sure. let me illustrate with an example
A recent CTE study (see below) found that CTE existed in 110 out of 111 (99%) deceased former NFL players. This seems pretty bad right? But then you look at how the sample was derived....A convenience sample of deceased players who donated their brains to be studied BECAUSE THEY THOUGHT THEY HAD CTE. Is it really surprising that they found a correlation between football and CTE? What if you looked the sample of ALLl football players including those who did NOT think they had CTE? Would you still see a correlation? i dont know for sure, but I can guarantee that the percentage of those with CTE would be lower.
So similarly by limiting your sample to only "good" offenses you are biasing your sample to teams who can move the ball and thus more likely to be able to score both inside or outside the redzone. Conversely, by including the universe (both good an bad offenses) you get a more realistic understanding of the correlation (if there is one).
source: [
www.cnn.com]
Quote
dzrams
It sounds like your world involves analyzing statistical data. So...tell me from that basis why I would want to focus on winning teams and top offenses?
In my mind, there are so many factors in whether a team wins or not - e.g. horrible defense or STs or coaching - which makes whether the team overall is a winner less informative. But drilling down and looking at only offensive efficiency and its correlation to RZ efficiency seems to me to be the best way to measure whether that particular metric is valuable.
Good point on only having one year. I agree with you that more years of data are required to draw better conclusions.
With that in mind, here is 2017:
(In parenthesis scoring offense rank, RZ TD rank)
Philly (1, 2)
NE (2, 3)
Rams (3, 17)
NO (4, 5)
Pittsburgh (5, 18)
Jacksonville (6, 1)
KC (7, 29)
Detroit (8, 10)
Baltimore (9, 9)
Minnesota (10, 13)
In 2017, the Rams, Pittsburgh and KC had top 10 scoring offenses but were not in the top 15 of RZ efficiency. Draw your own conclusions but I think it's informative that 7 out of the top scoring offenses were on the list.
I haven't looked so I'm just theorizing but my guess is that the 3 teams not on the list either were among the league leaders in RZ attempts AND/OR they have an awesome kicker.
