2019 Vikings Record against winning-losing teams

Oh yeah? Well the Vikings got outscored 12-0 in 4th quarter by some loser team that was trailing 28-0 just before that. Now what? Did we beat a team that was trailing 28-0 or did we beat a team that outscored us 12-0? Cuz that last quarter was more recent than those first 3 quarters.

I don't know, kinda looked like we got beat by an 0-1 team there in the 4th quarter.

Fortunately, we beat them in the first 3 quarters. 

Works for me. That was their first year under Pederson and with Wentz and they were clearly a team on the rise.





Looks like they were pretty bad, says the Nemmy system.

<snip!> I grandfathered in a couple of earlier years for you but the Nemmy system was only developed in 2017 so I'm not going to analyze how it worked in 1952 or 1922. Lets just see how it works for the Vikings in 2019 and beyond. I think you will like it because it will show that even the winning/goot teams we beat aren't usually really winners/good teams. At worst it will show that all the talk you hear about teams beating winning/losing teams is pretty meaningless. In fact every season opening game is already meaningless in that sense.

That's right.  I alluded to that above.  I mostly developed my system in response to people crowing about how we beat the "the 11-5 Saints" on September 11, 2017 when the Saints were actually winless and stinky at the time and were not a winning team until much later, October 15 to be exact.



I won't argue with any of that. I think both imperfect systems may be necessary to keep all things in perspective.

Well here's some perspective for you. I was working on a ranking system that was going to take into consideration how many yards you gained against an opponent as opposed to what they typically allowed, total, passing, rushing, and on both offense and defense. I figure if a team is constantly gaining more yards against opponents than those opponents typically allow, or give up fewer yards than they typically gain, that would have to be the sign of a pretty good team.

That way it wouldn't matter how good or bad your opponents were. For example, if a team played a schedule of mostly weak defensive teams, and another team played against mostly strong defensive teams, would the former team be better offensively just because they gained more total yards than the latter team? The former team might be gaining less yards against those easy opponents than those opponents typically allow, but still more yards than the latter team that might be gaining more yards against it's tougher opponents normally allow. I would say the latter team had a better offense despite gaining fewer yards.

BUT! The recent Vikings/Falcons game has thrown a big wrench into my idea lol. How many teams quit in the 4th quarter, thereby leaving a bunch of yards on the table, and maybe allowing more than they would have? Statistically if you ended all games after the 3rd quarter yesterday, the Vikings would have a top 5 defense, but because the 4th quarter happened, the Vikings fell to 12th in total yards and 19th in passing.