NFL 2013-2014

[Professor]

[Bauce]

I tend to think you're pretty level headed though optimistic.

[Professor]

Of course experience matters. Especially playoff experience.

When you play regular season games, you play for the long strategy. You hold back a bit in a game, because you know you have another one next week, regardless of what happens in this one. And, if you lose this one and win the next 5, you still make the postseason.

In the playoffs, you play 100% from the start. Because you know that if you lose, you have a year to recuperate.

Also, experience helps because you won't have jitters. When you've thrown a first pass of a game in a SB or multiple playoff games before, you aren't nervous. You just do your job. When its your first playoff game, and the coach calls a pass play, the first thing on your mind is "don't screw this up" or "it's my big moment" - not what it should be, which is just thinking about the route, the defense, etc.

Now, is it a huge deal? I don't think nearly as big as people make it out to be. But, it can definitely affect things.

Also, when it's your first game, leading up to it, you'll be excited. This means you may not have slept well the night before. I remember not sleeping but a couple hours on the day before my first championship race. But, once I'd won the championship, I was not as nervous about it the next year when it came around again.

[The Dude]

[exploited]

Playoff experience is important in ALL sports, and experience is important in all high-stakes human endeavours. It is a matter of psychology and has been studied again and again - high stakes equals high stress, and the more experience you have, the better able you are to cope.

This is why the army is so big on training. It is why astronauts do simulations again and again. Experience will not make you a better team, but it will make you less likely to screw up due to stress and nerves.

This is an article concerning baseball, but I expect it holds true in most other sports as well:

http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/artic ... ostseason/

[The Dude]

[The Dude]

[exploited]

It isn't that experience will make you perform better all on it's own. You can still play as well as usual while being nervous, and keep your averages the same. But when there is fifteen seconds left in the game and the outcome is riding on you, that is when experience helps. One failed pass won't show up in the stats, but can be the difference between winning and losing.

I have seen dozens of examples of players not being able to do something they can otherwise do 99% of the time. The statistics are really quite irrelevant here, because statistics deal with averages, not one or two absolutely crucial plays. To say that stress and coping ability doesn't effect the outcome of high stakes decisions is simply delusional.

[The Dude]

From 2000 - 2013 1st round, NFL teams with more postseason game experiences (# of games a player of theirs has played in the playoffs) is 69-67. Since 2006, teams with less experience have actually won more.

Of course, performance matters more and measuring individual performance for most NFL positions is kind of difficult.

But team wide, there seems to be no relevance to your team having more experience at all.


I can't believe people actually by into such a stupid narrative. Especially in the NFL where upsets are much more likely and we see it all the time and the nature of a winner take all game rather than a series.

[exploited]

In terms of teams, the experience factor is probably nill.

In terms of individual players, that is probably not the case. There are plenty of notorious choke artists.