An analysis of franchise momentum: The Chiefs' Dow Jones Average.

[Rain Man]

Many of us speak of the dark days of the 1970s and 1980s and warn you young bucks that it could be worse.

Well, it's pretty bad, and I started wondering just where we stand relative to the Dark Ages. So I developed an algorithm.

Here's how it works. Starting with Day 1 of the franchise, I looked at every regular and post-season game in our history. Each week I did the following:

A win is worth 1 point and a loss is worth -1 point.
I then add it to 99 percent of the score of the previous week.

In this way, it creates a long tail showing the momentum of the franchise, because a win or loss shows up the next week at 99%, the following week at 99% of that, and so on. So it more or less traces a path of the long-term goodwill or badwill built up by the franchise over time as every single game in history continues to ripple through the Chiefs' space-time continuum.

I made a couple of adjustments, too. I made a playoff game worth 3 points for a win and -3 for a loss, and I also added or subtracted 1 point at the end of each regular season depending on whether or not we made the playoffs. These points get tossed in with the rest of the scores.

The Chiefs Dow Jones can thus be positive or negative, with a positive number indicating more good times than bad, and negative representing, of course, times like now where we are killing our pack animals for food and the dead are carted away in wheelbarrows.

What I found is shown in the accompanying graph. The numbers don't really mean anything but are more of an abstract measure. Some key elements of the timeline include:

1. After some early positive and negative fluctuations, the Chiefs found themselves with a positive Dow of 0.08 in Week 2 of the 1962 season, after a 26-16 win over the Raiders to go 2-0. The Dow would remain positive for the next 15 years after that win. Go, Lenny!

2. With significant assistance from the AFL championship win in 1962, the Chiefs Dow Jones passed +10.0 for the first time in Week 1 of the 1963 season as the Chiefs blasted the Broncos 59-7. However, by Week 5 the Chiefs were 2-2-1, having just lost to the Buffalo Bills 35-26, and they wouldn't see the 10.0 point mark again until a 32-24 win over the Jets in Week 12 of the 1966 season, on their way to the loss in Super Bowl I. So the 1962 championship more or less created the little spike you see in the early days.

3. The Chiefs' star rose rapidly after that, with with the Dow surpassing +20 on Week 12 of the 1968 season. A 24-10 win over the Houston Oilers put the Chiefs at 10-2, and they went on to a 12-2 record but a humiliating playoff loss.

4. 1969 was of course a banner season. After ending 1968 with an index of 19.49, the Chiefs blew through the season with an 11-3 record and three postseason wins, including Super Bowl IV. We ended the season at a then-record Dow of +33.48.

5. We actually beat the Dow record briefly in 1970, though as you can see from the graph, we were topping out and struggling to stay at that level. At the end of Week 12 of the 1970 season the Dow stood at 33.61. We were 7-3-2 at that point, having just beaten the pushover Denver Broncos 16-0 and with the Super Bowl win still fresh. However, losses to Oakland and San Diego the following two weeks kept us out of the playoffs.

6. The team was still strong, though. I'm girding myself for neg rep from milkman, but the high water for the Kansas City Chiefs franchise actually occurred not upon the Super Bowl win, but rather at the end of Week 14 in 1971, as we prepared for a playoff game. The Dow at this point was at 33.63 and the Chiefs were a powerful team of winning veterans. We were 10-3-1 and had just beaten the Buffalo Bills and their young running back O.J. Simpson by a score of 22-9. While we'd missed the playoffs the previous year, we'd made it the two years before that and of course still had the Super Bowl in recent memory.

Of course, we would have our beating hearts ripped out and eaten the following week on Christmas Day, starting a horrific multi-decade decline that is the curse of Garo Yepremian.

7. From that high point of 33.63, we began a terrible, terrible decline, both long and rapid. A 23-16 loss to the Bengals in Week 5 of 1972 dropped us below 30 for good, and a 14-7 loss to the Chargers in Week 9 of 1974 dropped us below 20 points for the first time since Week 3 of the 1969 season. A 28-20 loss to Oakland to end the 1975 season dropped the index below 10.0.

8. In Week 4 of 1977 the Dow actually fell below zero, meaning that the franchise's cumulative memory was now negative. On that day, the Chiefs fell to 0-4 with, ironically, a 23-7 loss to the Broncos.

9. The fall did not stop there. In Week 6 of 1978 we fell to an index below -10 with a loss to the Buccaneers, and the low point of that era occurred with a loss to San Diego in Week 4 of 1980, when our index fell to -18.64.

10. Marv Levy stabilized the franchise a bit, temporarily pulling the index above -10.0, and then Mackovic came in. He didn't do quite as well as Marv as the Chiefs started sliding again, but his playoff spot in 1986 got the index to -10.28 before the playoff loss.

11. Mackovic was fired, and Gansz came in and started digging. An ugly loss to Seattle in Week 2 of 1988 took the index below -20.0 for the first time ever. By the time he left, the index was at a then-record -23.35 as 1988 drew to a close.

12. In 1989 a holy trinity came to town: Carl Peterson, Marty Schottenheimer, and Derrick Thomas. It took a few games to catch fire, though, and the low point of the Chiefs franchise occurred when a 21-17 loss to the Bengals took the index to an all-time pre-Pioli low of -24.41. However, things began looking up, and by the end of 1989 the index had risen to -19.74.

13. Bam, bam, bam. Faster than Derrick Thomas beating a left tackle, the Chiefs' fortunes rose. As they headed into a heartbreaking playoff loss to the Dolphins in 1990, the index was up to -10.14. In Week 7 of 1993, a young Will Shields and an old Joe Montana had resurrected the franchise, getting above 0 for the first time since 1977 with a 17-14 win over the Chargers as part of a 5-1 start to the season. Two playoff wins would push the index to 9.30.

14. In Week 8 of 1995, a 21-7 win over the Broncos would push the index above 10 for the first time since 1975.

15. The high water mark of the Peterson/Schottenheimer/Thomas era was the end of Week 16 of the 1997 season, when the index stood at 19.07. However, the theft of the playoffs the next week by a salary-cap-cheating team signalled the fall of Rome and its helmet-haired emperor.

16. In Week 1 of the 1999 season, coach Gunther Cunningham lost to the Bears and their "high-fangled trickery" and the index fell below 10.0. The index was at 5.43 when Gunther got his walking e-mails.

17. Dick Vermeil took over a team in crisis, and the index actually fell below zero three times in his early years, Week 13 of 2001 and Weeks 3 and 17 of 2002 as he struggled to stay above zero. However, he then assembled the greatest offensive show in Kansas City history and things looked up.

18. The high point of the Vermeil era was a 9.29 index at the end of the 2003 regular season, just before we entered the puntless game in Indianapolis. When Vermeil left, the index was back down to 4.98.

19. Enter Herm. He actually managed to increase the index for 16 weeks, rising to 7.16 before the embarrassing playoff loss to Indianapolis that dropped his first-year index to 4.08. From there on out it was downhill, with the index dropping below zero in Week 13 of 2007 after a 24-10 loss to the Chargers. A 30-27 loss to the Buccaneers in Week 9 of 2008 dropped the index below -10.0, and when Herm's work was finally done in 2008 the index stood at a frightful -16.60.

20. Haley arrived, and muddled about a bit. He got us as high as -14.45 the week before his playoff game, but then a bad 2011 dropped his cumulative reign into negative growth, as he was fired at an index of -18.04.

The Crennel era began with a little positive momentum, but then the bottom dropped out. Down, down, down in that burning ring of fire. Then further down. And further. As the 2012 season came to a close, the week 15 loss to the Raiders took the franchise to its lowest index in history. Then the Colts game dragged it down further. And finally, the Broncos game took us even further into uncharted territory. As of today, the Chiefs' index is at the lowest point in franchise history, at an astonishing level of -26.09.

[Rain Man]

Here's an overlay of the two.

[Marcellus]

Awesome stuff RM but are you going to feel responsible for the sudden drop in CP membership activity after the depression sets in?

[Marcellus]

This just proves that this place is a living proof that misery loves company.

[Zebedee DuBois]

I am compelled to emerge from my hiding place to commend you, Rainman, on this fine piece of work. A stunning visual depiction of our collective ennui.






now, back behind the drapes, no one look at my shoes.

[WilliamTheIrish]

Originally Posted by Rain Man

Thanks. It did indeed take about 6 hours to put together. I finished a few work deadlines and had some time tonight....

You're clearly insane. Loved the algorithm.

[patteeu]

Originally Posted by cdcox

Awesome work. I think this comes pretty close to capturing the fan sentiment at any given time.

BUT...

I think to get a cumulative perspective of the history of the franchise, you should integrate the area under the curve.

The Carl Peterson era has a very similar area above the curve as the desperate period in the '70's and '80's have below the curve. They essentially cancel one another out. What the current times are doing are eating into the glory years. We are still positive as a franchise, but are quickly burning up our legacy built through domniation of the old AFL.

Yes. And even though the current status of the team is nearly as low as it got in the late 80's, the fact that we haven't already been < -10.0 for the better part of 12 years this time makes it easier to bear assuming we pull out of it within the next few years, IMO.

Great work, Rain Man.

Can you do all 32 franchises now so we have something to compare to?

[patteeu]

Originally Posted by Rain Man

Here's an overlay of the two.

Ouch. It looks like the Chiefs are the Raiders without their glory years. I didn't need to see that.

[Rain Man]

As an update, our stock index now stands at -21.43, which is the second-lowest season-ending stock index in Chiefs history. (The low season-ending point was -23.35 as we ended the 1988 season.) Interestingly, if we had lost the final game against the Broncos, our index would have been -23.43.

As noted before, the low point of all time was Week 4 of 1989 when our index dropped to -24.41 following a 1-3 start. If we lose our first four games next year we'll drop below this mark.


I looked at another variable that I'll call hope. That variable is the change registered over the course of one season. Whereas the index captures total happiness, the Hope variable covers the change in happiness over the course of a year.

Not surprisingly, the best years are the championship years. The Hope variable was a +13.99 in 1969, indicating a very bullish outlook. The next two hope jumps were in 1962 (+11.66) and 1993 (+9.84). On the contrary, the years when hope dropped most dramatically were 2008 (-11.39), 1977 (-10.87), and 2007 (-9.30). This year was a -4.83, which is bad but not as bad as other years.

I think based on this we should call the Herm era the Era of Lost Hope.

[TigerPig]

This chart made me orgasm like Peter North after a week long hiatus from porn. Its a buttfucking work of art and you should be praised endlessly.

[whoman69]

So you're saying we should have sold out stock high in 1971?

[HemiEd]

Missed this thread the first time Kevin, very nicely done. Well that is an understatement, my vocabulary will not do it justice.

It has been a long road.

[Mile High Mania]

Amazing work... would be cool to see the Broncos and Chargers... even the Seahawks for old time sake as an overall comparison. I'm not sure if you used the data from profootballreference.com or not, but if I could get you the data... just tell me how you did it.

[teedubya]

That's why you don't buy stock in the Chiefs... or bet on them.



Sell MORTIMER!!! SEEEEEEEeeeeeeeeeLLLLLLLLLLLLLL

[RJ]

I think I'll keep throwing good money after bad until the day I die.

*Sigh*......I'll never be able to retire at this rate.

[Rain Man]

Originally Posted by Mile High Mania

Amazing work... would be cool to see the Broncos and Chargers... even the Seahawks for old time sake as an overall comparison. I'm not sure if you used the data from profootballreference.com or not, but if I could get you the data... just tell me how you did it.

I'd really like to do it for all the teams, and actually have it set up pretty good now. It'd be great if you or others could help. Anyone who wants to do this, here's the system. (The Broncos' index is going to be depressing to us Chiefs fans, though.)

Just take the enclosed spreadsheet and do the following:

Go into pro-football-reference, and year by year grab the schedule/record. It's the page that looks like this: http://www.pro-football-reference.co...s/crd/2009.htm

You can select the whole thing with a careful click and drag, and then copy the whole thing into cells G through AA. This is the only time consuming part because you have to copy and paste each year individually. However, there's a linky thing at the top that will let you go directly to the next year's table.



It's very important to start with the first year of the franchise at the top of the spreadsheet and work your way down, with the most recent year last. For AFL legacy teams, that means you start with 1960. For other teams, you might be starting in 1920 or 1950 or 1976 or whenever the team was founded.

You then have to do the following:

1. Delete the bye weeks.

2. Cell F is nothing but a count, so it means nothing.

3. In Cell E, insert a 0 (zero) for non-playoff games, and a 3 for any playoff games.

4. Cell D is the number of years since a playoff appearance, but I ended up never using that, so you can ignore it.

5. Cell C is the main formula, so leave it alone.

6. Cell B is the Year. Just a bookkeeping thing.

7. Cell A is some random calculations. The ones at the end of each year are the Hope Calculations, which merely compare the stock index at the end of one year to the next year. There are some other random calculations in there that you can ignore. All of this is optional.

8. You'll need to define the data set to update the graph, or otherwise it might not include the whole time period. That function depends on the version of Excel you have. If you don't know how to do that, just upload the file to me and I'll update the graph.

If your team had more or fewer playoff appearances, you may need more or fewer rows. You can just copy the formula into any new rows you need.

If you have an old version of Excel the file may not open. Let me know.