NFL: Examining the In-Season Correlation of Defensive Performance

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for NFLSportChannel.com

Published: October 10, 2009

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... >proclaim that it’s very difficult to predict how a defense will do before the season, then how much stock should we put into early-season performance?

Think about it. Is it at all likely that said defense will perform up to those numbers the rest of the season if they are so unpredictable and inconsistent?

Moreover, during which week of the season is it easiest to predict a defense’s stats for the remainder of the year? In other words, can you better predict the final 12 games using the first four, or the final four games using the first 12?

I looked at every team’s game-by-game stats since 2002 (gathered from pro-football-reference.com) to investigate. I compared defensive stats prior to and after a certain point of a season, as described above, as well as splitting up teams into four quartiles and seeing how each group performs the rest of the way.

First up is the relationship betwee...

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Article Source: BleacherReport.com


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