Interesting McCarthy Stat

[vince]

The big wins and the regular season record are all good signs. The horrible record in close games tells a story about specific situations.

This is true but they count all four quarters when they add up wins and losses.

Arians is off to a great start. Bellichek and McCarthy have been doing it better than anyone else for a decade and beyond.

Here's as telling and as legitimate of a story about the same situations...

McCarthy's teams, when they lose, have a strong history of them being close games where the opponent has been forced to come back to beat them at the very end of the game. Far higher percentages of Arians' and other coaches losses have come in situations where they didn't pose a strong threat (didn't hold the lead) to win late in the game.

Good teams (coaches) win more than their competitors. When they win, they tend to win soundly, but when they do lose, they still have put themselves in position to win late in the game a high percentage of the time.

McCarthy is 45 out of 55 (.818) in forcing the opposition to win highly contested games.
Arians is only 8 out of 19 (.421)

Some day Bruce might catch McCarthy and Bellichek. He's put four good years together. Six more years of winning - along with at least a Super Bowl win - and he'll be right there. So far his playoff record is 1-2, and as Dan said they almost gave that one away.

[pbmax]

Arians numbers here will come down. Its obvious even good coaches struggle to get to .500.

So the percentage difference between great (.500) and McCarthy (.331) is not huge. But Mike has a big sample size here. He would need a 12 game reversal to get to even.

Its an artificial construct, so there are many types of game represented here. Some wins were likely the defense and the 4 minute offense letting the opponent back in the game before the offense closed it out. Some losses were probably blowouts the Packers were able get close in the end.

But I see this as a specific example of inflexibility. Teams that are bad have a lot of comebacks because they are behind a lot and they can score high in this chart if the offense is better than the D. In the Packers case, the offense is maximized already and has no further answers late in a game. Elway could always junk Reeves offense in a 2 minute drill. Marino would simply put the ball in a place the defense couldn't defend. I don't know how the Patriots do it.