[stupac2]

Clemson is an interesting example. A few years ago “Clemsoning” was a verb. Suddenly they stopped losing those two games a year they shouldn’t, and became kings of the world.  Wonder what Dabo started doing differently, if anything.

Exactly. We're looking at a chaotic, small-sample-size system and trying to impose meaning onto it. There's not enough data and too many variables, everything is overfit and people tend to overreact to things.

Does Stanford really derp away games at a high frequency under Shaw? In 2011 Oregon just destroyed us, that wasn't a derp. Maybe the Fiesta was a derp, but it's also a pretty irrelevant one in the grand scheme of things. In 2012 I don't think either loss was a derp, our offense just wasn't very good and low-scoring games are high variance. In 2013 I suppose you can argue that the two regular-season losses were derps, I happen to think that MSU was just a really good team. In 2014 we had problems but I think USC was really the only derp. 2015 is tough because while we definitely performed worse than we should have against Northwestern, that was a good team, we were on the road in an early game, and early-season games are weird. Maybe you count it, but Oregon certainly wasn't. In 2016 you can count Colorado, I guess, the rest we just got rolled. This season we should've beat SDSU, but WSU and USC both times beat us fair and square.

So my count is:

2011: 0
2012: 0
2013: 2
2014: 1
2015: 1
2016: 1
2017: 1

That's an average of less than one "defeat from the jaws of victory" loss per year. Is that too many? I dunno, certainly it would be nice if it were zero, but given the realities of the game I'm not sure it's feasible. I could probably do this exercise with the Patriots over the same timeframe and find just as many games, perhaps more (I know fans rue the 2015 regular season for how many games were pissed away, there's always some). The only teams you won't find this with are the ones that regularly have a massive talent advantage, and even they do it too (see: OSU vs VT in 2015).

[stupac2]

Clemson is an interesting example. A few years ago “Clemsoning” was a verb. Suddenly they stopped losing those two games a year they shouldn’t, and became kings of the world.  Wonder what Dabo started doing differently, if anything.

Exactly. We're looking at a chaotic, small-sample-size system and trying to impose meaning onto it. There's not enough data and too many variables, everything is overfit and people tend to overreact to things.

Does Stanford really derp away games at a high frequency under Shaw? In 2011 Oregon just destroyed us, that wasn't a derp. Maybe the Fiesta was a derp, but it's also a pretty irrelevant one in the grand scheme of things. In 2012 I don't think either loss was a derp, our offense just wasn't very good and low-scoring games are high variance. In 2013 I suppose you can argue that the two regular-season losses were derps, I happen to think that MSU was just a really good team. In 2014 we had problems but I think USC was really the only derp. 2015 is tough because while we definitely performed worse than we should have against Northwestern, that was a good team, we were on the road in an early game, and early-season games are weird. Maybe you count it, but Oregon certainly wasn't. In 2016 you can count Colorado, I guess, the rest we just got rolled. This season we should've beat SDSU, but WSU and USC both times beat us fair and square.

So my count is:

2011: 0
2012: 0
2013: 2
2014: 1
2015: 1
2016: 1
2017: 1

That's an average of less than one "defeat from the jaws of victory" loss per year. Is that too many? I dunno, certainly it would be nice if it were zero, but given the realities of the game I'm not sure it's feasible. I could probably do this exercise with the Patriots over the same timeframe and find just as many games, perhaps more (I know fans rue the 2015 regular season for how many games were pissed away, there's always some). The only teams you won't find this with are the ones that regularly have a massive talent advantage, and even they do it too (see: OSU vs VT in 2015).