Buffalo Rumblings
My article prepping for the New England Patriots game praised them for accomplishing something that sounds simpler than we know it to be: Winning the games you should. Yes there is substance to New England thriving on lesser competition, but that’s not something that should be taken for granted (see: Week 6 and Week 10 results).
On paper, there’s zero reason to consider the Buffalo Bills’ game against the Cleveland Browns as anything other than one that’s “should win.” Let’s take a look at some data quick.
For those of you new to these charts, red highlights on the offense side (left) are bad. Red highlights on the defense side (right) are good. Easy enough, right? Let’s do a few notes on these then.
On the offense, the only thing NOT lit up red is field goal percentage which is:
Yards per game on the other hand is astronomically far away from the league mean. Only two teams are worse. And when it comes to yards per play, zero teams are worse. What’s worse, the run game or the pass game? They’re roughly equally shabby, ranking 29th and 31st in the league respectively per play. Interception rate and sack rate are 27th and 23rd in the league respectively.
Let’s cut to the chase though. The most important stat is the score, and the Brown are a hair more than a touchdown per game worse than league average. That’s “good” for a tie with the New Orleans Saints for 30th in the league. Those two teams beat out the Tennessee Titans by a single point scored this season. But hey, at least they’re not the Las Vegas Raiders, right?
Well, maybe Raiders fans can say “at least we’re not the Browns, right?” Cleveland has somehow managed 16 more drives than the Raiders this year and when it comes to points per drive, no one is worse than the Browns at 1.30.
The defense is all red highlights, which is what you want to see if you’re a Browns fan. On a per-play basis, they’re sixth-best against the run and eighth against the pass. No one has a better sack percentage than Cleveland. There’s a lot of really good stuff in there, but let’s cut to the chase.
Somehow they’re still allowing half a point per game more than league average. That’s not terrible mind you, but it does mean that despite some impressive numbers in contextual stats, the Browns are an average defense when it comes to stopping scores. They’re better on a per-drive basis, coming in at sixth best (tied with the Jacksonville Jaguars). There’s a legitimate argument to label them as a “good” defense.
Like the offense, they have the highest number of drives faced in the league. That means that while they...
