Pittsburgh Steelers

Super Bowl XLV Matchups

Key matchups in Super Bowl XLV:

BJ Raji vs Doug Legursky (Not Maurkice Pouncey)

Pittsburgh’s rookie Pro Bowl center Maurkice Pouncey was injured in their AFC Championship game against the Jets with what was called at the time a high ankle sprain. Later it was revealed that a bone fracture was part of the injury as well. Mike Tomlin is playing this close to the chest as any NFL coach must, but it’s unlikely that Pouncey will start, or that he will be effective if he does.

If he does not start Doug Legursky will take his place, earning his first start in the NFL. That’s right, his first start will be in Super Bowl XLV against a first round draft pick that has been building steam over the last couple months: Green Bay’s nose tackle BJ Raji. Raji is an expert at stuffing inside runs and collapsing pockets around quarterbacks. If the inexperienced Legursky has to face Raji he’ll likely need help from one of his guards on most plays, opening up blitzing lanes for Dom Caper’s linebackers.

Tramon Williams and Charles Woodson vs Hines Ward and Mike Wallace

Pittsburgh’s receivers are good, but Green Bay’s corners are better.

Charles Woodson was 2009’s defensive player of the year and has not fallen off in 2010. He’s well known for his physical play and is an excellent matchup against Hines Ward, who is known for his vicious run blocking. Expect to see flags for illegal contact on both of these veterans.

On the other side, Mike Wallace has had a 1,000 yard 10 touchdown season but is facing Tramon Williams who has been red-hot in the playoffs. Williams recorded six interceptions in the regular season, and three more in the Packers’ postseason drive. More importantly, two of these interceptions were big plays: a game ender against Philadelphia and a game changer against Atlanta.

Aaron Rodgers vs Troy Polamalu

This is perhaps the most anticipated of matchups between the two players that are the faces of their respective franchises. While Green Bay is on offense these two players will be reading each other for weaknesses and mistakes and communicating with their teammates to direct their squads.

Rodgers started the playoff brilliantly with six touchdown passes in the first two games with no interceptions, but did not fare as well against Chicago in the NFC Championship game where he threw no touchdowns and two picks. Chicago also has a top tier defense that is intimately familiar with both Rodgers and the Packers offense. Pittsburgh has a top tier defense but are not used to seeing the Packers in the regular season.

Troy Polamalu is the “quarterback” of his defense, calling coverages and adjustments to counter offenses. He has a solid but not spectacular playoff record, but his strength is in elevating his unit’s effectiveness more than in his own performance. As a crafty veteran Polamalu will be able to move his pass coverages in ways that Rodgers won’t expect and open the first time Super Bowler up to mistakes. Even if Polamalu’s hands aren’t involved, he’ll likely cause at least one interception in Sunday’s big game.

Pittsburgh Linebackers vs Green Bay Offensive Line

Pittsburgh’s linebacker corps of Woodley, Farrior, Timmons, and Harrison is monumental. Having so much talent concentrated in one part of the field is something that demands attention from offensive game planners.

Steelers defensive coordinator Dick LeBeau knows exactly how to move these players in ways that baffle the best of offensive lines, and Green Bay’s doesn’t even qualify for that. Chad Clifton, the veteran left tackle will likely do well against the blitzing James Harrison, but on the other side the inexperienced Brian Bulaga may have significant difficulties slowing down LaMarr Woodley.

Every team that faces Pittsburgh’s defense expects to see lots of blitzing, and with this matchup expect to see a fair amount of sacks as well, especially from the right side of the line.

Ben Roethlisberger vs Clay Matthews

This matchup may be a tough one to call. Ben Roethlisberger is a veteran quarterback with two Super Bowl rings who is known for using his size and strength to shake off would-be tacklers and make big plays. Clay Matthews is a second year pass rush specialist that led the Packers in sacks this season using his strength and speed to get around blockers.

There is little doubt that Matthews will get to Roethlisberger unless the Steelers regularly commit double teams to block him, which would be unlikely if Maurkice Pouncey doesn’t play. The question will be if the 6’3″ 240lb linebacker will be able to take down the 6’5″ 240lb quarterback. Defensive players are often asked to tackle smaller (even significantly smaller) players, but in this matchup the size and strength of the players is roughly even.

If Clay Matthews can consistently tackle Ben Roethlisberger when the opportunities arise, then the Packers may gain a defensive edge over the Steelers. If Roethlisberger finds a way to shed Matthews and get more time to throw the ball the Packers will be in as much trouble as the 2005 Seahawks or the 2008 Cardinals.

NFL Prediction, Conference Championships

By Dr. Ed Feng Leave a Comment

Green Bay will beat Chicago by 2.7 on the road

Pittsburgh will beat New York Jets by 3.8 at home

The predictions were 1 of 2 last weekend in the Divisional Playoff games. We won on Green Bay, lost on the New York Jets, and chose not to bet on the other two games.

Defense wins championships… or does it?

By Tom Kellogg Leave a Comment

For new readers of The Power Rank blog, here’s a brief summary of the week four posting:

“If political strategist James Carville were an NFL pundit he might be telling us ‘It’s the defense, stupid!'”

At that time, the top teams in the Power Rank were defensive powerhouses, with the exception of the then and now offensively dominant New England Patriots.

Now that the NFC and AFC championship games are looming on the horizon, it is again apparent that strong defense is the key to success in the NFL.

The four teams that remain in the Super Bowl hunt are the Steelers, Packers, Bears and Jets. All of these teams were defensive juggernauts this year. In the regular season, they ranked 1st, 2nd, 4th, and 6th respectively in points allowed. What happened to teams in 3rd and 5th place? Last weekend the 3rd place Ravens lost to the 1st place Steelers, and the 5th place Falcons lost to the 2nd place Packers.

Just take a look at the how the top ten teams in The Power Rank correlate to their rank in points allowed during the regular season:

First, it’s clear that being highly ranked defensively was critical to making the top of The Power Rank this year. More importantly notice the teams that made the playoffs, and teams still alive in the playoffs… all of the teams that are still playing have elite defenses, but with the Patriots’ loss on Sunday the best offense left is that of the Packers, the 10th ranked offense in the league.

To see if this was a more universal truth of the NFL, I decided to do some more digging into the success of superior defensive teams in the playoffs. I started with playoff results by defensive rank since 2002:

Not all seasons have been dominated by defensively superior teams, but overall there is definitely an emerging trend.

While compiling these stats I also noticed that there were a large number of games where teams played opponents of very similar defensive caliber. It didn’t seem right to me that a 3rd ranked defense beating a 2nd ranked defense be considered the same as a 10th ranked defense beating a 2nd ranked defense. So I adjusted both wins and losses by separating games where defenses were within three ranks of each other from games where defenses were four or more ranks different:

Now the 55-41 win rate by superior defenses shrinks to 39-28, whereas the record for games between similar defensively powered teams ended up at 16-12.

This result surprised me, since the win percentage for all three of the breakdowns are almost exactly the same:

Apparently the level of difference between the defenses didn’t matter as much as I thought it would. Regardless of that difference, teams with a superior defense seem to enjoy about a 57% chance of winning in the postseason. That’s somewhat significant but hardly dominant.

In fact, the only round where the defense seems to make a significant difference is in the divisional round where superior defenses have gone 25-11 over the last nine years, and have had a 69% chance of winning. The better defense’s chance of winning in any other part of the playoffs? An even 50%.

It seems clear. Having the best defense on the field has only mattered for one week a year over the last decade. The rest of the playoffs seem relatively unaffected by the strength of each team’s defense.

But why does the divisional round seem to favor defenses so much when the rest of the postseason seems utterly unaffected? To be honest, I’m not sure. I have some vague ideas, but listing them here would be nothing more than taking shots in the dark. If you’d like to share your own theories, please feel free to leave a comment.

Homefield Advantage in the NFL

By Tom Kellogg 10 Comments

It’s a nebulous topic. Whether it’s Our House, The 12th Man, or any other name homefield advantage is an intangible that’s often invoked in football.

This season I attempted to use the Power Rank’s neutral site predictive capability and account for home field advantage… and failed. I added an arbitrary three points for the home team, a practice that is relatively common when setting a betting line, but a practice that is hardly scientific.

Rather than develop a complex mathematical matrix to divine the true value of the homefield advantage (I’m just not that smart… I’ll let Ed work on that!) I decided to poke back into the recent history of the NFL to see is homefield advantage is a truly intangible myth or if it is a real and tangible aspect of the game which might one day be quantifiable.

I gathered data from NFL.com for the years 2002-2010, the only years that represent the current 32 team configuration of the league.

The first thing I wanted to look at was regular season performance.

Since 2002 home teams have won over 57% of the time, while road teams have won only about 43% of the time. That’s a fairly strong indication that homefield advantage is tangible and meaningful, especially since every year has produced winning records for the home team. The worst year for home teams since 2002 was 2006, when home teams won barely more than 53% of the time.

There’s a lot that goes into why playing at home is advantageous, from the comfort of your own familiar locker room to the jet lag (or lack thereof) of a coast-to-coast trip to field conditions. One of the biggest and most obvious advantages is the crowd noise produced by a home team’s fans. I wondered if this factor would increase the homefield advantage during the playoffs, when fans are going to be louder and more interested in every play of each game.

Here are the results for homefield advantage in the playoffs since 2002, with 2010 incomplete (and not counted):

This time there’s an even stronger correlation between home team and victory in the final win percentage, but the playoffs have special conditions that must be considered before jumping to the conclusion that the correlation is in fact stronger. First of all, in the regular season the home team is more or less random, whereas in the postseason the home team is determined by the strength of their regular season finish… usually.

In most cases homefield advantage in the playoffs is awarded to the team with the best record (or by tiebreakers if they had the same record) but this is not always the case. Division winners are awarded home field advantage over wild card teams regardless of record. That’s why the 11-5 Saints visited the 7-9 Seahawks, the 10-6 Packers visited the 10-6 Eagles (who they had beat on tiebreakers), the 12-4 Ravens visited the 10-6 Chiefs, and the 11-5 Jets visited the 10-6 Colts last week.

So in the wild card round, you have teams with better records visiting arguably worse teams that won their division. The results from these four games last week? A 1-3 record for home teams, with the Seahawks pulling of a somewhat miraculous win over the Saints.

So I also broke down the records of wild card games by homefield:

Not only is this correlation weaker than the homefield advantage in the regular season, its also generally weak. 52.8% versus 47.2% doesn’t create insurmountable odds. In fact, the odds for an away team to win in the wild card round are about equal to the odds of beating the house on a casino Roulette wheel (with 0 and 00 spaces).

So what happens in the divisional and conference championship rounds when homefield advantage almost always goes to the team with a better record?

Now the correlation is at its strongest, but again the home team is already coming in favored since they usually have a better record, especially in the championship round when the home team always has the better record.

Does this just mean that the better team is winning? I don’t think so. The correlations here are significantly larger than the correlation in the regular season, and as all football fans know, the best team doesn’t always show up and win. I’d attribute the correlation in the later playoff rounds to a combination of the two: a better team playing at home has a very significantly better chance of winning in the playoffs.

So what does that mean for this week? All of this week’s match ups feature a weaker team visiting a stronger team. This is the kind of correlation we see in the conference championship round of the playoffs, about a 69% chance for the home team to win versus 31% for the away team.

Seattle losing to Chicago and New York losing to New England seem like safe bets this week by conventional wisdom, but the other two games are less certain. Baltimore finished with the same record as Pittsburgh and lost the division on tiebreakers. The Power Rank’s #2 team Green Bay visit the Falcons, who needed a few lucky breaks to win at home against the Packers in week 12 this season.

If one of these potential upsets occurs, the record for better teams playing at home this week will be 0.750, close to the expected 0.688 correlation that is shown in the conference championship rounds of the last eight playoffs.

So it seems that homefield advantage is certainly tangible, and is particularly strong when it favors an already superior team (according to record) in the playoffs.