation, I catalogued the regular season records for every team that finished their preseason either winless or undefeated for the last twenty years.
The Undefeateds
First off let me say congratulations to the Baltimore Ravens. From the 99-2018 seasons, they finished the preseason undefeated an astonishing seven times! And if you peep their preseason win total from this year, do you know what you’ll find? That’s right. Another 4 bomb. Unreal.
Unfortunately, in general a 4-0 preseason record seems to have very little translation to regular season success. This is something fans here and in Cleveland know all too well as the only two teams to go 0-16 in the regular season in NFL history (DET, 2008. CLE, 2017) had flawless preseasons.
On average, these preseason juggernauts win a total of 7.8 games, with the most common outcome being a decidedly mediocre 8-8. Even those powerhouse Ravens only fare a little better, going for about 9.4 wins in their undefeated years.
The problem with gleaning any predictive ability from this set is how variable the outcomes are. The standard deviation is 3.4, meaning that roughly two thirds of these teams land somewhere between 4.4 to 11.2 wins. That’s a huge range, some of which can be attributed to those godawful Lions and Browns teams muddying up the data. If you remove them, the average win total jumps up to 8.2 with a standard deviation equating to 5.2 to 11.2 wins. A bit tighter, but still not terribly predictable.
The Losers Club
The Atlanta Falcons and Kansas City Chiefs are both the anti-Ravens. They’ve each lost every preseason game five times from 99-2018, though both managed to eek one out this year. The good news for them, and for the rest of the league, is that it may not really matter.
These losers end up winning roughly 7.6 regular season games during the subsequent year with the most common result being 7 wins. That average is only .2 wins fewer than the “winners” group (and only .6 even if you take out the 0-16ers). The Falcons average? Exactly 7.2 wins. The Chiefs do a little worse at 6.4 wins.
This group, on the other hand seems to be a little less variable. But only slightly. The standard deviation is 2.8 wins, meaning most teams can expect to finish somewhere between 4.8 and 10.4 wins. Still a wide range.
Playoffs?
At first glance, the data suggests that there is at least a modest link to making the playoffs and preseason success. Those undefeated squads produced 18 playoff teams over the 20 year span, or a little less than one per year. The losers group only managed 11 during that time frame.
The interesting thing is, though, that if you limit it to just the last ten years, the winless bunch actually had more playoff representation. They pushed through 9 teams compared to the “winners” 8. Is this a byproduct of more coaches holding back their starters in recent years, therefore stripping preseason games of any real representation of roster strength? Or is it just small sample size noise in the data? I’m not sure.
What I am sure of is that you cannot really gain much by judging how your team will do in the upcoming NFL season by their preseason record alone. Perhaps you can be slightly more optimistic if they won out, or pessimistic if they pulled an O-fer, but not much so.
Better predictors to season success are the same as they’ve been for twenty years: Teams with upper echelon quarterback play tend to do well (Brady, Brees, Rodgers, et al.) and teams with a near proximity to Lake Erie…not so much.
Art Design: Erik Belcarz. Credits: Dumpter Fire, Partensky, Peretz. https://www.flickr.com/photos/ifl/3968047605. Stafford, A Healthier Michigan. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Matt_stafford_2016.jpg. Background, Sannita. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Honolulu_blue_Silver_Black_White.svg.