Coleman Still Guilty

DNA tests last week proved again that Roger Keith Coleman was guilty of raping and slitting the throat of his sister-in-law. I used the Coleman case as an example of the extreme gullibility of death-penalty opponents in my Deadly Innocence article. How long before the first Coleman apologist insists the test results were faked as they did in the case of James Hanratty in Great Britain?

Not surprisingly, the Associated Press article reporting the test results looks as though it was written with the opposite outcome in mind, leading with a reminder that DNA testing has freed many prisoners and focusing on demands by death penalty opponents for retesting in other cases:

DNA has the power to cut short nightmares. It can save an innocent man from the horror of life behind bars for a crime someone else committed. It can ease the public's fear of a murderer walking free and looking to kill again.

In the past 16 years, DNA testing has freed scores of prisoners found to be wrongfully convicted, resolved old mysteries including murders and rapes, and transformed the debate over the death penalty. It has shaken the foundations of the criminal justice system itself.

...

Advocates for reform remain convinced that there are other executions that need to be retested, sure that an innocent person somewhere along the way has been executed--even as prosecutors and courts have been hesitant to go back and revisit cases that juries and courts have deemed closed.

Death penalty opponents are desperate for hard proof that one innocent person has been executed. But they aren't likely to find any.

Hope for Skins in Seattle?

I've been tinkering with ways to quantify NFL schedule strength differences in terms of wins and losses. While working on that I noticed a timely tidbit last night that's worth sharing before tomorrow's big game.

Seattle's opponent win percentage this year is the third-lowest in the past five years (I've only compiled data back through the 2001 season). Washington, on the other hand, is tied with six other teams for the 16th toughest schedule over the same span. The tables below include Washington, Seattle, and several other 2005 teams.

The first table lists teams with the lowest opponent win percentages (easiest schedules). Notice that six of this year's playoff teams are on the list.

Over the past five years teams with an opponent win percentage of .400 to .449 averaged 11.2 wins. Teams with an opponent win percentage of .450 to .474 averaged 10.1 wins.

The second table lists teams with the highest opponent win percentages (toughest schedules). It includes two 2005 teams whose coaches were fired this year (Oakland and Houston), and one team whose coach would likely have been fired this year if he wasn't in the first year of his contract (San Francisco). The list also includes one of the best teams not to make the playoffs this year (San Diego) and another team that barely edged into the playoffs by winning its last five games (Washington).

Teams with an opponent win percentage of .550 to .599 averaged just 5.1 wins, and teams with an opponent win percentage of .525 to .549 averaged only 6 wins over this period.

Some other offhand observations: In 2003 Atlanta Falcons coach Dan Reeves was replaced with three games to go as the Falcons finished 5-11. Too bad for Reeves. He not only lost Michael Vick that year, but also drew one of the toughest schedules in the league. In 2004 Reeves's replacement Jim Mora, Jr. was hailed as the NFL's next great genius--after getting back his star quarterback and drawing the fourth easiest schedule in the past five years.

Fortunately for Redskins fans, Buffalo unceremoniously dismissed Gregg Williams in 2003 after he led his team to a 6-10 record against the fourth toughest schedule on the list below.

And then there's Tony Dungee who was dimissed from Tampa Bay after a 9-7 down year in 2001--against opponents with a win percentage of .535. Good thing for young genius Jon Gruden that Tampa Bays' schedule strength dropped to .480 in 2002, helping his team lock up home field advantage through the playoffs.

Oh, and remember that uncharacteristically bad 6-10 record Indianapolis compiled in 2001? Yep, they had an even tougher schedule than Tampa Bay that year, which led to the firing of Jim Mora (Senior) and the hiring of Tony Dungee. And round and round we go!

I didn't include win-loss records but Washington is the only team on the toughest-schedules list to win 10 games and reach the playoffs. The Redskins may have improved more this year than is readily apparent: Last year's 6-10 record and dismal offensive performance were achieved against a much weaker schedule (.477 opponent win percentage) than this year's 10-6 mark.

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Current Washington Post Redskins stories: Seattle to Washington; Seattle all Smiles; Taylor Trial Update; Uneasy Truce; Yes, Taylor Brazen Liar; Seattle Waiting; Holmgren Loser; Getting D; Prioleau Grabs Chance; Brunell Odd; Kicking Bad Habits; Focus on Offense; Kornheiser; Griffin Difference Maker; City Powerless

Lowest Opponent Win Percentages Since 2001

Rank	Year	Team	Opp Win Pct
1	2001	Pittsburgh	0.418
	2003	Kansas City	0.418
3	2005	Seattle	0.430
4	2001	Green Bay	0.434
	2003	St. Louis	0.434
	2004	Atlanta	0.434
7	2001	Arizona	0.445
	2003	Carolina	0.445
	2004	Seattle	0.445
10	2001	New England	0.449
	2002	Green Bay	0.449
	2005	Carolina	0.449
	2005	Tampa Bay	0.449
14	2001	Seattle	0.453
	2004	Philadelphia	0.453
16	2003	Baltimore	0.457
	2003	Cincinnati	0.457
	2003	Minnesota	0.457
	2004	Green Bay	0.457
	2005	Chicago	0.457
	2005	Indianapolis	0.457
	2005	Miami	0.457
23	2003	Dallas	0.461
	2004	Arizona	0.461
25	2001	Chicago	0.465
	2001	San Francisco	0.465
	2003	Seattle	0.465
	2004	Chicago	0.465
	2004	New Orleans	0.465
	2005	Jacksonville	0.465

Highest Opponent Win Percentages Since 2001

Rank	Year	Team	Opp Win Pct
1	2004	Cleveland	0.590
2	2001	Detroit	0.582
3	2001	Carolina	0.574
4	2003	Buffalo	0.570
	2003	Houston	0.570
	2004	Oakland	0.570
7	2001	Indianapolis	0.563
	2005	San Diego	0.559
9	2003	NY Giants	0.555
	2004	Miami	0.555
11	2004	Baltimore	0.551
	2004	Kansas City	0.551
13	2003	Arizona	0.543
	2003	Jacksonville	0.543
	2004	Cincinnati	0.543
16	2002	Cincinnati	0.539
	2003	Atlanta	0.539
	2003	Cleveland	0.539
	2005	Oakland	0.539
	2005	San Francisco	0.539
	2005	Washington	0.539
22	2001	Tampa Bay	0.535
	2003	Detroit	0.535
	2005	Houston	0.535

CAP = KKK

I haven't paid much attention to the Alito Supreme Court nomination hearings. Once you know a little about the nominee the process quickly becomes quite tedious--aside from the occasional comic relief from Senatorial buffoonery. But I just can't refrain from pointing out this comment left on the Washington Post Campaign for the Supreme Court blog because it captures so perfectly the degree to which some on the left believe their own anti-Alito propaganda:

I always find it interesting how often republicans and conservatives bring up Sen. Byrd's KKK membership way back in the day, but when memberships in similiar orgs like CAP are brought up then somehow it's out of bounds

I love that! Membership in Concerned Alumni of Princeton, a conservative group supporting a mismash of causes from getting ROTC back on campus to keeping women off, is equivalent to membership in the most murderously racist organization in American history! And of course Senator Byrd's affinity for the Klu Klux Klan went far beyond mere membership: In 1942 he single-handedly signed up 150 new members and assumed leadership of the inaugural chapter of the KKK in Crab Orchard, West Virginia.

Thickening Gibberish

Something about playoff time in the NFL spurs sportswriters to fill their pages with ever thicker helpings of gibberish. I've been in the mood to bash them recently so here's another round.

NFL.com asked its stable of writers to predict playoff winners for this weekend through the Super Bowl. And boy is there a lot of gibberish. Green Bay Packers safety Darren Sharper notices that Redskins quarterback Mark Brunell and Buccaneers quarterback Chris Simms are similar...and different. After a lot of back and forth he gives the edge to Brunell because of his greater 'playoff experience'. (Do the rules change in the playoffs?)

Simms passed for five times as many yards as Brunell today--so much for playoff experience. Simms did throw one more interception than Brunell--perhaps with a little more experience he'll learn that's a bad thing to do in the playoffs.

Sharper predicted Cliinton Portis would have a big day against the Bucs because that's what he did last time. Portis didn't get the message--he finished with 16 carrys for 53 yards.

Sharper believes the Redskins had the 'momentum' edge against the Bucs after winning their previous five games. Lincoln Kennedy likes the Skins chances against Seattle but is worried that Washington has "expended too much energy just getting to the playoffs". On the other hand, at least they haven't needed to 'rebound from a tough loss'!

(Hmm. I think understand this: Wins give you momentum and make you harder to stop, but they take a lot of energy. When your energy runs out you slow down and become easier to beat. If the Redskins have enough fuel in their tanks they'll reach the Super Bowl. And Joe Gibbs owns a champion NASCAR pit crew so he'll never let his football team run out of gas!)

Today's Wall Street Journal (yes they do have a sports page) gets the gibberish of the week award. A chart in the print edition (not sure if it's online--their site requires a subscription) shows the top-seeded playoff teams and ultimate Super Bowl contenders for the past ten years. Its caption reads:

While much is made of the value of getting the top seed--and it's accompanying home-field advantage--in the NFL postseason, recent history shows that teams with home-field advantage throughout the playoffs made it to the Super Bowl less often than teams that had to win on the road.
...
From 1995 to 2004 in the AFC 3 of 10 teams with the No. 1 seed (home-field advantage) reached the Super Bowl. In the NFC over the same period, 6 of 10 teams with the No. 1 seed (home-field advantage) reached the Super Bowl.

But the chart demonstrates exactly the opposite of what its caption implies! Yes, only nine of 20 teams in the past ten Super Bowls were top-seeds, but there were five times as many lower-seeded teams in the pool. Nine of 20 top-seeded teams (45 percent) reached the Super Bowl while only 11 of 100 lower-seeded teams did (11 percent). Top-seeded teams are actually four times as likely to reach the championship game! Moreover, seven of the 11 lower-seeded teams reaching the Super Bowl were second seeds--meaning they had home field advantage up to the conference championship game.

You'd think a newspaper with over two million daily readers could afford a few numerical literates amongst its fact-checkers!

Skins Beat Bucs?!

You know you found every bit of luck you needed to win an NFL playoff game when:

• You set a new record for fewest yards of offense ever by a playoff winning team (120)
• Your opponent's yards per rush (3.0) are more than double your yards per pass (1.4)
• The other team gains over twice as many yards of offense (120 versus 243)
• Your quarterback's total passing yards (41) are barely more than your average yards per punt (38)
• Your total net passing yards (25) are less than the receiving yards of your opponent's backup tight end (Anthony Becht, 26 yards)
• You fumble three times and get them all back
• The other team fumbles three times and you run one of them back 58 yards for a touchdown (fumble returns are rare and fumble recoveries are considered about 1/3 as valuable as interceptions for this reason)
• Your star safety who's shutting down the other team's star receiver is booted from the game just after halftime for spitting in the face of another player while the referee is pushing him away (expect more stuff like this from Taylor)

That sure was one ugly offensive performance! Early in the season team followers fretted over the Skins' turnover deficit. Some of that was due to Washington's poor fumble recovery luck as I've often written, but the team wasn't picking off interceptions either.In case you haven't been paying attention to how dramatically those trends have reversed, consider these numbers: In the first eight games Washington took balls away from their opponents just six times; over the past nine games including today's win over Tampa Bay Washington has 25 takeaways. That's a change from .75 per game to 2.77 per game!

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Washington Post Redskins stories: Who Needs Offense?; Springs to Return Next Week; Brown Still Alive; Seattle Up Next; Defense Scores KO; Good and Ugly; Shepherd Made Catch

If They Can't Get Football Right...

It's when you read the sports pages, where all the facts and statistics are simple and readily available that you begin to realize how bad some newspaper writers are at getting their stories straight. Thomas Boswell builds up the Redskins' chances of going deep into the playoffs in his latest column by emphasizing Joe Gibbs's past success at taking weak teams to the Super Bowl. To do this he tears down the 1987 Redskins to make them appear much weaker than they were, and builds up their competition to appear stronger than it was. Boswell first runs through a litany of the '87 team's skill position statistics and compares them unfavorably with today's players. But Washington's stars only played 12 games because of the strike shortened season. (Did Boswell forget that? No, he mentions the strike early in the article.) Despite playing just 12 games Gary Clark managed to rack up 1066 yards receiving with a hefty 19 yard per catch average. Clark was third in the league in yards and tenth in TDs that year. Ricky Sanders also managed to pile up 630 yards and average 17 yards per catch. Oh, and don't forget Art Monk who, despite playing just nine games because of injuries, snagged 38 balls for nearly 500 yards. And while Washington had only three pro-bowlers in '87, the offensive line starters for that year were selected for a total of 13 pro-bowls between 1981 and 1988, and the defensive linemen from that team went to six pro-bowls during their careers. "Even the ['87] defense was none too special, allowing 19 points per game -- a bit more than the current Redskins (18)," adds Boswell. There's just one problem with that comparison, though: Point production changes from year-to-year in the NFL. The '87 Redskins were actually ranked sixth in the NFL in points allowed while this year's team is ranked ninth, despite allowing fewer points. More importantly, the '87 team ranked fifth in points scored versus this year's 13th place ranking. Next Boswell builds up the '87 competition. He notes that the 13-2 49ers were hotter than today's Colt's, winning their last three games by 124-7 and that the '87 Bears had gone 40-7 over the three previous seasons. But again he has problems: Washington never played San Francisco because the 49ers were knocked out by the 8-7 Vikings who, by the way, also dispatched the 12-3 Saints (thank you very much). Washington scraped by the Bears 21-17 on a 52-yard Darrell Green punt return TD, and returned home to edge the Vikings before blowing out the mediocre Broncos in the Super Bowl. The 10-4-1 Broncos had the second best record in a weak AFC that year (Cleveland went 10-5). And just how strong were those Bears? Well, it's true they were 40-7 from 1985-87, but four of those seven losses came in '87. In other words, they had the same 11-4 record as Washington (while scoring 23 fewer points and allowing just three fewer points than Washington for the season). There's a big reason why wildcard teams usually fare poorly in the playoffs: Home field advantage makes a huge difference in the NFL. Washington probably has a slightly better than even chance of knocking off the Bucs Saturday in Tampa, but realistically they have a very small chance of going deep into the playoffs. Savor a good season and appreciate the foundation Gibbs is building for serious playoff runs in the next few seasons.

Skins Recover the Playoffs

The Washington Redskins sealed their first playoff appearance since 1999 when Sean Taylor scooped up a fourth-quarter Eagles fumble, rambled 39 yards, and launched himself into the endzone. Taylor's score was the perfect capstone to a season nearly sabotaged by what must have been one of the worst strings of fumble recovery luck experienced by an NFL team.

After the first seven games of the season Washington had recovered just 4 of 26 fumbles on offense and defense combined. Their 15 percent recovery rate at that point was far behind the rest of the league and was extremely improbably. (The chances of recovering just 4 of 26 fumbles are 1 in 3,333--about as likely as tossing 12 heads in a row while flipping a coin.)

From that point to the start of today's game Washington recovered 20 of the next 29 offensive and defensive fumbles to move from worst (by far) to ninth-worst in the league. In today's game Washington recovered four of seven Philly fumbles, lifting their season recovery rate to 45 percent. (The NFL.com stats for today are confusingly contradictory--as of this writing they show five Eagles fumbles and four Skins recoveries on the team stats page; four Skins recoveries and three Eagles recoveries on the game stats page; and three Eagle fumbles and three Skins recoveries on the play-by-play page.)

The five teams with the worst fumble recovery rates through 15 games are Houston, Philadelphia, Cincinnati, Green Bay, and Seattle--all tied at 38 percent. With this poor recovery rate and one of the toughest schedules this year the Texans are likely much better than their 2-14 record indicates. At the other end of the league are New Orleans, the New York Giants, Carolina, Atlanta, and New England with respective recovery rates of 69, 61, 58, 58, and 57 percent. That's bad news for the Saints who may be worse than their 3-13 record--perhaps why Jim Haslett is so eager to escape!

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Current Washington Post NFL stories: Washington Monumental; NFL Playoff Schedule; Giants Clinch East; Gibbs Gamble Pays; Kornheiser; Boswell; Jenkins; Springs Questionable; Bucs Conversion Revisited; Kornheiser II; Wilbon II; Gibbs's Replacement to Stay; Fans Snap up Tickets; Gibb's Methods