The Saddest Stats Of NFL Week 11
Michael Reaves. Getty Images.Welcome sad NFL fans. Have yourself a little seat on the cheap plastic chairs in the circle. I know you're eager to vent over your pathetic teams, but maybe write whatever your gripe is down because it's going to be a while before I yield the floor from twisting the sad statistical knife on my gutless, unintelligible Chicago Bears.
"But Stathole - Tommy Devito is starting and we can't even pretend that's not an improvement"
Heard. I know there's other teams out there. I'll do my best to share the floor and listen but don't blame me if I go full Steve Carrell from The Big Short when he walks in and out of therapy while on the phone. But Jesus. Can you believe the Bears were 4-2? Caleb was the first overall #1 pick QB to do this and now we know how much more impressive that is when you account for Matt Eberflus as his coach and Shane Waldron as his coordinator. I was actually feeling a little bad in those weeks not covering my team in this blog. It was almost like I was graduating from this sad circle. Still here even though I was finally better than you all. Finally someone. No longer a loser. A winner.
What a sad thought that was.
Here are your sad stats for Week 11.
Sad Stat #1 - Matt Eberflus's win percentage in one score games is THREE standard deviations below the average for active head coaches
People who don't work with stats are often clueless about what standard deviations mean - and that's OK. It's not a concept our brains are evolved to process. Michael Jordan is three standard deviations above the average height - standing 6'6. How many people do you come across on the daily that are anywhere near this?
And yeah - 22 games is still a low sample size, so the reliability of this figure is probably not statistically significant, but when you look at what this doofus has done in the ends of games it certainly corroborates the stat. Not running another play with some :36 or so seconds left and a timeout before kicking a long field goal was the most gutless beta move a coach could do to his rookie quarterback that just put the fucking team on his back on that very drive. I haven't seen a coach do something that stupid since the last Bears one score game in Washington when this idiot played prevent defense to allow a 15-yard play before the Hail Mary and then went on to LITERALLY say in his presser "that play didn't matter".
So you know what? I'm calling those three standard deviations significant.
Oh, and those five wins?
Miles ahead of Eberflus on the graph is Zac Taylor (second to last place). But you could argue he's a scapegoat here as we move along to…
Sad Stat #2 - Evan McPherson has pretty much lost four games on his own for the Bengals
OK, this gave me a fun idea. What kickers have the record for most games lost single-handedly footedly? I, of course, have every kick result ever recorded at my disposal so I ran some code to see how many teams lost that would have won if you added the points left on the table by the kicker for both extra points and field goals missed. This is obviously not a perfect science and wouldn't have caught last night's catastrophe by McPherson since they lost by seven, but let's have some fun here.
For 2024 - Justin Tucker and Greg Zeurlein lead the way with three lost games while McPherson only has two. But I think it's more than fair we manually add last night to the ledger to put him up there tied for the lead. We can't count the Washington game from Cheah's list though since they lost by more than three.
But that's just this season. Let's talk all time. I have four kickers with seven on a season - last one being Graham Gano in 2010, followed by Scott Sission (1993), Pat Leahy (1990), and Dan Cockroft (1980). With over half the season complete, seven is going to be tough for McPherson to catch, but I'm all over keeping an eye on this stat in case he makes a late-season push.
But hold up a minute. Justin Tucker is tied with the lead for most games lost by a kicker? Let's check in on the all-time place kicker GOAT that has lived long enough to become the villain on his team.
Sad Stat #3 - Justin Tucker is the 25th most accurate field goal kicker this season (min ten attempts)
I sent this stat to Big Cat when Tucker was 30th after starting the game 0/2, but the point pretty much stays the same. Tucker has fallen off the kicker kliff. The only thing really going for him is that this was another sad day for kickers across the league to divert attention from.
Sad Stat #4 - New Bears Offensive Coordinator Thomas Brown has scored as many first drive points (3) in one game on the job as Shane Waldron in nine games
Sorry, I'm back. Made it through two non-Bears sad stats at least. I'm trying here. Many people are pointing out that there was a lot of good that came from this game for the Bears. While they're definitely right, there's a place and time and that place and time is not here and not now. What we really should focus on is how Matt Eberflus thought Shane Waldron was worthy of coaching a pee-wee offense - let alone the NFL. Eberflus reportedly campaigned for Waldron to keep his job before letting him go. And to be honest, Thomas Brown didn't do anything remarkable. And that's perfectly fine. He just used common sense in allowing Caleb Williams to make quick decisions to mask the putrid offensive line which included using his athletic running ability to keep the defense honest. Exactly what the Bears needed. So no. I'm not focusing on the positive here when we have a derelict head coach who literally hired the two worst offensive coordinators on the market during his three and hopefully final years.
Sorry. I know I'm monopolizing. Let's move on.
Sad Stat #5 - NFL defenses have given up seven touchdowns while committing a 12-men on field penalty since 1999 and the Bears have two of those vs the Packers (Aaron Rodgers and now Jordan Love)
The cycle continues. I know they didn't actually have a 12th man playing - he was just late running off - but this is probably one of the most embarrassing defensive stats I can think of. Maybe they don't give up a touchdown with a 13th man. In fact, is there even a 13th man rule? Maybe that's a loophole. Is it "too many men" written in the rules or "12th man"? These are the things I'd be researching as an NFL coach. Is this sad? Yes. Better than Eberflus? Yes.
Sad Stat #6 - The Titans are just the third team in the last quarter century to lose a game when scoring a 98+ yard touchdown
Justin Jefferson took one 97-yards from Sam Darnold as the Vikings beat the 49ers in Week 2. Which is what's supposed to happen. You can't score a ridiculously long touchdown and lose the game. You just can't. But it does happen every so often. Last time was Brandin Cooks from Drew Brees in Week 1, 2016 (98 yards) and then Terrell Owens in 2009 for the Bills from Ryan Fitzpatrick.
Sad Stat #7 - The Cowboys have the third worst point differential for first five home games of a season in NFL history
I'll say it. I felt bad for Mike McCarthy. Not just for last night. But for the season. I'm not saying he's the best coach. We all know his gameday deficiencies, but this team is a hot mess. With that being said, has there ever been a camera zoom so close to the play sheet that you could actually read the packages and plays on it?
Hang on now. Let's take a closer look.
I might need to hit the spreadsheets and run some Mike McCarthy "backed up" stats. Does that say "eat, smell, alert!" right after it? Like, as a reminder of what the three lifecycle stages of being "backed up" are? People joke about his play sheets being a Denny's menu but to fact check the haters it's actually a Denny's itinerary.
I do respect that he separates his redzone packages though. Mid Red sounds like something Marlboro makes. Maybe I'll check back in with some Mike McCarthy package stats. Wouldn't that be a treat…
Sad Stat #8 - NFL Math Lesson: A team that commits four unnecessary roughness penalties on a single play is equivalent to the other team committing one
The end of the Texans Cowboys game got a bit ugly after the Texans crossed the high red zone into the mid red zone. That's when a single play resulted in five penalties - all unnecessary roughnesses (roughnessi??). Four were on Dallas, the fifth on Laremy Tunsil who makes his second penalty-related sad stat appearance this season. Pretty hilarious that these all just offset. Lesson to be learned here is that if you see two players fighting and flags go flying - may as well go full Hanson brothers on the nearest opponent you see.
This had me curious though. Was this the NFL record for most penalties in a single play? Certainly there hasn't been more than five, right?
Wrong. While I found two others that had five in the past 24 years (Giants/Rams Week 16 of 2014 and Bears/49ers Week 16 2018) we have a standout performer with an eight spot. The octofoul.
Week 17, 2017. Bills/Dolphins. David Fales was in at quarterback for Miami so you know things were going well. Here's the ledger:
- Jarvis Landy unsportsmanlike conduct
- Jarvis Landry (again) disqualification
- Kenyon Drake disqualification
- Adolphus Washington unsportsmanlike conduct
- Leonard Johnson unsportsmanlike conduct
- Jarvis Landry (what, again???) unsportsmanlike conduct
- Kenyon Drake (again) unsportsmanlike conduct
- Kenny Stills unsportsmanlike conduct
I think technically this might just be six penalties and they just made it seem like the disqualifications were their own thing in the write up. So with that in mind, it would be six which is still more than Sunday Night's five. But fuck it. Who cares, it's all offsetting anyway.
The footage of flags and hats flying like a college graduation ceremony is an absolutely hilarious must watch. I can't believe I don't recall this play. But I sure as hell found it.
Also funny is that Pro-Football Reference didn't exactly design their website to handle plays with this much critical information to store in a single play row. I know you can't read it since I had to zoom it out for effect, but you know what line it is.
That's it for Week 11. I hate everything. See you next week.
Bonus sad Bears stat:
Bonus Bears sad stat #2
Catch up on last week's sad stats