Hope everyone is enjoying this season as much as I am from not only the perspective of being a Broncos fan, but also enjoying other surprises around the NFL. The reason for this post is simple - I have spent the past months busily studying important stats and trends. I have tried to rank the best teams with numerous methods and predict upcoming games with even more.

As I have discarded poor methods and learned valuable lessons, I have come away with a few things I believe are true.

When I began going through the rankings on all the charts NFL.com has for Offense and Defense, I found myself looking at a lot of numbers that, although correct, do not tell the complete story and may be misleading. The perfect example comes from a story at ESPN.com that suggested after maybe week 5 or week 6 that the 2009 Minnesota Vikings offense was close to the 1999 Minnesota Vikings.

The biggest comparison came with the offenses. The 1999 Vikings had Culpepper and Moss and this years Vikings have Favre and Peterson. However, the problem comes when they use total points scored when comparing the offenses.

Anyone who saw Denver @ San Diego, please tell me if special teams touchdowns, or defensive touchdowns and safeties, count as points anymore?

The problem here is the offense does not score all of the points. In fact, to open the season, when Chicago played Green Bay, NBC showed a statistic that said this:

Chicago's defense and special teams have accounted for over 20 percent of its total offensive points total over the last 2 (or 3?) years; the closest team to them over that same span was at 9 percent.

The truth is, when people say New Orleans leads the NFL in points with 39.7 PPG, they are 100 percent accurate. However, when they say this is one of the most prolific OFFENSES and could end of scoring the most in history, their reasoning is WRONG.

New Orleans has 5 defensive touchdowns (34 points with one botched PAT), number 1 in the NFL. Their defense has scored 64.2 percent of St. Louis' offensive point total (53) and 56.7 percent of St. Louis' team total (60). That is astonishing how prolific their secondary scoring has been (my term for points not scored by the offense).

It is time for people to realize the fundamental difference between stating New Orleans is the top scoring team in the NFL (true) and saying their offense is scoring around 40 points per game.

The same goes for defense. Apparently Denver's defense allowed Sproles to return that punt for a touchdown (where were you Brian Dawkins?). No, the NFL's number 1 defense is not allowing 11.0 points per game. Our defense has surrendered only 59 points in 6 games, or 9.8 PPG. THAT is our true total.

It is not about being "misrepresented" or feeling the NFL is slighting or favoring a team. It is about being simply wrong. Stats are numerical representations that show what has happened, objectively. They do not care who did it, how, why or when. All that matters is they show the truth. The problem is, professionals for NFL.com, ESPN.com and whomever, fail to do the most simplistic and only objective thing in sports correctly. They fail to accurately describe the performance of teams.

If you go to NFL.com and look up Penalties or Penalty Yards, you simply get accurate totals that do not tell the truth. Since there are byes in the NFL, these totals are not ranked correctly. These totals must be corrected for Per Game Averages. Why the NFL does not do this, I do not know, but it would be helpful if they got it right.

Again, the whole point is not that that they are bad at their jobs, or that they are clueless. The idea is they are providing a product (Stats) to the general public and talking (media) figures around the country and it is false.

This leads me to my number one rule in stats - make sure you are representing the TRUTH. The next time you see some say the Number 1 Offense (it still happens to be New Orleans), watch to see if they say 39.7 PPG (their total points) or 34.0 PPG, their true offensive points output after 6 games.

I know this may have seemed like a rant, but it has really bothered me that people have chosen to ignore what is actually happening and use the wrong numbers for stats that are widely used by everyone.

Now you know the truth behind these totals.

Ok, good, I feel better. The next part is the fun part of stats or numbers. As I was talking with lebowskibronco earlier today, there are 2 kinds of stats. The first group describes the performance of a team and usually is a great indicator of why a team won. The second group is a great predictor of future success.

The First Group

lebowskibronco has a great set of stats that really hit home why teams won the game. Turnovers, field position, 3rd down percentage and time of possession are really good at showing this. In order to win games, you must win in these categories as well as others. This helps you get a better understanding of what is important to win football games. This group is very simplistic because their is little creativity or opinion involved. Game stats show what happen and it is fairly obvious to decipher what went wrong for the losing teams. This group is really good for coaching, because you can preach the effect these have on games. If you avoid interceptions, have good redzone efficiency, limit penalties...I encourage everyone to study this group because they tell the story that maybe the eye does not see when watching a game. These stats give a much better understanding of what has happened.

The Second Group

This group requires specific stats that accurately portray what winning teams have in common. although some might argue that turnovers can be a predictor of future success, everywhere I have seen, they do not do as good of a job. Here are some of the top indicators that I use.

1. Net Yards Per Play - simply, how many more yards on a play do you get than your opponent. Last week, the teams performing better in this area coming into the game went 10-3.
   
2. Net Passer Rating - (I know, I know) many here believe it is not the as great of a stat as media figures tout, but it does a pretty good job summarizing how well a quarterback performs. How much better is 80.0 than 75.0? or 95.0 than 90.0? I do not know, but 100.0 is a whole lot better than 60.0. It has its purpose and great and efficient passing teams simply win often. Teams winning in this category coming into last week's games went 10-3.
   
3. Yards Per Attempt - (this must include the net value where yards lost to sacks is included) big-pay and accurate quarterbacks move the team down the field and put the offense in a position to score. this also means that they do not take a lot of sacks, giving credit to good offensive lines as well. Again, teams with better performances in this area going into the games last week, went 11-2.

This past week I used 9 categories, including Turnovers and Starting Field Position. I went 9-4.

When I took these two stats out, I went 11-2.

If I went solely on the three successful indicators of success  show above, I still go 3-0. The only 2 games that went against the grain - Chicago @ Cincinnati and Arizona @ NY Giants, showed two losing teams playing worse than past performances this year with opponents playing much better than past performances.

People will say that stats are overrated, wrong, stupid, pointless, for nerds or (insert your favorite); however, when they are done correctly, truthfully, and with reason, they are a great tool to understand the past and predict the future.

I hope you all will look at stats through the correct lenses, and not through the misleading figures posted by some of the major football websites.

Take care and enjoy this weekend as Denver takes on Baltimore.