In his podcast Nick Underhill made the comment that the Saints defense looks better but doesn’t want to project anything about the upcoming season just yet. He hopes they can get to allowing 24 points per game range to result in something like a 10-6 season. But is that enough? I spent an evening doing some number crunching and the result surprised me.
I looked at stats over a period of 5 years. I categorized them by number of wins in a season. I did not factor in the 3 ties that have been in that period of time. Defensive performance goes hand in hand with the offensive performance. A crap offense can win the Super Bowl as long as the Denver Broncos have a stellar defense. So the stat to look at here is difference in points; Points scored minus points allowed.
What I found is that of the 7 teams that won only 2 games the average difference was -11.4. So they got 11.4 points scored more on the defense then they could put up on average. On the other side of the spectrum it was a positive of 12.3 points for the 2 teams that went 15-1 in that same period.
| Total Wins | Average Point Difference | Number of teams |
|---|---|---|
| 2 | -11.7 | 7 |
| 3 | -9.3 | 6 |
| 4 | -7.8 | 14 |
| 5 | -5.9 | 9 |
| 6 | -3.4 | 14 |
| 7 | -2.0 | 21 |
| 8 | -0.9 | 22 |
| 9 | +2.1 | 11 |
| 10 | +4.5 | 17 |
| 11 | +5.2 | 14 |
| 12 | +8.0 | 15 |
| 13 | +11.1 | 8 |
| 14 | n/a | None |
| 15 | +12.2 | 2 |
PS for those who are interested, my calculations showed the distribution is mathematically sound!
So, a 10-6 team has to outscore their opponent by an average of 4.5 points per game. The maximum here were the 2016 Seahawks who had 9.1 points per game margin, whereas the minimum were the Bengals who only had a 1.3 points per game margin going 10-5-1 in 2014.
The one real question is: what does this all mean for the Saints? To answer that we need to look at how they behave in relation to the rest of the league.
| Year | Saints Wins | League Average Point Difference | Saints Point Difference that Year |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2011 | 13 | +11.1 | +13.0 |
| 2012 | 7 | -2.0 | +0.4 |
| 2013 | 11 | +5.2 | +6.9 |
| 2014 | 7 | -2.0 | -1.4 |
| 2015 | 7 | -2.0 | -4.3 |
Now I will not bother you with the details, but for this to mathematically work, you would need to subtract 1 point per game to make it a standard distribution. That means that the Saints need to outscore their opponent by 5.5 points rather then 4.5 points per game to get the same results.
So what are the numbers the offense puts up? In 2011 it was 34 points per game, in 2012 it dropped to 28, but the last 3 years it has gone down to 25.5 points per game on average (25.9, 25.1 and 25.5). It is reasonable to believe the Saints put up an other 25.5 point year. Yes there are new exciting weapons, but Brees is not getting any younger and his offensive line has some real question marks. That means the defense needs to allow for only 20 points per game on average to get to a 10-6 season.
Is that doable? In the last 5 years there have been 40 defenses who held their opponents to less then 20 points per game, and 120 who did not. Statistically the Saints need to be in the top 25%, which is top 8, to get to a 10-6 season this year.
So Nick, in conclusion, you better hope the Saints defense will be way better then that 24 points allowed range that you mentioned if you want to report on games rather then coaching changes come January.
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