Oakland Raiders: Tackling Tough Opponents Is What They Do

A lot of folks enjoy looking at pictures or graphs. The old saying is that a picture is worth a thousand words.

I believe in that old saying, so I transform numbers into graphs so that the reader can see the ups and downs, the periods in which one team dominates another, the points where their records are the same, and so on.

The article photo contains a graph of the wins of the Oakland Raiders and the Chicago Bears, from 1978 to 2009. In 1978 the NFL started having 16 game seasons so that is why 1978 was selected as a start point.

Near the end of the graph you do see that the Bears dominate the Raiders.

We could conjecture that if the direction of the Bears "overall wins" continues, they seem to be going downward, while the Oakland Raiders seem to be moving upward and are constant in their performances in both 2008 and 2009.

Also note that at the very beginning of the graph the Oakland Raiders were dominant, followed by an overlap, and again Oakland domination.

It's clear to me that there could easily be a breakdown for the Bears and a breakthrough for the Raiders.

Here is the raw data:

Oakland	Bears	Compare
9	7	O
9	10	B
11	7	O
7	6	O
8	3	O
12	8	O
11	10	O
12	15	B
8	14	B
5	11	B
7	12	B
8	6	O
12	11	O
9	11	B
7	5	O
10	7	O
9	9	TIE
8	9	B
7	7	TIE
4	4	TIE
8	4	O
8	6	O
12	5	O
10	13	B
11	4	O
4	7	B
5	5	TIE
4	11	B
2	13	B
4	7	B
5	9	B
5	7	B

The Chicago Bears had a 3-13 record  in 1982 and the Oakland Raiders had a 2-14 in 2006. Those are the years of the minimum overall wins for each of the teams.

Now let's focus on more recent years:

The difference between overall wins in the past seven years, using the formula Oakland minus Bears, gives us:

Looking at the data using this measure indicates that the Oakland Raiders have improved over the past four years, with the difference at a minimum in 2009. That could be considered encouraging.

Go Raiders! Just win in 2010, baby! And remember that it is the heritage of the team to tackle tough opponents and cause the upset.