Lost amid the nationwide hype over the Cold, Hard Football Facts Defensive Hog Index was the fact that the Steelers topped the NFL in our Relativity Index this year, too.

 

In other words, the Steelers were the best team in the 2008 regular season, relative to the quality of their opposition. The Patriots topped the NFL in Relativity in 2007. So, if not for the greatest upset in Super Bowl history, the two teams to top our Relativity Index since its creation in 2007 would have gone on to win the championship each year.

 

Instead, of course, that honor goes to the DHI, as the Giants and Steelers topped this indicator each of the past two years.

 

The big question now is whether the 20-2 performance of the Defensive Hog Index picking playoff winners since its creation is a long-term trend or just a sudden anomaly. In fact, it's the big question our readers have in the wake of Pittsburgh's victory in Super Bowl XLIII and we've got tons of email about it. Some folks even think we're hiding past data, because it doesn't corroborate to the recent performance of the DHI.

 

The truth, folks, is this: the Defensive Hog Index was just created during the 2007 season, largely with the help of friend of the CHFF Jonathan Comey, the sports editor at the Standard-Times of New Bedford, Mass. We simply have no data on the DHI before 2007.

 

But during the 2008 season we finally caught up with the times and created a database that we now use to compile all our stats. Our goal here in the off-season is to improve the database to help us spit out stats more effectively in the future, but also improve it so that we can go back in time and compare teams throughout history using all our indicators.

 

So that's kind of the big goal here in the 2009 off-season. It will not only help you learn more about teams from the past, it will allow us to use our own stats for greater historical analysis.

 

In the meantime, here's the final performance of all our Quality Stats over the past two years when it comes to predicting playoff winners.

 

Defensive Hog Index – 20-2

Relativity – 12-10

Scoreability – 11-11

Vegas favorites 11-11

Big Play Index – 11-11

Quality Stats average – 11-11

Home teams – 10-10 (only 20 games because Super Bowls are neutral site)

Passing Yards Per Attempt – 10-12

Defensive Passer Rating – 10-12

Bendability – 9-13

Offensive Hog Index – 7-14 (only 21 games because one playoff game featured two teams tied in this indicator)