Do You See What I See: Oakland Raiders, Dallas Cowboys' Patterns?

Studying the historical and contemporary performance of the Oakland Raiders is a heap of fun when you see and discern information using verbal, symbolic, numerical and graphical data. Decoding these ways of seeing allow for a rich discussion of performance.

One the most prolific and celebrated writers on the Bleacher Report, Leroy Watson, said that I seem to see patterns in most things. That was a humbling compliment. Now let's have a little fun looking at the numbers for the Oakland Raiders and the Dallas Cowboys.

For example, and to set the tone. Do you see a line of symmetry in the figure in the article's photo? Here is a hint: Look at the picture, thinking of horizontal lines, and vertical lines, then diagonal lines.

I see a vertical line of symmetry. Do you see it?

Now let's look at the performance data for the Oakland Raiders and the Dallas Cowboys.

Oakland has a win-loss record of 3-7

Dallas has a win-loss record of 7-3

Oakland has a win-loss ratio of .3

Dallas has a win-loss ratio of .7

Now look at this mapping:

Oakland         Dallas           

3 ----------->  7               wins

7------------>  3               losses

.3----------->  .7              ratio

Do you see the pattern? There is a line of symmetry in this pattern. It, too, is a vertical line.

If you perform a reflection with respect to a vertical line, and flip the wins to losses, and the losses to wins, and then flip the magnitude of the win-loss ratios, you see that these teams are inverses of each other.

So, my recommendation is that Oakland is going to have to play real smart and real hard to reverse the pattern set forth in the 2009 season.

Do not take Dallas for granted.

Another example: The B/R writer named El posted a comment on Sunday, Nov. 22. At the time of his comment, Dallas had a score 0, and the opponent had 6 points. In the last few minutes of that game, Dallas overcame their opponent, and they were victorious.

So, the same dynamic performance that we had over the Bengals on Nov. 22, was similarly exhibited by Dallas in the last few moments of their game.

My conjecture: Dallas is going to be a formidable opponent.

How do I know? The numbers tell me so.