NFL Truths and Myths

ESPN.com has a series of articles providing a statistical analysis of the truth or falsity of some of football's truisms. The analysis was conducted by Jeremy Green, who was the Browns' director of pro personnel under the old regime. He broke the truisms down into two categories: sins that probably will cost you the game; and myths that frequently won't.

The "sins" category includes few surprises, but it is interesting to note that, statistically speaking, the second biggest indicator of a likely loss was, believe it or not, trailing at the end of the first quarter. Teams that trail after a quarter lose 75% of the time--only teams that lose the turnover battle end up on the losing end of the scoreboard more frequently (81% of the time).

In the "myths" category, the one thing that surprised me is that penalties aren't much of an indicator. The team with the most penalties lost 54% of the time, according to Green's data.

There are three articles, and you can find them here, here and here.