*How did the Hawks make it this far? - Printable Version +- International Simulation Football League (https://forums.sim-football.com) +-- Forum: Community (https://forums.sim-football.com/forumdisplay.php?fid=5) +--- Forum: Media (https://forums.sim-football.com/forumdisplay.php?fid=37) +---- Forum: Graded Articles (https://forums.sim-football.com/forumdisplay.php?fid=38) +---- Thread: *How did the Hawks make it this far? (/showthread.php?tid=42248)

*How did the Hawks make it this far? - fnordypsyduck - 11-26-2022 I would like to begin this by saying that this is in no way meant to be disparaging to the Baltimore Hawks, as they have clearly earned their playoff spot through a lot of hard work on the field and the fact that they were able to defy the odds is inspiring for most of us. However, I would be out of place to say that people were expecting Baltimore to be one of the 6 teams in the playoffs for this season. In fact, from what I have gathered, it appears that most people assumed that Baltimore would be one of the bottom teams in the league along with Honolulu. And yet, they secured a playoff berth outright by 2 games without needing any tiebreakers. Further to this, teams like New Orleans and Sarasota both missed out on the playoffs (1 GB and 2 GB in their conferences respectively) despite sitting with almost double the amount of total TPE as the Hawks. Looking at the surface, this appears to be one of the craziest possible outcomes for this season, however upon diving into the numbers, I think I can make sense of how this came to be.      One of the first things that I noticed while reviewing the stats was their touchdown production. The Hawks scored the least amount of touchdowns in the entire league, both with and without defensive or special teams touchdowns. 5 QBs scored as many or more touchdowns than the entire Hawks team (Farrell, Sailor, Knight, Elizabeth II, and Singh in that order). The team put up 33 touchdowns altogether with Honolulu being the next closest at 37, so in all reality, a team that had this much trouble scoring should never have even sniffed the playoffs, even with if they had a top tier defense. However, this is when I noticed their field goal production. Baltimore both attempted and made the most field goals in the entire league, making 36 and attempting 42 for a respectable 85.7%. This shows that even if the team was unable to punch in it for TDs, they were at least putting up a fight on the offensive side and getting points on the board, which is sometimes all it takes. That, combined with the fact that they went 3-1 in games decided by 3 points or less, very possibly took this team from one that finished 9-7 to a team that finishes 7-9 or 6-10. So I think Baltimore really can thank their offense, and Mike Makmur for that matter, for getting them over the hill to the playoffs.      I know that a good portion of you are probably saying to yourselves "Alright sure, the team put up a good amount of field goals, but that can't be the only thing that brought them to the playoffs," and I would agree with this, so we need to look a little deeper. From there, I went into the rest of the special teams to see if there was something else propelling this team to wins. Obviously, a team that isn't scoring much compared to the rest of the league is probably going to be punting quite a lot, which is true in this case as the Hawks led the league in punts with 89, 5.56 punts per game. However, this punting may have worked to their advantage. Makmur was able to average 47.6 yards per punt, 2nd best in the leauge, and also dropped 34 inside of the 20 yard line, also 2nd in the league. This furthers the story that the offense was doing well enough to gain some field position even without being able to score touchdowns and place their opponents into bad field position. It also explains how the Hawks had the 3rd lowest points against total (359) despite being in the bottom half of the league in Tackles, TFLs, and Sacks. Well, it partially explains this, because a team that can't produce on offense and also can't produce on defense should be having points scored against them at a much higher rate. Something isn't adding up, and it's not just my lack of ability to do math correctly despite having a degree in Math.     If you take a look at this chart, you can see a couple things. One of them is that the Hawks were the only team to be below 6 YPA in the entire league, sitting at 5.9 with Honolulu being the next closest at 6.5. This, paired with the fact that the team only threw for 21 TDs, shows again the issues that this offense was having. But if you look more closely, you can see that the team also had the lowest number of interceptions thrown (7) and had the 4th highest TD to Interception ratio in the league. That level of efficiency is not generally shown by teams that are not producing offensively, especially considering the run game was close to the bottom of the league in TDs as well at 10. I also went through the team's schedule and found that opposing teams had only 14 FF and 16 FR compared to the Hawks' 23 & 21 respectively. Also, despite not putting up great numbers of TFLs, Sacks, and Tackles, this team was churning out interceptions all over the place. They managed to lead the league with 23 interceptions. That's almost 1.5 interceptions per game! That gives them a +21 in turnovers overall, meaning that they were being much more careful with the ball as well as being able to make the other team make mistakes on the field. I think that speaks to some level of coaching as well, as they must have been focusing on keeping their eyes on the ball and I'm sure the coaching staff was pushing the team to always be trying to get the ball away from the offense. Whatever it was, I feel as though without this level of turnover production, this is a team that would never have been able to make it as far as they did.      So are they Hawks one of the biggest playoff surprises in league history? It's hard to say. The turnover production is a huge boost to this team and really helps to explain how they made it this far, but considering the expectations that this team had coming into the season, it's very possible. Maybe in another article I will explore the possibility of them being a history breaking playoff team, or maybe them being in the weaker conference had something to do with it. Either way, the Hawks should be incredibly proud of the way that they played this season and should be excited for what the future has in store for them as this team grows stronger in the offseason and beyond. RE: *How did the Hawks make it this far? - BOOM™ - 11-27-2022 Baltimore has a large Voodoo community tbh.... RE: *How did the Hawks make it this far? - infinitempg - 11-27-2022 trust me when i say we are just as confused as everyone else RE: *How did the Hawks make it this far? - DREAMSLOTH - 11-28-2022 It's surely the voodoo.