Oakland Raiders Heartbeat More Stable Than the 49ers’ Arrhythmia

Let's have a little fun. Let's just say that a doctor measures the heartbeat of a team.

The doctor notices a large swing from high to low in the pattern of the win chart for the San Francisco 49ers. In this playful analogy, the doctor concludes that the 49rs are more prone to failure or a "football heart attack."

The width of the interval that bounds the fluctuations of the Oakland Raiders is smaller than that of the 49ers.

Believe it or not, the doctor concludes that according to this measure the Oakland Raiders are a "healthier" team than the 49ers.

Again, there are patterns that many folks do not discern unless they build some type of model to characterize what is going on locally, globally and structurally in a given team.

Here is the raw data.

 

Oakland delta O 49ers delta 49 Year 9 2 1978 9 0 2 0 1979 11 2 6 4 1980 7 -4 13 7 1981 8 1 3 -10 1982 12 4 10 7 1983 11 -1 15 5 1984 12 1 10 -5 1985 8 -4 10 0 1986 5 -3 13 3 1987 7 2 10 -3 1988 8 1 14 4 1989 12 4 14 0 1990 9 -3 10 -4 1991 7 -2 14 4 1992 10 3 10 -4 1993 9 -1 13 3 1994 8 -1 11 -2 1995 7 -1 12 1 1996 4 -3 13 1 1997 8 4 12 -1 1998 8 0 4 -8 1999 12 4 6 2 2000 10 -2 12 6 2001 11 1 10 -2 2002 4 -7 7 -3 2003 5 1 2 -5 2004 4 -1 4 2 2005 2 -2 7 3 2006 4 2 5 -2 2007 5 1 7 2 2008 5 0 8 1 2009 4 7 -7 -10   Here is the graph of the win chart and the measures of change for both the Oakland Raiders and the San Francisco 49ers.

The change is measured from one year to a subsequent year by subtracting the decrease from, for example, 2008 to 2009. Note that the Oakland Raiders had five wins in 2008 and five wins in 2009. The change, then, is zero. These numbers are calculated for both teams, for the time interval 1978 to 2009.



Observations

1 The purple graph shows more severe...

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