Thursday "Are You Ready For Some Football" Links

-According to Banter-favorite Andrew Brandt, teams that win in March rearely win in January. [NFP]

-Matt Bowen takes us inside the playbook in a micro-preview of tonight's Saints-Vikings matchup. [NFP]

-Lombardi. I find a little humorous that seven of the most eight intriguing people in the NFL are quarterbacks and the eighth is a head coach. [NFL.com]

-In a recent article, Brian Burke of Advanced NFL Stats critiques some of Football Outsiders' "theories":

• Standard team rankings based on total yardage are inherently flawed. -- Ok
• Running on third-and-short is more likely to convert than passing on third-and-short. -- Concur
• If their overall yards per carry are equal, a running back who consistently gains yardage on every play is more valuable than a boom-and-bust running back who is frequently stuffed at the line but occasionally breaks a long highlight-worthy run. -- Not always. If you're the underdog or significantly behind in the game, you want the boom/bust guy.
• A running back with 370 or more carries during the regular season will usually suffer either a major injury or a loss of effectiveness the following year, unless he is named Eric Dickerson. -- False. As one of my commenters put it, this notion "is a violent assault on good logic and reason."
• Teams with more offensive penalties generally lose more games, but there is no correlation between defensive penalties and losses. -- Probably false. It's possible they've fallen for the same trap I fell into years ago. The NFL calls penalty yards by an opponent "defensive penalties." But if true, it's interesting. The real question would be why don't defensive penalties matter?
• Field-goal percentage is almost entirely random from season to season, while kickoff distance is one of the most consistent statistics in football. -- True.
• Field position is fluid. -- Huh? I think this is just supposed to mean that defenses affect their offenses' field position and vice-versa.
• Injuries regress to the mean on the seasonal level, and teams that avoid injuries in a given season tend to win more games. -- Ok. Did we need a study for this?
• A team will score more when playing a bad defense, and will give up more points when playing a good offense. -- And all this time I thought it was the other way around!
• The future NFL success of quarterbacks chosen in the first two rounds of the draft can be projected with a high degree of accuracy by using just two statistics from college: games started and completion percentage. -- Intriguing, but I'd like to see how this system has performed since it was published. As I recall, it's been off the mark.
• Championship teams are generally defined by their ability to dominate inferior opponents, not their ability to win close games. -- Interesting.

-Two of Deadspin's nerdier recent posts:

-Real-time Sales Analytics

-Breaking down the "greatest kick ever" with physics

-When Harold Miner surfaces, we link. [Lost Lettermen]

-Well, that was easy: