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+---- Thread: *The Unluckiest team in ISFL history: A short analysis (/showthread.php?tid=32252)
*The Unluckiest team in ISFL history: A short analysis - Suggs - 05-16-2021
(I am using my 2x Media Voucher on this post)
Hey everyone! I’ve been developing some stats over the last few weeks, as well as finishing some collabs that I want to put a lot of work into and polish it out, so I haven’t posted a media article for a long time. I’ve been planning this small piece for a couple of weeks and thought that this 2x Media voucher was just the perfect trigger for me to write this down. Last week I did my Ultimus Week Point Task, in which I wrote about Season 28’s most and least lucky teams. I initially looked at team’s Pythagorean Wins (which I explained in the PT and will later in this post) and their actual wins, and talked in more depth about the season of these teams.
Almost all of those reading this article probably know about the sadness that was Chicago’s Season 28 campaign, which involved a lot of last-minute losses and close games. When I took a deeper look at it, the pure unluckiness of it made me question: how unlucky Chicago in S28 were compared to the other teams in ISFL history. I looked at all teams to try to find the answer to the question: Which ISFL team had the unluckiest campaign? In this article, I will attempt to find a single team’s season that had the most “sim gonna sim” moments, ranging from bad play calls by the sim, such as punting from your opponent’s 40-yard line when down by 1 in the last 2 minutes to heartbreaking football moments, such as getting intercepted on a critical last minute drive.
Because of the sheer number of teams and seasons of the ISFL, I had to go through a few steps to cut down the list to a few that could be individually looked until I decided which one was today’s big winner (or loser, really).
First of all, I wrote down the standings of all 28 ISFL seasons, including wins, points for, and points against. That was used to calculate Pythagorean Wins, a stat created by Bill James for baseball to estimate how many wins a team was expected to have based on how many runs they scored and conceded over a timespan and was eventually adapted to Football by the guys at Football Outsiders, taking into consideration points scored and points conceded. My logic was that teams that had less wins than their Pythagorean expectation were better than their record showed. If they are worse than what their record shows, it means that they had some unlucky moments along the season, which is what we’re trying to find. After taking a look at the stats, I found out that usually the two teams with the worse expected-real wins differential of each season stood out, being usually along the -1.20 to -2 win differential range (they lost as many as 2 wins more than expected), so I looked at the 2 most unlucky teams Pythagorean wise per season.
Second of all, I looked at the 56 individual seasons I lined up (2 teams per season in 28 seasons) and paid attention to two elements of it (which were chosen because I think they symbolize the two most unlucky things that can happen in a season): close losses and games lost by late opposition scoring plays (this one is fairly abstract, but I took any score with about 6 minutes left in the 4th quarter as “late”. Again, no real reason here). I summed up these two elements and cut down my search again to all teams with a sum of 10 (because they were very uncommon and served as a good outliner).
Finally, I took a final look at the play by play of all close games of these final 5 teams and make my final decision:
• The Season 13 Baltimore Hawks (5 close losses and 5 late losses)
• The Season 16 Philadelphia Liberty (5 close losses and 5 late losses)
• The Season 23 Philadelphia Liberty (6 close losses and 4 late losses)
• The Season 25 New York Silverbacks (8 close losses and 4 late losses)
• The Season 28 Chicago Butchers (8 close losses and 6 late losses)
![[Image: U9Y61WK.png]](https://i.imgur.com/U9Y61WK.png)
I immediately crossed off the Season 23 Philadelphia Liberty. Even if they had an unlucky season, they were not close to our other competitors. They made it to the ISFL playoffs and had an Expected to Real Win differential of only -1.4, which is the lowest among these 5. After going over all the play-by-plays of all these teams, however, I still couldn’t make a decision. So, I went and calculated the average time of last score conceded in close games, an average of how much time was left on the clock in a close loss after the opponent completed their game winning play. And that eliminated any doubt I had. I will, however, shoutout the 3 other teams in contention.
Season 13 Baltimore Hawks
Baltimore had a great shot at this. 5 close games lost, each through a late drive in a 14-game season is certainly heartbroken. Conceding a touchdown with 13 seconds on the clock against Philly to start the season and one against San Jose with 1 minute left was tough, but they had it was easier than the next teams on this list. Their recent history was great too, as they had 3 consecutive Ultimus appearances between S10-S12, winning it S10, and went on to go there again in S15 and blow the Sabercats out.
Season 16 Philadelphia Liberty
Talk about an Ultimus hangover. On top of having an unlucky regular season, they lost the Ultimus on by 4 points, with their opponents, Arizona, getting the final score with 1:30 on the clock. On the last play of Ultimus XVI, Philly QB Falconi made a pass that went for 42 yards, stopping 4 yards short of the endzone, very reminiscent of the NFL’s Super Bowl XXIV, when Titans receiver Kevin Dyson was tackled 1 yard short of the endzone on a similar situation. It was especially tough because this season was the start of a 7-year playoffs drought for the Liberty that was ended, ironically, by their S23 campaign, which made the final 5. Anyway, the Liberty can take an Ultimus appearance home, more than 4 ISFL franchises, so I cannot put this as the “unluckiest season ever”.
Season 25 New York Silverbacks
A very close 2nd place by the Silverbacks (another close loss to their season, I guess) here. The 3rd lowest Pythagorean wins differential in ISFL history, New York had it tough in S25. 8 close defeats, 4 late plays conceded, and an average time of last score of 1 minute and 43 seconds tell you all you need to hear. Field Goals, Touchdowns, you have everything here. They do have some consolation prizes, however. Season 25 was a top-heavy season, with all teams but 2 getting less than 7 wins. And if someone fields a bad team, you expect it to be an expansion franchise, which the Silverbacks were. They went on to have some good seasons after, with 2 playoff appearances and going on to win their conference in Season 26.
And the unluckiest campaign in ISFL history is:
The Season 28 Chicago Butchers 
This was the whole motivation for writing this piece and probably not a huge surprise to anyone here. I have recently learned in one of my College classes about “recency bias”, our tendency to give greater importance to recent events over older events, based on our easiness to remember recent stimuli in comparison to older ones. When going over this team on my Ultimus Week PT, as well as reminding myself of what I had seen over the course of S28, it did seem that it couldn’t get unluckier than what Chicago had managed to do. My knowledge of recency bias, however, made me question this and go further into this. I spent hours trying to find justifications as to why one campaign or another were unluckier. Until I considered average time of last conceded play in close losses. For the S13 Hawks, it was 2 minutes and 38 seconds. For the S16 Liberty, it was 2 minutes and 11 seconds. For S25 Silverbacks, it was 1 minute and 43. For this Butchers team, it was 41 seconds (or 52 seconds, if you decide to consider Week 6 loss to Arizona, when they conceded a FG with 1 minute and 50 seconds left in OT. In that game however, they only went to OT because they scored a TD with 25 seconds on the clock, so make of that what you will).
Sometimes, stats can be misleading, or used in misleading ways. If I had only considered teams’ difference to their Pythagorean expectation, it wouldn’t count the whole story. This Butchers team lost on a kickoff return in W3; by 8 in W4, 24 yards away from tying the game; in OT in W5; by 3 in W9 because of a 63 yard FG with 13 seconds on the clock; by 4 points in W10; by a FG in W11 (the details of this loss are too excruciatingly sad to go over in this media piece, I recommend watching the play by play, rewatching the game on YT, or looking at my UW PT for more info. Reader discretion is advised.); and by 7 in W15, 22 yards away from the endzone. No human would be able to tell this story thorough pure statistical analysis, at least not as vividly.
As a Jacksonville Jaguars fan, I became used to see Football and sports in general through an uncommon lens. I rarely remember games because of their result, but rather by the context of a play, a sum of plays, a sum of games, or even the sum of the sport in itself. It has become rare for me to become truly saddened by the unfolding of events in sports. I like to believe that the spectacle that we have is not a given and should be taken as a blessing instead. As most things in life, we should appreciate every second of it, both the good and bad. There is not good without bad, and vice versa. You would imagine that there was something good to be taken from all of this, an underlying message, a light at the end of the tunnel. There isn’t. This is a sh*tstorm of a season. Thanks for reading.
RE: The Unluckiest team in ISFL history: A short analysis - zaynzk - 05-16-2021
S25 New York was rough time haha we were begging for a first win for weeks haha
RE: The Unluckiest team in ISFL history: A short analysis - Crodyman - 05-16-2021
I KNEW WE HAD A SPECIAL SEASON
RE: The Unluckiest team in ISFL history: A short analysis - ValorX77 - 05-16-2021
Tries to Add S28 Austin to the list
RE: The Unluckiest team in ISFL history: A short analysis - YoungTB - 05-17-2021
(05-16-2021, 07:31 PM)Suggs Wrote: Conceding a touchdown with 13 seconds on the clock against Philly to start the season and one against San Jose with 1 minute left was tough, but they had it was easier than the next teams on this list.
That play against the Liberty for the S13 Hawks was the best play in Liberty history, even though it was Week 1. @me
RE: The Unluckiest team in ISFL history: A short analysis - goodfortunecoffee - 05-17-2021
That was a beautiful closing paragraph
RE: The Unluckiest team in ISFL history: A short analysis - Suggs - 05-17-2021
(05-17-2021, 01:21 AM)goodfortunecoffee Wrote: That was a beautiful closing paragraphThank you! My inspiration was Jon Bois and Secret Base's "The search for the saddest punt in the world", where he creates this whole system for measuring his dissatisfaction with punting, spends 53 minutes talking about it and ends by noting that the saddest punts in history had a 6-3-1 record, almost admitting defeat. I recommend watching it, if you haven't already. But I do stand by every single word of what I've said in that paragraph.
RE: The Unluckiest team in ISFL history: A short analysis - Reno - 05-17-2021
My agony from this last season is realized.
RE: The Unluckiest team in ISFL history: A short analysis - Z-Whiz - 05-17-2021
(05-16-2021, 09:59 PM)zaynzk Wrote: S25 New York was rough time haha we were begging for a first win for weeks haha
You're welcome