New England’s excellent regular season got me interested in comparing all the Superbowl champions to evaluate which team had the MOST DOMINANT SEASON. I came up with 7 factors (i.e. methods) to evaluate regular season performance and 4 factors to evaluate playoff performance. Each Superbowl champion was ranked from 1 (Best) to 42 (Worst) in each of these factors based on their actual numerical performance compared with all the Superbowl winners. I averaged the rankings for the 7 regular season factors and then ranked each team’s overall regular season performance. I also averaged the rankings for the 4 playoff factors and then ranked each team’s overall playoff performance.
I realize that this approach provided equal weighting to each of the factors and this could certainly be argued about what factor is the most important factor to consider regarding team performance. I realize that some people may consider won/loss record as the only important factor. But I am trying to identify the team that had the most dominant single season. Thus, I felt it was important to consider factors such as point difference since more dominance is displayed in a 35 point victory than a 1 point victory. I also included factors that compared the Superbowl champion’s regular season performance with the top performance by the next best team that season. So San Francisco’s 14-2 1989 regular season (2nd best team was 12-4) is ranked as a more dominant season than Denver’s 14-2 1998 regular season (Minnesota was 15-1 in 1998). I also included factors that used a statistical approach to rank each team’s performance relative to how other teams performed that same season. So although Pittsburgh had an excellent 12-2 record in 1975, they did this during a season when there were many very strong teams (two other teams were 12-2) and many very weak teams (9 teams won 4 games or less). It is not as statistically significant to achieve a 12-2 record during a season when other teams also accomplish that same record.
For evaluating playoff performance, I chose to include average playoff point dif and % of total points scored by team. The 49ers of 1989 had the top playoff point difference ranking based on an average playoff point difference of +33.3. The % of total points scored factor gives a team more credit for a 21-0 victory than a 49-28 victory which makes sense to me. The 1985 Bears ranked first in the % of total points scored with victories of 21-0, 24-0, 46-10. I also chose to rank the teams based on their closest playoff victory, so a team would be ranked higher if they won all their playoff games easily. I waffled about whether to include average playoff pointspread as a factor for playoff performance but decided to include it since there is clearly a positive correlation between team dominance and pointspread lines. I actually also performed another analysis and excluded the average playoff pointspread factor and the overall results are not much different than these results so I decided to keep it.
At this point I had rankings of the best regular season performances and the best playoff performances by the Superbowl champions. I decided that the regular season performance ranking and the playoff performance ranking would be given equal weighting. So I simply averaged these two rankings and then ranked the teams overall season performance based on the combined rankings. I realize that some people may argue that the regular season has more games and should be weighted higher. However, I feel a playoff game is much more important than a regular season game and is warranted to be considered more significant. We all see how some top teams decide to rest players near the end of the regular season and often lose games that they would not have lost. So I am not confident that a 14-2 season is that much better than a 13-3 season where a team lost a game because they rested players.
I will attempt to past the ranking from my Excel spreadsheet below. Please give me a chance to past the table before replying to this post. Before I do this I need to clarify that I was attempting to see how the 2007 Patriots compared with the other dominant teams so I had to assume the Patriots would win the Superbowl in the below ranking. I also wanted to determine whether the 2007 Patriots season could be considered as the most dominant season of all time so the below rankings for the 2007 Patriots include a 42-7 victory over the Giants in the Superbowl. I clearly do not feel the Patriots will beat the Giants 42-7 but needed to do this to see if the Patriots had a chance to be considered the most dominant.
I realize that this approach provided equal weighting to each of the factors and this could certainly be argued about what factor is the most important factor to consider regarding team performance. I realize that some people may consider won/loss record as the only important factor. But I am trying to identify the team that had the most dominant single season. Thus, I felt it was important to consider factors such as point difference since more dominance is displayed in a 35 point victory than a 1 point victory. I also included factors that compared the Superbowl champion’s regular season performance with the top performance by the next best team that season. So San Francisco’s 14-2 1989 regular season (2nd best team was 12-4) is ranked as a more dominant season than Denver’s 14-2 1998 regular season (Minnesota was 15-1 in 1998). I also included factors that used a statistical approach to rank each team’s performance relative to how other teams performed that same season. So although Pittsburgh had an excellent 12-2 record in 1975, they did this during a season when there were many very strong teams (two other teams were 12-2) and many very weak teams (9 teams won 4 games or less). It is not as statistically significant to achieve a 12-2 record during a season when other teams also accomplish that same record.
For evaluating playoff performance, I chose to include average playoff point dif and % of total points scored by team. The 49ers of 1989 had the top playoff point difference ranking based on an average playoff point difference of +33.3. The % of total points scored factor gives a team more credit for a 21-0 victory than a 49-28 victory which makes sense to me. The 1985 Bears ranked first in the % of total points scored with victories of 21-0, 24-0, 46-10. I also chose to rank the teams based on their closest playoff victory, so a team would be ranked higher if they won all their playoff games easily. I waffled about whether to include average playoff pointspread as a factor for playoff performance but decided to include it since there is clearly a positive correlation between team dominance and pointspread lines. I actually also performed another analysis and excluded the average playoff pointspread factor and the overall results are not much different than these results so I decided to keep it.
At this point I had rankings of the best regular season performances and the best playoff performances by the Superbowl champions. I decided that the regular season performance ranking and the playoff performance ranking would be given equal weighting. So I simply averaged these two rankings and then ranked the teams overall season performance based on the combined rankings. I realize that some people may argue that the regular season has more games and should be weighted higher. However, I feel a playoff game is much more important than a regular season game and is warranted to be considered more significant. We all see how some top teams decide to rest players near the end of the regular season and often lose games that they would not have lost. So I am not confident that a 14-2 season is that much better than a 13-3 season where a team lost a game because they rested players.
I will attempt to past the ranking from my Excel spreadsheet below. Please give me a chance to past the table before replying to this post. Before I do this I need to clarify that I was attempting to see how the 2007 Patriots compared with the other dominant teams so I had to assume the Patriots would win the Superbowl in the below ranking. I also wanted to determine whether the 2007 Patriots season could be considered as the most dominant season of all time so the below rankings for the 2007 Patriots include a 42-7 victory over the Giants in the Superbowl. I clearly do not feel the Patriots will beat the Giants 42-7 but needed to do this to see if the Patriots had a chance to be considered the most dominant.