Whether John Harbaugh and the injury-plagued New York Giants will sustain their 3-1 start comes down to two schools of thought: perspective and realism.
We know how ESPN’s Aaron Schatz feels, and it has nothing to do with Jaxson Dart and Brian Burns’ respective season-ending injuries. Schatz loves his statistics, and he is incredibly down on both the Giants and Browns because of their DVOA (defense-adjusted value over average) scores.
According to Schatz, the Giants and Browns rank among the 12 worst teams (in terms of DVOA) to start 3-1 since 2000. That sure sounds like cherry-picking to us, but alright. The Giants’ -9.4 percent is second best behind the 2016 Rams, and the Browns rank fourth at -10 percent.
“Terrible performance in the big losses (Browns to Jaguars, Giants to Rams) overwhelms play in the three close wins for each team,” Schatz wrote.
New York Giants fans must ignore ESPN’s latest pessimism amid a 3-1 start
Of the 10 teams that started 3-1 with a lower DOVA since 2000, only four reached the postseason. Schatz opted for the glass-half-empty approach, as is his right, and maybe the data will justify his mindset.
But 40 percent is still 40 percent, and that matters with such a small sample size. We’d be far more willing to hear Schatz out if only one such team had earned a postseason berth.
As the late Dennis Green once said, you play to win the game. So who cares if the Giants beat the Titans and Cardinals, both of whom are on pace to have a top-10 pick? The analytics don’t matter in a standalone season if the result is a playoff berth.
None of this is intended to be biased, and by no means are we guaranteeing the Giants will make the playoffs. We’re not even sure whether they’ll finish with a winning record given all of their injuries — and ironically, that’s arguably the biggest flaw in Schatz’s logic.
Citing DVOA or any team-wide advanced metric as a reason to be skeptical of the Giants’ playoff chances conveniently ignores their growing injured reserve list. Few would have batted an eye had he predicted Harbaugh’s club would finish 6-11 without Dart, Burns, and so forth.
Consider this yet another instance of why being overreliant on analytics and advanced metrics is incredibly dangerous. Limiting the context while attempting to make a point is, frankly, an absurd strategy.
Then again, Schatz also referenced DVOA when explaining that the Vikings are the eighth-worst 4-0 team since 2000. The problem: 10 of the other 11 teams made the playoffs, and two — the 2006 Colts and 2015 Broncos — even won the Super Bowl.
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