I must give Phil Steele credit for coming up with this idea, but like everything else he does, he carried the idea way too far. It is a rather simple idea. Give 1 point to a team who won a game by 7 points or less, and deduct 1 point for every game they lose by 7 points or less. Then total all the points up and see where the team sits. If they are in the plus side of the ledger, they won more games than they lost. If they are on the minus side, they lost more games than they won. According to Steele, he uses "a touchdown or less as a base for my calculation of a "close" win or loss, because if a team won or lost by a touchdown or less, they were usually just one play away from a different outcome." He then determines that if a team has a difference of 2 points, either way, they fall into one of the two categories, the lucky and the unlucky. He uses a ridiculous spread (7 points) so he can put as many teams as possible into one of the two categories. By doing this, only 7 out of the 32 teams do not fall into one of these categories. He then claims that if a team was unlucky, wager on them because it is bound to turn around. This way, he has more teams to brag about if they turn things around, and more teams to forget about if the opposite occurs.
Now Steele is doing so poorly of late, he had to go to work for ESPN. I can see why he is trying to stretch a pretty good system into a "one size fits all" model. While I give him credit for this idea (only because he claims that it is his idea and I have no proof yet that it is not), his numbers are way off. Here is what I did. I went by the same premise that Steele used, but I cut the points that a team won or lost by from 7 or less to 3 or less. If as he claims, a team was "usually just one play away from a different outcome", a statement which does not pass the smell test, how close were they if all they needed was a FG? By using 3 points, the results for last year was this: "Teams who were lucky:" Houston, +5, Oakland +5, Tampa Bay +4, Tennessee +4, NY Giants +3, and Miami +3. My "Unlucky" teams are: LA Chargers -4 and Arizona, -3.
This is a good system to use if you need that "one more" stat to make a decision, either way.
Now Steele is doing so poorly of late, he had to go to work for ESPN. I can see why he is trying to stretch a pretty good system into a "one size fits all" model. While I give him credit for this idea (only because he claims that it is his idea and I have no proof yet that it is not), his numbers are way off. Here is what I did. I went by the same premise that Steele used, but I cut the points that a team won or lost by from 7 or less to 3 or less. If as he claims, a team was "usually just one play away from a different outcome", a statement which does not pass the smell test, how close were they if all they needed was a FG? By using 3 points, the results for last year was this: "Teams who were lucky:" Houston, +5, Oakland +5, Tampa Bay +4, Tennessee +4, NY Giants +3, and Miami +3. My "Unlucky" teams are: LA Chargers -4 and Arizona, -3.
This is a good system to use if you need that "one more" stat to make a decision, either way.