Week 17 Gameday Thread (New Years Day Edition) - Green Bay Packers (7-8-0) vs Minnesota (12-3-0)

[PACKRULE]

To the Vikes fans in here your team is doing well. Congrats on winnning the north and your teams success this year.

I wish our forum could acknowledge that but we just really can't. 

Good luck the rest of the way. 

[PackFan13]

Watson didn't actually practice. It's going to be tough to win without him. ****!

[Packer_ESP]

2 minutes ago, PACKRULE said:

To the Vikes fans in here your team is doing well. Congrats on winnning the north and your teams success this year.

I wish our forum could acknowledge that but we just really can't. 

Good luck the rest of the way. 

I'd say most of the forum is acknowledging it except a few guys. They're playing well, they're winning the north - they're also being lucky and they are probably not as good as 12-3 would make you think, not unlike the Packers in some of their 13-3 years for example. That is all, I don't think there's any irrational phobias in that assessment.

[Scoremore]

13 minutes ago, PACKRULE said:

To the Vikes fans in here your team is doing well. Congrats on winnning the north and your teams success this year.

I wish our forum could acknowledge that but we just really can't. 

Good luck the rest of the way. 

No we can't.  I sure as hell won't.  They are a paper tiger and will be exposed in the playoffs.  Nothing will make me happier either.  The Vikings can suck it!  Go Pack Go!!!

[{Family Ghost}]

13 minutes ago, PackFan13 said:

Watson didn't actually practice. It's going to be tough to win without him. ****!

Watson and Nixon worked with trainers on the sidelines.  I still think both will go Sunday, but who knows?

[{Family Ghost}]

17 minutes ago, PACKRULE said:

To the Vikes fans in here your team is doing well. Congrats on winnning the north and your teams success this year.

I wish our forum could acknowledge that but we just really can't. 

Good luck the rest of the way. 

I don't have anything good to say about the Vikings.  

[PackFan13]

1 minute ago, {Family Ghost} said:

Watson and Nixon worked with trainers on the sidelines.  I still think both will go Sunday, but who knows?

Let's hope. Nixon would be nice but we need Watson out there. 

[NoFlyZone]

3 hours ago, Ham Sammich said:

Well, this guy doesn't statistic. 

 

You can absolutely, unequivocally say 11 is not a big enough sample size. In nearly any and all situations. 

 

How about when the situation is the length of the entire regular season? What else do you have to go on? 
You all want to ignore a trend to the point of absurdity. When did ignoring literally all context and proclaiming “IT’S JUST LUCK” become the intelligent take? The fact remains that you have a large body of evidence that the Vikings are good at finishing close games and you’re all choosing to ignore it just because it’s convenient. 
 

We’re talking about an NFL season here and it’s only so long. The fact that a trend established over the course of the entire season isn’t notable to you is pretty laughable. Living in Wisconsin (and being a Dallas fan, actually) it’s been quite interesting to see how painfully jaded GB fans are about the success that Minnesota has been happening.

Edited December 29, 2022 by NoFlyZone

[Old Guy]

6 minutes ago, PackFan13 said:

Let's hope. Nixon would be nice but we need Watson out there. 

I think the kid we grabbed from Seattle is going to return kicks. I think Cobb handles punts. Absolutely need Watson for this game. The offense is just different when he, Doubs and Lazard are all healthy. 

[Arthur Penske]

34 minutes ago, PackFan13 said:

Watson didn't actually practice. It's going to be tough to win without him. ****!

 

20 minutes ago, {Family Ghost} said:

Watson and Nixon worked with trainers on the sidelines.  I still think both will go Sunday, but who knows?

They usually need to practice Friday to go

[NoFlyZone]

4 hours ago, vegas492 said:

I almost spit out my coffee when I read that 11 games was a "large enough" sample size.

It isn't the perfect example but watch Jerry and Marge Go Large.  True story about a guy who understood math and won it big in the lottery.  ( Great movie with Brian Cranston.)

He initially bet and did not win because when you have a small sample size, randomness has a higher probability of happening.  But when you increase the sample size exponentially, the randomness goes away.  (He bet small at first, and lost.  Then he bet big a few times and won.  Then he got investors and bet huge and won huge.)

Jerry explained it (I'm paraphrasing) like flipping a coin.  If you flip it 10 times, you may get heads 7 of the 10 times.  Flip the coin 1,000 times and there is no way that 70% of the flips is heads.

If equating that to the NFL, the 17 game schedule does not lend itself to a high enough sample size to remove randomness from the equation.  Hence you get things like this from time to time.

And that is the cool thing about the NFL.  Randomness.  And for the Vikings?  It could very well be that this is their year and they keep beating the odds.  Or....get bounced quickly by a good team.  

Yes, 11 games is a large enough sample size in the NFL to get a sense of some sort of trend. By your logic we shouldn’t even evaluate any team at all, let alone look at what teams get ‘hot’ at the end of the season because it ‘could all just be totally random’. The point you’re missing is that we have a large body of work (basically a full season) showing that the Vikings are good in the situations that they are being criticized for. The point you’re missing is that the outcome of their games in tight situations might not just be totally random chance. It may or may not actually have to do with the play of some of their most impactful players in those moments. But for some reason we want to devoid the situation of all actual context and rational thinking just because it’s easier to pretend that it’s all luck/ random chance because the games have been close. It’s not a logical argument.
 

As far as the coin comparison goes… get back to me when you flip a coin 11 times and get heads 11 times in a row. Keep track of the attempts, please. That being said, the Vikings success hasn’t been due to a flip of a coin or any other comparison of random chance. There is more to it than that. One can attempt to be a math nerd and also attempt that feat in a way that actually makes rational sense. GB fans will keep waiting for the ‘regression to the mean’ for the Vikings without understanding what that even means in comparison to the specific play of the Minnesota Vikings. This of course all while ignoring the fatal flaws of their own football team.

Personally I rank the Vikings behind Dallas, Philly, and San Fran… but the desperate hoops GB fans will jump through to dismiss them as an ‘average’ team at 12-3 is genuinely amusing. 

 

[vegas492]

13 minutes ago, NoFlyZone said:

How about when the situation is the length of the entire regular season?
 

We’re talking about an NFL season here and it’s only so long. 

Right, that is the point that you are not seeing.  The NFL season is too short for randomness not to factor in.

You can fight all you want against this notion, but it is true.

It's kind of like gambling at Vegas.  The longer you play, the more the odds shift to the house.

If you win early, you have beaten the odds.  The longer you play, the more those odds shift back.

The 17 week schedule is no way close to long enough to remove randomness from the equation.

Also...it could be that the Vikings continue on this hot streak all the way home.  

[vegas492]

2 minutes ago, NoFlyZone said:

Yes, 11 games is a large enough sample size in the NFL to get a sense of some sort of trend. By your logic we shouldn’t even evaluate any team at all, let alone look at what teams get ‘hot’ at the end of the season because it ‘could all just be totally random’. The point you’re missing is that we have a large body of work (basically a full season) showing that the Vikings are good in the situations that they are being criticized for. The point you’re missing is that the outcome of their games in tight situations might not just be totally random chance. It may or may not actually have to do with the play of some of their most impactful players in those moments. But for some reason we want to devoid the situation of all actual context and rational thinking just because it’s easier to pretend that it’s all luck/ random chance because the games have been close. It’s not a logical argument.
 

As far as the coin comparison goes… get back to me when you flip a coin 11 times and get heads 11 times in a row. Keep track of the attempts, please. That being said, the Vikings success hasn’t been due to a flip of a coin or any other comparison of random chance. There is more to it than that. One can attempt to be a math nerd and also attempt that feat in a way that actually makes rational sense. GB fans will keep waiting for the ‘regression to the mean’ for the Vikings without understanding what that even means in comparison to the specific play of the Minnesota Vikings. This of course all while ignoring the fatal flaws of their own football team.

Personally I rank the Vikings behind Dallas, Philly, and San Fran… but the desperate hoops GB fans will jump through to dismiss them as an ‘average’ team at 12-3 is genuinely amusing. 

 

No, statistically, it is not enough time to remove randomness.

You can get your gut feeling all you want.  That is fine.

You can try to read the tea leaves.

But if you understand math, statistics, probabilities and randomness, the 17 game schedule is not long enough to remove randomness from the equations.

And that actually plays into the notion that Minnesota is having a great year and will be successful in the playoffs.  Because the random factor is in there.  And yes, they are on a hot streak.  And we know that those can last for a while.  And given the small sample size of the regular season...it has worked out nicely for them.  And may continue to do so in the playoffs.

[NoFlyZone]

5 minutes ago, vegas492 said:

Right, that is the point that you are not seeing.  The NFL season is too short for randomness not to factor in.

You can fight all you want against this notion, but it is true.

It's kind of like gambling at Vegas.  The longer you play, the more the odds shift to the house.

If you win early, you have beaten the odds.  The longer you play, the more those odds shift back.

The 17 week schedule is no way close to long enough to remove randomness from the equation.

Also...it could be that the Vikings continue on this hot streak all the way home.  

Kind of expanded on these thoughts in my other post.

But it’s at least notable that you could see it going the other way, too. Kudos for that at least. But I explained that I don’t think it’s wise to look at the outcomes as random chance in my other post. Also, the NFL season is only so long. If you’re a betting person you have to make do with the trends available to you… and understand that something might be attributing to that trend other than totally random chance. There may or may not be a reason why the Vikings have been as successful as they have been in tight games. There is more to it than surface level math. 

Edited December 29, 2022 by NoFlyZone

[vegas492]

6 minutes ago, NoFlyZone said:

 The point you’re missing is that we have a large body of work (basically a full season) showing that the Vikings are good in the situations that they are being criticized for. The point you’re missing is that the outcome of their games in tight situations might not just be totally random chance. It may or may not actually have to do with the play of some of their most impactful players in those moments. But for some reason we want to devoid the situation of all actual context and rational thinking just because it’s easier to pretend that it’s all luck/ random chance because the games have been close. It’s not a logical argument.
 

 

But they are not.  You've seen the graph of 12-13 win teams and their point differential.  Minnesota is the outlier on the bad end of that graph.

The more games that they play, the more likely it is that they move back to the "norms" of winning and losing based on that point differential.