Assignment 6: The Green Bay Packers

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Introduction

Being from the great state of Wisconsin, one thing all Wisconsinites unite towards is to love and support the Green Bay Packers! I have gone to Packer games since I was a little kid, and I wanted to use this assignment to look into the history of the Packers as well as to answers some questions I had about the 100 year history of the greatest football organization of all time. For this research, I used Pro Football Reference and pulled data from the Packers 100 years as a pro football team. Statistics included their record, postseason results, how many points they scored and allowed, and other analytics regarding the strength of their teams.

Question 1: How has the game of football changed for the Packers?

One thing we see in sports is how the games have changed over time. In basketball we have seen a three point shooting explosion, and in baseball we have seen differences in how long pitchers can pitch. In football, the main change has been from an old school running game to a more high-octane offensive football game. I wanted to see if this would show for the Packers, whether we would see a higher average of points scored and allowed per game in today’s age rather than in the early 1900s. To see this, I created two graphs that look at the average points per game and points allowed per game for every season. In the first graph, we see a positive relationship between year and average points per game. This means that as time has gone on and football has developed, scoring has increased on average for the Packers most years. A similar finding is shown in the second graph as average points allowed also increased over time. Another cool thing about these graphs is that we can pinpoint years or certain time periods where the Packers may have had a bad offense or a really poor defense. For example, in the 1950’s the Packers’ defense was the worst it has ever been, surrendering over 25 points per game. Since that stretch, the Packers defense has only allowed that many points per game in a season 3 times.

Question 2: Which Packers coach has had the most success?

In my time as a Packer fan, I have seen 4 different coaches lead the Green Bay Packers. However, I wanted to compare the success of some of these coaches to other past legendary Packer coaches to see which stand alone as the best in franchise history. To do this, I looked at total wins and total playoff appearances by coaches. After looking at these first two graphs, I took the top six coaches who had the most wins and playoff appearances: Matt LaFleur, Vince Lombardi, Curly Lambeau, Mike Holmgren, Mike Sherman and Mike McCarthy. I used these 6 coaches and made graphs depicting how many wins to losses they had per season as well as how they fared in the postseason. Looking at the graphs, Vince Lombardi and Curly Lambeau are far and away the best coaches in Packers history. However, I weas intrigued to see the success of Mike Holmgren, a coach who led the Packers in the 90’s and early 2000’s. Taking the Packers to two Super Bowls is not an easy feat, so his success definitely would make him one of the better coaches for the Packers in the modern era.

Question 3: What is more important for winning a chmapionship: offense or defense?

For this question, I wanted to look at whether having strong offensive play or defensive play was more important for the years that the Packers won championships. To do this, I filtered only the years the Packers won a championship and analyzed their average points per game and points allowed per game. On top of that I made a table looking at the average offensive and defensive ranks they had for each of these seasons. These ranks look at how the Packers ranked among the other teams in the NFL in Offensive scoring (Total Points Scored), offensive yardage(Total Yards Gained), defensive scoring (Total Points Allowed), and defensive yardage (Total Yards Allowed). The graph shows that many of the Packers championship teams were playing outstanding defense, only allowing at most 16 points per game. On the offensive side, most of the championship teams averaged at least 20 points a game. Looking at the table, most of the time the Packers title teams ranked better on defense than they did offense. While there are definitely more analytical statistics one could look at to determine factors for championship teams such as interceptions or sacks, this table gives a small glimpse at how being better at defense may be more important than offense for being a championship team.

Average Offensive Scoring Rank	Average Offensive Yards Rank	Average Defensive Scoring Rank	Average Defensive Yards Rank
3.538461	4.769231	2.230769	2.846154

Question 4: Do the Analytical Statistics Tell a Good Story?

When I looked at this table, I saw a couple of statistics that I had never seen before. Called SRS, or Simple Rating System, the stat looks at the quality of a team compared to the average NFL team (0). Offensive and defensive SRS are also the Simple Rating System, but focus merely on their respective side of the football. MoV is Margin of Victory, and this is the average point differential per game. For example, if a team scored 300 points during this season and allowed 200, they would have a 100 point differential. Margin of Victory would take the point differential and divide it by games played. Lastly, strength of schedule looks at the average quality of opponents the team played by looking at the SRS system. Analyzing these stats, I wanted to see if any of them were a good indicator as to whether a team was actually good. I compared the offensive and defensive SRS ratings between Packer teams that made and did not make the playoffs and did the same thing with strength of schedule and margin of victory. Looking at the results, the two most important variables look to be offensive SRS and margin of victory as almost all the playoff teams had a positive number for these stats. The second graphs look at how the playoff teams fared in these statistics, wrapped by who far they progressed in the playoffs. From those results, the teams that ended up winning championships looked to have a much higher defensive SRS as well as a higher margin of victory, while the other two stats were relatively consistent with the other teams that lost in the postseason.

Question 5: Who is the Greatest Packer Quarterback Ever?

In the history of the Green Bay Packers, three quarterbacks have defined the organization with their accolades and dominance. These players are Bart Starr, Brett Favre, and Aaron Rodgers. I have had the privilege to watch Aaron Rodgers for all of my life, so I have always biasedly thought he was the best of the group. However, I want to look at accolades of these players such as how many times they have been to the playoffs, how the offense ranks on average with them at quarterback, and their success in the playoffs. The first graph looks at how many times each quarterback led their team to the playoffs. The results show that Aaron Rodgers and Brett Favre both hold the edge against Starr, going to the playoffs twice as many times as Starr had. The next graph though, looks at how each quarterback has fared in the postseason. The results here show that Starr has been the most successful, winning the most Super Bowls and championships while Favre and Rodgers have each only won one. The last table shows how the offense has ranked on average with each QB at the helm. This table shows that Starr and Favre had similar and better average rankings in terms of team offense in comparison to Rodgers. While one definitely would need to look more into the individual statistics to find a better glimpse at which quarterback was better, this data gives a good look at how each differenatiate themselves from one another in terms of achievments with the Pack.

Top Passer	Average Offensive Scoring Rank	Average Offensive Yards Rank
Favre	4.454546	6.909091
Rodgers	6.636364	9.454546
Starr	4.166667	6.833333