[BostonCard]

Within one score of winning seven games last year is an extraordinarily misleading way to look at it. For one, I have no idea what you mean. We won three games and the four closest losses had a combined margin of 16 points. In most football games that’s at least three scores, though if you get touchdowns and convert on both two point conversions it can be two. In no way is it one and in no way were we remotely close to bowl eligibility, much less seven wins. In fact, by your strained logic we were more than three times closer to one win (five combined points from that) than to seven wins. 

Aside from the three games we actually won, we lost four by one score or less:
TCU (27-34 loss)
Wake Forest (24-27 loss)
Cal (21-24 loss)
SJSU (31-34 loss) 

The framing might have been inartful, but it wasn’t so obtuse that might reasonably have no idea what marchballer meant; often times people lament what could have been by noting the number of “close” games, frequently defined as those were the final score differential is within a score.  Of course, two of our wins were also within one score, so we also could have been looking at a 1-11 season more easily than a 7-5 season.  But, if you want to tell yourself a story of why our 3-9 record was maybe not as bad as it seemed, pointing out the relatively close losses is a time-tested way of doing so, and just because it is not advanced analytics does not make it “extraordinarily misleading”.

BC

[BostonCard]

Within one score of winning seven games last year is an extraordinarily misleading way to look at it. For one, I have no idea what you mean. We won three games and the four closest losses had a combined margin of 16 points. In most football games that’s at least three scores, though if you get touchdowns and convert on both two point conversions it can be two. In no way is it one and in no way were we remotely close to bowl eligibility, much less seven wins. In fact, by your strained logic we were more than three times closer to one win (five combined points from that) than to seven wins. 

Aside from the three games we actually won, we lost four by one score or less:
TCU (27-34 loss)
Wake Forest (24-27 loss)
Cal (21-24 loss)
SJSU (31-34 loss) 

The framing might have been inartful, but it wasn’t so obtuse that might reasonably have no idea what marchballer meant; often times people lament what could have been by noting the number of “close” games, frequently defined as those were the final score differential is within a score.  Of course, two of our wins were also within one score, so we also could have been looking at a 1-11 season more easily than a 7-5 season.  But, if you want to tell yourself a story of why our 3-9 record was maybe not as bad as it seemed, pointing out the relatively close losses is a time-tested way of doing so, and just because it is not advanced analytics does not make it “extraordinarily misleading”.

BC