Anyone who follows football knows how big a part of the game that parity is. One team can be good one year and bad the next and vice versa for seemingly no reason. This series, called Predicting Parity, seeks to discover why that is and figure out how to predict it. Every season since the NFL went to the new playoff format in 2002, the following season has always had at least one team has always won 6 more games than the year before and one team has always lost 6 more games than the year before. I’ve dubbed those teams plumeters and super sleepers. They are shown in the chart below.

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Team	Year	Change	Next Change		Team	Year	Change	Next Change
Oakland	2003	-7	1		Cincinnati	2003	6	0
NY Giants	2003	-6	2		Pittsburgh	2004	9	-4
Tennessee	2004	-7	-1		San Diego	2004	8	-3
Kansas City	2004	-6	3		Atlanta	2004	6	-3
Miami	2004	-6	5		Chicago	2005	6	2
NY Jets	2005	-6	6		Tampa Bay	2005	6	-7
Philadelphia	2005	-7	4		NY Jets	2006	6	-6
Green Bay	2005	-6	4		New Orleans	2006	7	-3
Washington	2006	-6	4		Baltimore	2006	7	-8
Tampa Bay	2006	-7	5		Cleveland	2007	6	-6
Baltimore	2007	-8	6		Baltimore	2008	6	-2
Chicago	2007	-6	2		Atlanta	2008	7	-2
NY Jets	2007	-6	5		Miami	2008	10	-4
Jacksonville	2008	-6	2		Cincinnati	2009	5.5	-6
Green Bay	2008	-7	5		Kansas City	2010	6	-3
Seattle	2008	-6	1		Tampa Bay	2010	7	-6
Cleveland	2008	-6	1		St. Louis	2010	6	-5
Detroit	2008	-7	2		San Francisco	2011	7
Tampa Bay	2009	-6	7
Cincinnati	2010	-6	5
Minnesota	2010	-6	-3
Carolina	2010	-6	4
Indianapolis	2011	-8
Tampa Bay	2011	-6
			3.181818182					-3.88235294

Those are actually the biggest changes I’ve gotten from any of these list. Teams that win 6+ fewer games than the year before win, on average, 3.18 more games the following season, while teams that win 6+ more games than the year before win, on average, 3.88 fewer games the following season. So many things have to go right for a team to improve by that much and so many things have to go wrong for a team to get that much worse. Things typically are different in the following year. Of the 17 teams to win 6+ more games than the year before since 2003, 6 of them won 6+ fewer the following year.

Last year, San Francisco had a record +28 turnover differential, which we’ve proven is both unsustainable and unpredictable on a yearly basis. They only had one defensive starter (Patrick Willis) miss any games defensively. They also had career years from 10 of 11 defensive starters (exception: Patrick Willis). If their turnover differential goes towards zero, and a few guys on defense miss significant time, and several guys regress defensively (all totally reasonable things), that team could easily miss the playoffs.

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On the opposite end of the spectrum, Indianapolis and Tampa Bay figure to have better years this year. I don’t have Indianapolis in the playoffs or anything, just because of how poor that supporting cast is. They have drafted very poorly in recent years before this year and had minimal talent around Peyton Manning in 2010, so much so that he only managed 10 wins. Their supporting cast might have even been worse last year. If Peyton Manning can barely manage 10 wins, how is Andrew Luck supposed to win any more than 8 as a rookie? They’ll be better though.

Tampa Bay, meanwhile, should be in between what they were in 2010 and what they were last year. In 2010, they had less than 20 turnovers and won 10 games and last year they had more than 35 turnovers and won 4 games. Turnover differentials aside, this team has had 6 or 7 win talent for 2 years and this offseason added guys like Doug Martin, Vincent Jackson, and Carl Nicks, as well as Mark Barron, Lavonte David, and Eric Wright. They could also finally get a full season from Gerald McCoy (3rd overall pick in 2010) for the 1st time in his career and 2011 3rd round pick Mason Foster could improve off a miserable season. They’ll be in the playoff race in a loaded NFC.

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