Why Barnwell Was Wrong About the Niners

Barnwell writes about how his prediction of a Niner regression was not all that wrong.

I hate this type of analysis -- mostly because it looks the wrong way through the spyglass.  It reminds me of screenwriting books which analyze why certain movies work after they've been made.  The irony with all these books - they are never written by people who write a good movies - and yet they proclaim to be able to tell you how to write a screenplay.

Backwards analysis is not the same process as making, building, or even making predictions.  Backwards analysis explains why such and such occurred, but doesn't offer much in the way of predictive value, nor does it factor in luck, timing, and all sorts of randomness, which is a huge component of life.

Analysis like this is for history and the academy and has its use.  But don't mistake it for being predictive or even in the same ballpark as the type of intelligence and strategy it takes to build a winning football team.

Barnwell's analysis is a more complicated version of the following --

1.  A team wins when they run the ball 30 times or more.  Therefore, the team should run the ball for the first 30 plays to maximize their chances at winning.

2.  Movies studios lose money when they make bad movies, so therefore they should only make good movies to profit.

You get my point.