Momentum/Form

[Hammer]

I just wondered if this had any bearing on a team? In the past I have had teams with seemingly excellent rosters go on a losing streak for a while, turn it around and go on winning streaks, and vica versa. No obvious reasons. Is this just coincidence?

In relation to this, are Pre Season games meaningless or are they worth trying to win. I often inactivate key players for fear of injury, but wonder if this risks a slow start to the season?

[Buzzbee]

As far as I'm aware, there is no concept of momentum coded into the game. Also, Jim has said that there is no 'rust' factor, so playing your starters in pre-season doesn't help unless you are trying to develop them.

[Saucy]

Am I alone in thinking that there SHOULD be both a momentum and a rust factor in the game?

These things definitely exist (for some teams and players) in real life, witness the Steelers beating the Colts in the playoffs after getting soundly beaten there in the regular season. No doubt there were other factors involved too, but it would stretch credulity not to attribute that playoff win at least in part to exactly 'momentum' and 'rust'.

[Vinatieri for Prez]

As far as I'm aware, there is no concept of momentum coded into the game. Also, Jim has said that there is no 'rust' factor, so playing your starters in pre-season doesn't help unless you are trying to develop them.

I'm not so sure Jim ever said there was no rust factor for starters not playing in the preseason. He sits starters in the IHOF preseason, but this could simply be him deciding the rust penalty was outweighed by chance of injury. If he said that for sure, then that is news to me.

I don't think there is momentum factor in between games, but during a game, there are some coach/player ratings that can help someone get an early lead or catch up in the 4th quarter.

[sovereignstar]

I'm not so sure Jim ever said there was no rust factor for starters not playing in the preseason.

We start out 0-5, and then we put together a game like this against the defending champions. There's no slow-start mechanism in the code, but it always seems to happen to us.

Enough evidence for me.

[Vinatieri for Prez]

Well, that is indeed news to me. Thanks.

[OldGiants]

Am I alone in thinking that there SHOULD be both a momentum and a rust factor in the game?

I certainly hope so. Explicitly using ratings to model this is crude and unnecessary. I think the natural growth and decline of player skills during the course of a season already produces this effect in a subtle and elegant way.

If you've got the coaches with the skill and the players with the potential, they will improve during the season. And while the other teams improve, (or the older teams decline) too, if you improve more you can see the 'momentum' build. Your team is becoming better, so why do you need a momentum factor to double count what is already in the game?

I think this is one reason for the late season, bad-team winning streak that results in a mid-level draft pick instead of a franchise choice that so many comment upon. We all have better coaches and players high in potential (as well as depth) and that produces good late season runs even after bad starts.

[cthomer5000]

Neither exists to my knowledge, but I agree that both would be excellent additions to future versions of the game.

[MIJB#19]

I dug up some stats from the IHOF. Six seasons of data. I did a little research on what the outcome of a game was for teams following a win, following a tie and following a loss. Additionally, I did a little research on seeing what teams did against teams coming off a win, coming off a tie or coming off a loss. Further more, I combined the two. Here is what I found. I left out the conclusions on games following ties and games played against teams coming off a tied game since there were only 2 games tied in the sample size of 6 seasons.

.536 win percentage following a win
.464 win percentage following a loss

.536 win percentage against a team that lost last week
.464 win percentage against a team that won last week

.578 win percentage following a win and against a team that won last week
.500 win percentage following a win and against a team that lost last week
.500 win percentage following a loss and against a team that won last week
.422 win percentage following a loss and against a team that lost last week



Also, I dug up the streaks of wins and losses for the entire league over the same time span, with live streaks also included, if wanted, I can exclude them.) The frequency of each streak is as follows:
362 won 1 game
186 won 2 games
102 won 3 games
34 won 4 games
32 won 5 games
18 won 6 games
16 won 7+ games (combined due to sample same)

391 lost 1 game
182 lost 2 games
79 lost 3 games
41 lost 4 games
23 lost 5 games
11 lost 6 games
10 lost 7 games
19 lost 8+ games

It appears that extending a streak has a change of about 50% with low streaks, but the higher streaks seem to have a bigger success rate to continue. After a team has won 7 in a row, the success rate in extending the streak is about 2/3rd, but the sample size beyond 7 wins is too small to make any conclusions. For losers, the success rate to extend the streak is at 60% or higher as soon as teams have won 4 in a row. I do realize that the higher the streak, the smaller the sample size and a success rate of 62 out of 103 is a probably too small a sample size. Of course, this is raw data, there's no evaluation of the talent of teams involved here. And with the streaks, there's also no evaluation of what the opponents did the previous week, to make extending a streak more or less likely.

[MrBigglesworth]

I think a lot of that data is due to the fact that bad teams are more likely to have lost the week before. For instance, if you play a 5-10 team there is a 67% chance that they lost the week before. If you play a 10-5 team there is only a 33% chance that they lost the week before. Therefore, you end up playing more bad teams coming off losses (and by definition you have an easier time beating bad teams) than you do good teams coming off losses, so your data gets skewed. You'd have to control for both W/L % and also home field advantage.

[Warhammer]

I would be interested to see if Motivation comes into play over the course of a season, and not just games.

[QuikSand]

.578 win percentage following a win and against a team that won last week

Hmmm... I am trying to understand what this statistic means. If both teams are coming off a win, doesn't the resulting game between them necessarily contribute one win and one loss to the total set... rendering this a .500 outcome? What am I missing?

[MIJB#19]

Hmmm... I am trying to understand what this statistic means. If both teams are coming off a win, doesn't the resulting game between them necessarily contribute one win and one loss to the total set... rendering this a .500 outcome? What am I missing?
Good point. I'm kinda puzzled myself. Either I reversed the 'against a team that did x last week' lines, or there's been a case of fuzzy math.

[MIJB#19]

I think a lot of that data is due to the fact that bad teams are more likely to have lost the week before. For instance, if you play a 5-10 team there is a 67% chance that they lost the week before. If you play a 10-5 team there is only a 33% chance that they lost the week before. Therefore, you end up playing more bad teams coming off losses (and by definition you have an easier time beating bad teams) than you do good teams coming off losses, so your data gets skewed. You'd have to control for both W/L % and also home field advantage.
Yeah, I thought about it, but that's basically why I also did the 'what did the opponent do last week' stat. And in itself records can be misleading under your assumption. How do you take into account whether a team is 5-0 beat five 0-4 teams or beat five 4-0 teams?

[MrBigglesworth]

Yeah, I thought about it, but that's basically why I also did the 'what did the opponent do last week' stat. And in itself records can be misleading under your assumption. How do you take into account whether a team is 5-0 beat five 0-4 teams or beat five 4-0 teams?
You can weight it by their final record, not their record at the time.