Oakland Raiders: Tackling Tough Opponents Is What They Do

 

A lot of folks enjoy looking at pictures or graphs. The old saying is that a picture is worth a thousand words.

I believe in that old saying, so I transform numbers into graphs so that the reader can see the ups and downs, the periods in which one team dominates another, the points where their records are the same, and so on.

The article photo contains a graph of the wins of the Oakland Raiders and the Chicago Bears, from 1978 to 2009. In 1978 the NFL started having 16 game seasons so that is why 1978 was selected as a start point.

Near the end of the graph you do see that the Bears dominate the Raiders.

We could conjecture that if the direction of the Bears "overall wins" continues, they seem to be going downward, while the Oakland Raiders seem to be moving upward and are constant in their performances in both 2008 and 2009.

Also note that at the very beginning of the graph the Oakland Raiders were dominant, followed by an overlap, and again Oakland domination.

It's clear to me that there could easily be a breakdown for the Bears and a breakthrough for the Raiders.

Here is the raw data:



 

Oakland    Bears Compare 9 7 O 9 10 B 11 7 O 7 6 O 8 3 O 12 8 O 11 10 O 12 15 B 8 14 B 5 11 B 7 12 B 8 6 O 12 11 O 9 11 B 7 5 O 10 7 O 9 9 TIE 8 9 B 7 7 TIE 4 4 TIE 8 4 O 8 6 O 12 5 O 10 13 B 11 4 O 4 7 B 5 5 TIE 4 11 B 2 13 B 4 7 B 5 9 B 5 7 B

 

 



The Chicago Bears had a 3-13 record  in 1982 and the Oakland Raiders had a 2-14 in 2006. Those are the years of the minimum overall wins for each of the teams.

Now let's focus on more recent years:

 

4 7 5 5 4 11 2 13 4 7 5 9 5 7  

 

Article Source: Bleacher Report - Oakland Raiders