Last week’s article was significant in many ways.  Most significantly for this duo, it represents a lot of work.  This week’s effort will be notably shorter—we’ll take your misplaced gratitude, but it’s really a selfish decision. 

Second, last week’s article is a foundation that we expect to build upon.  For consistency’s sake, the “meat” of the rating system will remain the same for this season—unless we specifically note otherwise.  We may, however, change the appearance from time to time.  If we do, we’ll update that archived article appropriately. 

Third, going forward, we’ll spend minimal time explaining the CQ+.  You can read about it in last week’s article. 

Finally, we can point out how inconsistent we are by completely disregarding the plan we laid out last week.  As opposed to offering a case study on the Cowboys this week and the Pat’s next week, we’ll combine those teams now, in preparation for a very exciting showdown this Sunday. 

It’s games like this one where fantasy football can easily take a backseat to the more traditional NFL fandom.  At this point in time, the Pats are favored by 6 points.  Like the large herd of popular NFL commentators (led in action, if not with popular consent, by Sean Salsbury), we will make a prediction regarding the outcome of this critical game that makes the most sense by using hindsight.  In other words, tune in next week for that "foresight." 

Beginning the ’07 season, here is the CQ+ for the Cowboys: 64 

Beginning the ’07 season, here is the CQ+ for the Patriots: 80                                               

Through Week 5 of the ’07 season, here is the CQ+ for the Cowboys: 85

Through Week 5 of the ’07 season, here is the CQ+ for the Patriots: 87

The Cowboys’ CQ+ has increased dramatically since the beginning the season, whereas the Pats’ CQ+ has only increased by 7.  We suspect this means that we should have had an easier time predicting success for the Patriot skill players at the beginning of the season than we would have had predicting it for the Cowboys, but we will have to test hypotheses such as these going forward.   

As a reminder, you need to keep your expectations for the CQ+ low.  We simply do not expect that a X+Y will always yield a better offense than an X.  Two notables about the CQ+s above:

Thus far in the season, no reasonable person could claim that the Cowboys and/or Patriots are under-performing on offense. 

Through week 5 of the NFL season, here are some pertinent facts:

Those that rolled the dice on role players like Marion Barber III and/or Sammy Morris are feeling really good right now.  In fact, pretty much any player seeing significant time in either of these offenses is surpassing expectations.  Honestly, we’d like to make a real “prediction” for both of these teams for 2007, but the reality is that we’ll have to sit back and wait. 

Some other notables that we dug up while obtaining the above. 

All five of the Patriots starting linemen have played their entire careers in New England.  Light is in his seventh season, Mankins his 3^rd, Koppen his 5^th, Neal his 7^th and Kaczur his 3^rd.  In light of the emphasis we place on continuity for the units under examination, this may be the single most important factor in assessing the Pats’ success.   

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