Riverboatin' in Carolina: The Panthers are on a tear in winning close games

[KB_fan]

I've got a new article up on the Huddle main page.

http://www.carolinahuddle.com/2016/07/15/carolina-panthers-close-games/

It takes a look at the Panthers history in close games, and most notably the five seasons under Head Coach Ron Rivera.  "Riverboat Ron" is alive and well, and the Panthers have been on quite a tear in winning close games in the 52 games they've played since Week 2 of the 2013 season when Riverboat was born...

Thanks to Sporting Charts, here's the Panthers Small Win-Loss differential for each season of their history.  We had the highest small win-loss differential ever in 2015, with 7 wins out of 8 games decided by 1 - 9 points.  (for a +6 Small W-L differential)

 

Here too is another graph from Sporting Charts that didn't make the article.  It compares Small Wins vs. Small Losses for each season.  Looking at 2011 - 2015 you can very clearly see the remarkable turnaround once Ron became Riverboat Ron:

 

And off-topic, but just for fun....  Here is the comparison of big wins and big losses ("big" = 10+ points)  over the years:

 

There's quite a bit more data in the article... so go check it out.

[Jeremy Igo]

KBFan is a breathe of fresh air for any stats lovers looking for actual content from a writer.  

[Your GFs favorite huddler]

That Buffalo loss may have,under the radar, been one of the best things that's ever happened to this franchise. Those stats are mind blowing! Awesome work! It's really remarkable for a Coach to pull a 180 and do what Ron did and the facts are there to prove it! 

[d-dave]

I love your analysis KB_fan!  So much better than most of the junk that gets bandied about here!

[KB_fan]

21 minutes ago, Jeremy Igo said:

KBFan is a breathe of fresh air for any stats lovers looking for actual content from a writer.  

Thanks Jeremy.  It's a fun change of pace for me to write on a totally new subject this past year. 

[the butch]

Great article.  Really love what Rivera has done to "right the ship."  Definitely intentional improvement.  I would love to compare all 32 teams' "small win" records over the years and see how we stack up.  Kinda hard determining relative reasons for success without a reference point.

[KB_fan]

2 minutes ago, Dick the Butcher said:

Great article.  Really love what Rivera has done to "right the ship."  Definitely intentional improvement.  I would love to compare all 32 teams' "small win" records over the years and see how we stack up.  Kinda hard determining relative reasons for success without a reference point.

Actually, I was wondering the same thing, and have been looking at results for other teams.  I started to put some of that data into the article, but it upped the geek quotient so much I decided to leave it out for now.  After all, the Huddle isn't Football Outsiders or Football Perspective or a heavy-duty stats site like that.  But here in the forum, I'm happy to share some of what I've found.

Stay tuned.... I'll post more in a bit.,

[rippadonn]

56 minutes ago, Your GFs favorite huddler said:

That Buffalo loss may have,under the radar, been one of the best things that's ever happened to this franchise. Those stats are mind blowing! Awesome work! It's really remarkable for a Coach to pull a 180 and do what Ron did and the facts are there to prove it! 

It's called believing in the guys YOU put on the field. Players love that on 4 and 1

[Your GFs favorite huddler]

3 minutes ago, rippadonn said:

It's called believing in the guys YOU put on the field. Players love that on 4 and 1

I know as an offensive lineman nothing excites you more than having a coach put faith and trust in you to get that 1 yard...it also helps having a 6'5 freak of nature, bruiser of a QB

[Smithers]

1 hour ago, KB_fan said:

I've got a new article up on the Huddle main page.

http://www.carolinahuddle.com/2016/07/15/carolina-panthers-close-games/

It takes a look at the Panthers history in close games, and most notably the five seasons under Head Coach Ron Rivera.  "Riverboat Ron" is alive and well, and the Panthers have been on quite a tear in winning close games in the 52 games they've played since Week 2 of the 2013 season when Riverboat was born...

Thanks to Sporting Charts, here's the Panthers Small Win-Loss differential for each season of their history.  We had the highest small win-loss differential ever in 2015, with 7 wins out of 8 games decided by 1 - 9 points.  (for a +6 Small W-L differential)

 

Here too is another graph from Sporting Charts that didn't make the article.  It compares Small Wins vs. Small Losses for each season.  Looking at 2011 - 2015 you can very clearly see the remarkable turnaround once Ron became Riverboat Ron:

 

And off-topic, but just for fun....  Here is the comparison of big wins and big losses ("big" = 10+ points)  over the years:

 

There's quite a bit more data in the article... so go check it out.

Can the Observer just hire you to replace Joe?  

[KB_fan]

Using Sporting Charts, I was able to quite easily get data on big and small wins & losses for all teams from 2009 - 2015.  So, that's 32 teams and 7 seasons, for a total dataset covering 3584 games and 224 team seasons.   A good starting point!

There seems to be an INCREDIBLY, and perhaps surprisingly high, relationship between excellent performance in close games, and overall winning percentage.  In fact, I think I'd go as far as to say that with only rare exceptions you could quite probably use either close game win % or close game win-loss differential as a predictor of a season's success.

Here are the data for the 50 teams with the best close win % in the past 7 years (.667 of higher).  It happens to include the 2013, 2014, and 2015 Panthers:

I know it's a lot of numbers, and I'll post some summary tables and averages in the following comments, but I want to point out a few things.

Look at the fairly high consistency in terms of numbers of close games played by teams each year.  The average is 8.  One would think that among some of the teams with the highest close win % you might find a number teams that only played 2 or 3 close games and happened to win 2 or 3.  In fact, of these 50 teams with the best close win records in the past 7 years, only the 2010 Seahawks and the 2009 Vikings played fewer than 5 close games.  Close games are a reality in the NFL.  You've got to win them to succeed.

Secondly, look at the overall win figures for this group of 50 teams.  Of these 50 teams with excellent records in winning close games, only 4 had a losing regular season record below .500, including the 2014 Panthers.  Winning close games correlates very clearly with a higher overall win %.

[Nate Dogg]

Great article KB!  Do you know what our record is at home since 2013? It has gotta be godly. Ever since I bought my PSLs I don't remember hardly any loses.

[KB_fan]

Here are some averages for the full 7 year data set I examined re: close wins:

 

The top line is pretty unexciting.  Those are the averages for all 224 team seasons in the 7 years of data I pulled from Sporting Charts.  Obviously small wins and overall wins average out over the entire league to .500, and a small W-L differential of 0.... Teams play an average of 8 close games per season, and average out to a 4-4 W-L record.

 

So... with that out of the way, look at the 2nd table (blue shading).  In that table, I grouped the teams by their overall win % and looked at their performance in winning close games.  You can see, there's not a big difference in close games played, though the very best teams tend to play 1 fewer close game per season (i.e. they have more big wins).  But there is a huge difference in close win %.  Good teams win close games.

 

The third table  (green shading) is perhaps the most interesting to me.  I grouped the 224 team seasons for these 7 years into 4 quartiles of 56 team results each based on the success in winning close games, and then looked at the averages, including the average overall win %.  

As expected, the teams with the best close win % had more wins.  

When all the data is graphed on an X-Y scatter plot, it gives a pretty linear relation:

That's a REALLY quick & dirty graph and unfortunately since there are so many matching points, you can't really tell how common any particular value is.  I need to find a tool which would change the size of the points based on the number of values.  But quickly, the Small W-L is on the bottom, horizontal axis.  The number of total wins for a team with a given small W-L differential are plotted on the center vertical axis.

So to find the Panthers data for 2015:  go to the line for 6 on the horizontal axis, and then look up for the point at 15 wins. (interestingly enough, the 2011 GB Packers also had a 15-1 season, and a 6 Small W-L differential, identical to the 2015 Panthers).

I've got one more graph to post below.

 

[KB_fan]

Here's perhaps a bit more useful data and a graph.

I created a histogram plotting the number of occurrences of each Small W-L differential level (the range was from - 8 to +8) in the 2009 - 2015 period.  That way you can see how frequent each level is.

Superimposed over that, I plotted the average number of total wins per team per season for teams that had that level of a Small W-L differential.

So you can see that the Panthers were one of only 3 teams from 2009 - 2015 with a +6 Small W-L differential, and that the average total wins for those teams was 14.   Our success in 2015, along with the 2011 Packers who also won 15 games while compiling a +6 Small W-L differential skews that number up quite sharply!!