Week 3 Sample Analysis

Tennessee went into New Orleans for a monday night game that was to be a must-win game for the Saints to avoid an 0-3 start. The Saints prepared that week for what they knew would be a battle that they had to bring their 'A' game. Despite the hostile environment and a rabid opponent with their backs to the wall, it was clear before the game that Tennessee was for real this season so far with hard-fought victories won with solid play at the line of scrimmage. This is how this piece of 20-20 hindsight was apparent before the game played out on monday night of week 3:


Tennessee opened the season with a solid victory over Jacksonville that was not assisted by turnovers or any overt breaks involving the proverbial 'bounce of the ball.' The quotient result is based specifically on the opponent played. What's more, the better an opponent does at the line of scrimmage on offense and defense, the more positive that team's result AND the lower an opponent is pushed down towards negative numbers. Therefore, a spread is created between the winner and loser that is wider with greater dominance in results of the quotient. (A spread that doesn't initially seem that close but involves two ppositive numbers usually indicates a fairly competitive game. (...like a 700.00 to 200.00 result, for example).

The quotient result for Tennessee was the best of week 1 suggesting a dominant performance:

--->Tenn.......1584.44333
vs. Jax..........-459.64

Not only did Tennessee's result go up with solid play,
but the Jaguar's resulting quotient was lowered to the minimum result of that week.


Tennessee's Week 2 quotient shows that they gave Indianapolis a solid battle up front (although Indy pushes the envelope with game-breaking plays on defensive secondaries---often resulting in larger final scores, ultimately winning the game):

---> Tenn........612.4433
vs. Ind......505.54

Regardless of the final result on the score board, this was a hard fought battle at the line of scrimmage with both Tennessee and Indy rushing the ball with success at various points during the game.

Given Tennessee's early success with their game plans, it was clear that the Saints would be in for a battle regardless of the ultimate outcome that left New Orleans 0-3.