Wait! There's More!

Scouts Inc. watches games, breaks down film and studies football from all angles for ESPN.com.-Article Footnote

They watch the games! Holy crap. I guess if you watch the games, you are instantly qualified to begin a business selling expert information to the public at a fee. I'm gonna have to get Robocats on the horn, there's a living to be had here.

Anyway, they ranked all the playoff teams in the most intelligent manner one could think of: they gave them a number ranking (quantity 1:12), broke it down by position, and got really tricky when they summoned the gods of addition to come up with an end result. That's right: Scouts Inc. has a team evaluation system that involves not one, but each and every fault of general analysis:

-no scale
-no average or control group
-assumption of equidistant skill level seperation...
-between all tweleve teams...
-at every postion...
-assumption of equivlent position value
-assumption that coach value is perfectly equal to any other position...
-like Quarterback for example

and of course the clincher:

-totally subjective rankings to ensure that no two intelligent people could ever agree on the same rankings.

What I am about to show you here is only their defensive rankings of the twelve playoff teams. Rest assured that the rest of their crap is more of the same.

Anyway, here are the Football Outsiders numbers for all of the defensive data from 2007. FO has about 1/4 the resources of Scouts Inc, works half as hard, and knows roughly thirty eight times more about football.

You don't have to be a big fan of DVOA to use it for a loose standard of actual real defensive power rankings. Here are the 12 playoff teams ranked in order of defensive effeciency (in bold):

1. Tennessee -13.5%
2. Pittsburgh -12.5%
3. Indianapolis -10.8%
4. Tampa Bay -10.2%
5. San Diego -9.8%
6. Washington -7.2%
7. New England -6.1%
8. Dallas -5.8%
9. Seattle -5.4%
10. Jacksonville -3.3%
11. New York Giants -2.9%
12. Green Bay Packers -1.3%


And the Scouts Inc rankings:

1. Dallas Cowboys 12
1. Green Bay Packers 12
3. San Diego Chargers 13
4. New England Patriots 14
5. Indianapolis Colts 18
5. Seattle Seahawks 18
7. Pittsburgh Steelers 20
8. Tennessee Titans 21
9. Tampa Bay Buccaneers 24
10. New York Giants 25
11. Jacksonville Jaguars 27
12. Washington Redskins 30

That's actually correct, Football Outsiders system which uses every play of the season as a data point ranks Green Bay's defense as the least effective. Scouts Inc, which uses some anonymous dudes' "professional" opinion, finds them to be the best.

Great system.