Hi, guys. This is the piece i sent to Guru, as my submission to the stat-guy gig on MHR. I put some hours into it, and want it to go public i some way, so here it is.

As always you will have to bear with me and my language!

If you disagree on any of my analysis, remember I'm Scandinavian. I'm the closest to a tree-hugging socialist you'll ever get (allthough electing Obama is a step on the way, Tee-Hee), so we can all be friends and sit in a circle and talk about it in the comments section!

Also: I know this doesn't include a lot of hard, cold stats, but I lacked inspiration so I was writing off the top of my head. Hat tip to SethGrandpa for some inspiration (He broke down the commons in the losses - it sparked my idea of the win-commons... before you get to exited about some positive writing, beware)

Prelude: In this episode I would like to split the post into three parts. The first part a camparison of the way the Denver Broncos and the San Diego Chargers win and lose their games. The next part; a related basic piece of stat-analysis, in this case done by footballoutsiders, and a third part trying to connect the dots and interpret some of the data and points made in the first to parts.

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After week 12 of the 2008 season the Denver Broncos find themselves on top of their division - to wins ahead of the San Diego Chargers. Actually, it's more like 1.5 win, since the tie-breaker situation is unfortunate (San Diego has the advantage in in-division record). Speaking of the Chargers, its stunning how much the two teams resemble each other: Two extremely prolific offenses (despite struggling run-attacks), horribly inept defenses (albeit with flashes of respectability, SD last week against Peyton Manning were decent and Denver vs. Atlanta).

If the two teams are so alike, then why is there the significant 2 (1.5) game gap? I would love to be able to tell you guys that it is because of good coaching, great preparation and phenomenal quarterbacking when the game is on the line. I'm sorry - most of (and at least 2) of the wins are complete and utter flukes.

Denver won "close" games (decided by 1-8 (one possession) points) at Atlanta, at Cleveland, and at home against the Saints, Chargers and Buccaneers. Denver has only lost one "close" game - in Jacksonville. That's a record of 5-1. I'll grant the Broncos the wins over Cleveland and Tampa. The Tampa game was one of my favorites this year, the offense took what the Tampa-2 gave them, and held onto football, and the offense actually generated some pass rush. The Cleveland game was the classic shoot-out - very good, effective offenses against bad defenses. The three other games however were won in very fluke-ish, some might say lucky, ways:

-          San Diego: Ed Hochuli. The offense took advantage and played well with the house money. But if Hercules gets it right, it's curtains. With a fluke-ish ending, abusing a bad defense bears little credit.

-          New Orleans: Martin Gramatica, a 10-year veteran kicker, misses to field goals including a likely gamewinner from 47 yards. Missed field goals happens, but twice in a game? The average success on lead-changing kicks is, by the way, pretty consistently around 75%. The Broncos did everything in their power to lose this game (Shefflers fumble, soft defense etc.). With a fluke-ish win, abusing a bad defense bears little credit.

-          Atlanta: Roddy White will catch that ball for the game winning touchdown eight-of-ten times - minimum. Again Denver did what they could to give it away: covering a pro-bowl caliber receiver with your backup safety (if I recall correctly) in the endzone... Any comments on that, HT?

The Chargers, on the other hand, lost "close" games against the Panthers and Colts, and at Denver, Miami, New Orleans (London) and Pittsburgh. They only won one "close" contest: at home against the Chiefs. All this for a lowly record of 1-6. In the games against New Orleans, and Miami the Chargers lost to better teams. I think it's to their credit they were able to keep those contests close. They didn't get any lucky breaks against Pittsburgh and Indianapolis, but weren't unlucky either. On the "bad luck" games' side the Denver game has already been mentioned, and loosing on an as-time-expires TD is a certainly a bad break. When it was a desperation play by Jake Delhomme after avoiding a great deal of pressure and then throwing it to a no-name tight end in double coverage, makes it unbearable (for a Chargers fan of course). I will, by the way, never forget Donte Rosario for that grab...

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The football-stats-wizards over at footballoutsiders.com has done research in almost every possible area of this magnificent sport. They spend a lot of time investigating correlations between on-field tendencies and checks in the win-column, wins is despite every stat, like Madden would say, "what it's all about". While investigating the matter of margin-of-win vs. good records at season's end as well as in the following year, they defined the following definitions to be able to break different wins into tiers. This is from their "stat-dictionary" on their website:

Guts: Any win by 1-8 points over a team that will finish the season with a record over .500. This term comes from an article written for FOXSports.com in 2005, and republished in Pro Football Prospectus 2006, demonstrating that big wins over bad teams are a better indicator of future success than close wins over good teams. The four terms introduced in this article:

* GUTS: A win by 1-8 points over a winning team

* STOMPS: A win by 14+ points over a losing team

* SKATES: A win by 1-8 points over a losing team

* DOMINATIONS: A win by 14+ points over a winning team

While I have the opportunity I will stress that this isn't my work, but merely a compilations. I share the urge of these guys to get these fundamental truths about the game spread out to as many fans as possible. Anyway; I highlighted the passage because that is, in fact, what I wanted to illustrate with this part. Here's another quote from their website:

Football games are often decided by just one or two plays -- a missed field goal, a bouncing fumble, the subjective spot of an official on fourth-and-1. One missed assignment by a cornerback, or one slightly askew pass that bounces off a receiver's hands and into those of a defensive back five yards away and the game could be over. In a blowout, however, one lucky bounce isn't going to change things.

Championship teams beat their good opponents convincingly and destroy the cupcakes on the schedule. Certainly there are exceptions to this rule, including the past two Super Bowl champions. Unless this becomes a trend that lasts four or five years, it is hard to say this rule no longer exists.

© [2007] Football Outsiders, Inc. All rights reserved.

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If we should tie the knot on these two parts, the second part suggests that the fluke-ish (I am overusing that word aren't I?) wins, have no value in determining whether or not a given team is a "good" football team. It bears no value either in predicting the future outcome of games. So if you believe in cosmic equality, you better commence in early hibernation, because the Broncos have a lot of bad luck coming their way!

In  other words: "Luck", or what Bronco-friendly mainstream media might call swagger, pedigree, x-factor or "finding a way to win", is the only thing separating the Broncos from a 3-8 record. It's not like Any of Denvers losses were flukes (Spankings at the hands of the Patriots, Dolphins, chiefs and... uhg... raiders). I don't even think the game in Jacksonville were that close... In fact the only "championship-quality-team-esque" win of the 2008 season for the Broncos came on Monday night with the 41-14 bashing of the raiders. That good impression evaporated 11 weeks later, I would say.

If we give Denver the wins in Cleveland, Atlanta, Oakland, at home against Tampa and even one of the "lucky" wins, Denver would be at 5-6. By the way, FO's advanced stats estimates Denver to 4.8 wins this season - the Broncos "outplay themselves" by 1.2 wins. The Chargers will, if we split their bad-breaks games down the middle, also be at 5-6 (FO: 6.0 estimated wins). The gap from the second paragraph is closed, and we've even, I think, been generous to the Broncos and given them the Roddy White-drop or the Gramatica-oopsie. Depressing, right? This also illustrates why someone still might favor San Diego to win the division.

And just to make you all feel very much worse, here's the dagger:

Out of 165 teams with winning records since 1995, only five were STOMPED by a losing team more than once

Let me put it this way: I hope this group of five becomes a group of six, because neither the chiefs or the raiders will have winning records come January.