Correlation vs. Causation

A good example of the stupidity of statistics:

There’s a line of demarcation where too much Brees becomes a bad thing. It’s somewhere in the low 40s. Yeah, Brees threw 44 times in victories against Houston and Jacksonville, 45 times in a three-point win over Carolina and 47 in a December victory against Tennessee. But none of those was pretty, and Houston was the only playoff team among that bunch.

In games in which Brees attempted 43 or fewer passes, the Saints were 8-0. They also were at their best in those games. They had a running game, some defense and no huge mistakes by the special teams.

But the Saints apparently didn’t notice that trend. They put too much on Brees on Saturday, and they did have some valid reasons for that. Brees didn’t help matters with two interceptions, and the Saints turned the ball over three times in the first quarter.

The article suggests the reason the Saints lost was that they relied too heavily on Brees. If, the article says, they had Brees throw under 40 times, the Saints would have had a better chance of winning. Here is a great example of the media getting things totally backwards. In games when the Saints are ahead, they are much more likely to run the football and hence, Brees pass numbers will be down. In games when they are behind, like yesterday, they are forced to throw the ball more to play catch up. The fact that they threw the ball 63 times was because they were behind, not the reason they were behind. These columnists are so stupid. The statistics tell the story of the game -- they don't make the story of the game. If the Saints ran more yesterday, they would have never even caught up with the 49ers once they were down 17 points. The Niners D would have stopped them and the game would not have been close. It is as if these people have never watched football before and are relaying on statistics to tell them something anyone with a brain and a set of eyes can see on the field.

Furthermore, if Alex Smith hadn't become a miracle worker, and there wasn't much reason to think he had it in him, we'd be talking about Brees' performances as one of the greatest playoff performances of all time and the Saints coaches as genius' who were able to rally their team back from one of the worst playoff deficits of all time. As far as I can tell, Brees got fooled on that one interception by Goldsen and his second pick was not a bad play as it was 3rd and long and he just chucked it up and it ended up working pretty much like a 35 yard punt -- basically a smart, calculated risk.

In short, I thought Brees played a near perfect game. The same cannot be said of the Saints defense.