Football, football, football

As I'm stuck wearing my University of Michigan ballcap in public until U of M loses (ah, superstition), I can't help the Steelers get back to winning until Michigan loses. So it goes in the world of sports voodoo.

But this is interesting -- last year's NFL division champions are a combined 10-14 after three weeks of the 2009 season. Early season results are notoriously unreliable, but at least for this brief stretch, the NFL's eternal quest for parity seems to be working.

Of course, history suggests that a number of the front-runners now won't be around at the end of the season, while at least two or three currently struggling teams will be in the playoffs at season's end.

My favourite paper tiger will remain Minnesota until the Vikings actually win a Super Bowl, or at least make it to one. For one thing, I don't trust Brett Favre to hold up over an entire season as an effective quarterback. For another, Minnesota fits way too nicely into a particular paradigm of conventional wisdom that doesn't actually bear out. Namely, TEAMS THAT CAN RUN THE BALL AND STOP THE RUN WIN.

What's wrong with the above CW? Well, mainly that it's trumped by TEAMS THAT CAN PASS THE BALL AND STOP THE PASS WIN SUPER-BOWLS. Good passing is defined more by overall offensive efficiency (how many points do you get out of how many yards?) and yards per attempt than gross yardage. And the NFL is a passing league, now more than ever thanks to three decades' worth of rule changes meant to help the passing game at the expense of the defense.

The last Super Bowl was like an advertisement for the 'Pass/No Pass' theory simply because both the Steelers and Cardinals had below-average running games. Way, way, way below average in terms of both yards and yards per carry. Indianapolis had a legendarily bad run defense entering the 2006-2007 playoffs, and while the return of Bob Sanders helped, Indy's ability to stop the pass was a lot more important.

Actually, the Indy/Miami game of two weeks ago was like a bizarro microcosm of this whole theory, as Miami held the ball with its ball-control offense for 45 minutes of gametime and still lost the game because it couldn't stop Indy's passing game and it couldn't muster much of a passing attack of its own.

So it goes.

You can always go check out a variety of CW-attacking viewpoints over at Cold, Hard Football Facts, whose estimable creators and contributors are engaged in trying to create workable sabrmetrics for football.