Tom Oates: Odds are stacked against Packers
Channel: ABD AST
Date: 2020-06-18

Now that it looks like there will be an NFL season this fall, it’s safe to start wondering about the Green Bay Packers’ prospects in their second season under coach Matt LaFleur.

The hope is that the Packers, who improved from 6-9-1 to 13-3 and reached the NFC Championship Game in LaFleur’s first season, will build on that impressive start and take the next step. That step, of course, is the Super Bowl.

It’s certainly a reasonable goal for a defending division champion with a future Hall of Famer in quarterback Aaron Rodgers, home-run hitters in wide receiver

Davante Adams and running back Aaron Jones and the expectation the offense will make a natural improvement during its second season running LaFleur’s scheme.

It’s never that simple, however, and it won’t be for Green Bay this season. Indeed, the odds are stacked against the Packers in 2020. To take the next step, they’ll have to overcome several statistical trends that work against teams that have made such a sizable jump in record from one season to the next.

In a league where there is little to separate teams in terms of talent, there are statistical fluctuations in key areas from year to year that can mean the difference between making the playoffs or having a losing record. What was a team’s record in one-score games? What was its turnover differential? Did its point differential sync up with its record?

Those factors seem to point to one thing: A team such as Green Bay that improves its win total dramatically over the previous season will be hard-pressed to match that success the following season.

Since the NFL-AFL merger in 1970, there have been 40 teams that increased their win total by seven or more games from one season to the next.

Three such jumps took place in 1983, which followed a season shortened to nine games by a players’ strike. It seems certain none of those three would have qualified for this list had it not been for the abbreviated season that preceded it, so they don’t count in the statistics.



Two other teams — San Francisco and Green Bay — made the leap last year (the 49ers went from 4-12 to 13-3). Obviously, we won’t know until December how those teams will fare in the season after their surprising jumps.

Of the 35 remaining teams that improved by seven or more wins in one season, the success rate in the ensuing season isn’t good. Whether they weren’t that good to begin with, lost a key player or the often-fickle football gods deserted them, precious few of those teams were able to maintain the gains they made during their breakout year.

Only three of the 35 improved their win total in the season following their big jump — the Baltimore Colts in 1976, the New York Jets in 1998 and the Los Angeles Rams in 2018. All three had made a jump of seven or eight wins the previous season under a new coach — Ted Marchibroda in Baltimore, Bill Parcells in New York and Sean McVay in Los Angeles — and all three improved even more in their second season under those coaches. If there is a ray of hope in Green Bay, that is it because this is LaFleur’s second season.

The optimism ends there, however. Less than half of the teams — 16 of 35 — that improved by seven or more games in one season had a winning record the following season. Eight others dropped to 8-8 or 7-9, which means almost a third of the teams — 11 of 35 — managed only six or fewer wins.

Even fewer teams qualified for the playoffs following their big season. Of the 35 teams, only 11 reached the postseason in the ensuing season. Of those 11, only one — the 2005 Pittsburgh Steelers — won a Super Bowl and they did it even though they had four fewer regular-season wins than the 15-1 Steelers of 2004.

Concern over the Packers’ prospects is legitimate, mainly because their 13-3 record was built on winning close games and turnover differential, two things that tend to even out over time.

Green Bay went 8-1 in games decided by eight points or less last season. In the NFL, teams win one-score games about 50% of the time. So when a team has either a great record or a poor record in such games, it tends to move back toward 50% the following season.

The Packers tied for third in the NFL with a plus-12 turnover differential last season. With Rodgers, their giveaways are usually low, but they improved their takeaways from 15 to 25 last season, moving from 29th to seventh in the NFL. Since the Packers are historically good in turnover differential, this is one stat they can reasonably expect to hold up this season.

Finally, the Packers’ point differential last season was plus-63, which suggests they overachieved. Their 13-3 record tied with San Francisco and New Orleans for the best in the NFC, but those two teams and two others in the conference had point differentials greater than plus-100. Some NFL people consider season-long point differential the truest indicator of a team’s strength.
.