Recently, I took about the most granular view possible of the Buffalo Bills in the playoffs — and compared those singular plays to what transpired with the Los Angeles Rams in the same time frame.
On that article, I received this super-insightful comment from from Rumbler garsimeon on how he decides who really are the best teams in the playoffs:
This is impressive. And awesome.
It’s also very telling.
As for the STDev here, that stands for standard deviation — which, in this case, is essentially the degree
at which a team’s performance drifts away from the average.
Simeon went on to explain some of the inner-workings of this Net Points/Drive statistic he created and where the Bills have ranked in it along with their STDev each year.
In garsimeon’s Net Pts/Drive metric, the Bills defense was close to the bottom third of the league in three of five seasons since 2021 (!) and only in 2023 was the defense hyper-consistent.
Offensively, the Bills have been awesome in the Josh Allen era (obvious). Interestingly, the 2021 season — which ended with a loss in 13 Seconds — the Bills offense had the second-most volatile week-to-week performance in the league.
But Buffalo’s offense has been reasonably volatile, sizably swaying from their average throughout the season. In 2022, the Bills were reasonably strong defensively, somewhat volatile, and their offense was about as good as it gets.
Naturally, super consistent teams with excellent offenses and defenses are likely to be championship contenders. Garsimeon’s net points/drive gives us quantifiable data to identify who those teams are each season.
As for the Bills, they need to get better all around on defense and more consistent on offense to align with the recent Super Bowl winners.
