'Brutality Index: Which NFL Teams are Hard to recover From?'
I've watched football games where each team was just killing each other. Play after play was a hard hit and players were getting injured at a high rate. And I've watched some games where the receivers were always open, the holes through the line were spacious and there were a lot of missed tackles. This got me thinking of which teams were the toughest and if we could gain some insight into which teams would win based on who they played the week before. I compiled a list of records for each team based on what the team they played did the following week. To clarify: In Week 1 the Chiefs played the Patriots. In week 2 the Patriots played the Jets and the Chiefs played the Raiders. Were the Patriots or Chiefs so beat up from their week 1 game that they lost the following week? Or was the game easy and it didn't take much out of them and the won the following week?
As shown below, teams that played the Broncos or Colts were 7 and 2 the week after. This tells me that the Broncos and Colts were not very physical and the team was so healthy the next week that they won.
Titans 2 - 8 (0.2) Packers 2 - 8 (0.2) Lions 2 - 8 (0.2) Patriots 2 - 6 (0.25) Giants 2 - 6 (0.25) Jets 3 - 7 (0.3) Ravens 3 - 6 (0.333) Bucs 4 - 6 (0.4) Bengals 3 - 4 (0.429) Jaguars 3 - 4 (0.429) Panthers 4 - 5 (0.444) Chargers 4 - 4 (0.5) Eagles 5 - 5 (0.5) Bears 4 - 4 (0.5) Cowboys 4 - 4 (0.5) Steelers 4 - 4 (0.5) Bills 5 - 4 (0.556) Chiefs 5 - 4 (0.556) Dolphins 5 - 4 (0.556) Seahawks 5 - 4 (0.556) Rams 5 - 4 (0.556) Cards 4 - 3 (0.571) Browns 6 - 4 (0.6) Texans 6 - 4 (0.6) Redskins 6 - 4 (0.6) Niners 5 - 3 (0.625) Vikings 6 - 3 (0.667) Saints 6 - 3 (0.667) Falcons 7 - 3 (0.7) Raiders 7 - 3 (0.7) Broncos 7 - 2 (0.778) Colts 7 - 2 (0.778)
On the other hand, teams that played the Packers or Titans were so beat up that they went 2 and 8 the following week.
I think I'll call this list the Brutality Index or maybe the Physicality Factor. This list is up to date as of week 11.
Some items of note are that the weaker defenses like the Broncos, Colts and Raiders are at the bottom of this list and the better defenses like the Titans and Giants are at the top. But do the Lions really have that physical of a defense? I didn't expect them to be with the big boys.