No wire hangers EVER!

 

The Fillability Index is an annual Cold, Hard Football Facts tradition that allows us to distinguish between:

Essentially, we simply look at how each team ranked across the board in our Quality Stats. And then we look at their personnel acquisitions and determine if those acquisitions actually address their needs.

 

You'd be surprised how often a team's actions and its actual needs do not meet.

 

We also look from time to time at what the "pundits" are saying about each team: sometimes their "team need" profiles miss the mark because the "pundit" in question is either not looking at the appropriate data or because he/she's just an idiot.

 

You'd be surprised at how common those results are, too. (Or, given the lowly state of journalism these days, maybe you won't be.)

 

In any case, below is a chart showing how your favorite NFL team stacked up last season across the board in all of our Quality Stats. (Click here for the overview of each AFC team and here for each NFC team.) But you can pretty much figure it out on your own.

 

For example, the Cardinals kinda need a little help on defense. In fact, when you look at their No. 32 ranking last year in our Bendability Index, and a dreadful No. 30 spot in Defensive Passer Rating, you can conclude that it's something of a minor miracle that they ever reached the Super Bowl.

 

Of course, both those weak links snapped like Joan Crawford in a closet full of wire hangers when it mattered most: on Pittsburgh's final game-winning drive of Super Bowl XLIII.  (For those of you who forgot, Steelers QB Ben Roethlisberger passed for 84 yards, and the winning score, on the final drive.)

 

In fact, here's a look at the performance of Arizona's defense in the Super Bowl a couple months ago:

 

show video here

 

 

As you can see, Arizona's defense seemed pretty high-strung at the outset and almost kept it all together, but then it all just snapped in a big ugly ending that left them in tears. So to put it another way: if your team has too many wire hangers in its statistical closet, sooner or later they're going to snap.

 

A well-managed team is going to make off-season personnel decisions that allow it to weed out the statistical wire hangers. A poorly managed team (like the Millen-vintage Lions) will ignore the statistical wire hangers ... and ultimately get victimized by them.

 

In the case of the Cardinals, it's pretty obvious the needs are on the defensive side of the ball and that the only things they did well last year were pass and catch. So if the team starts grabbing wide receivers in the first couple rounds of the draft this weekend, expect Arizona fans to pull their own Joan Crawford.

 

Keep this chart handy throughout the off-season. It will help you, and us, track your team's offseason performance in our all-important Fillability Index. We'll provide Fillability grades after the draft, as we've done each year in the past.

 

	Bend	Score	OHI	DHI	PYPA	DPR	BPI	Rel
Arizona	32	10	18	17t	6	30	15	19
Atlanta	2	17	3	23t	3	18	13t	11
Baltimore	3	7	23	3	18	1	1	2
Buffalo	15	16	22	17t	22	17	24	22
Carolina	9	9	5	19t	5	15	4t	6
Chicago	14	1	24	6t	25	10	9t	16
Cincinnati	21	30	31	27	32	21	25	29
Cleveland	7	29	27	29	31	13	21	26
Dallas	29	21	9t	6t	11	20	27	18
Denver	28	28	1	31	7	31	31	25
Detroit	31	22	32	30	27	32	32	31
Green Bay	23	6	9t	14	10	4	11t	13
Houston	27	25	13	23t	4	26	20	20
Indianapolis	5	13	7	25	9	11	13t	7
Jacksonville	20	26	20	15	23	28	29	23
Kansas City	22	27	15	32	26	25	16t	30
Miami	6	23	16	9t	8	9	4t	17
Minnesota	24	11	21	4	19	16	16t	12
New England	10	14	9t	16	13	23	23	9
New Orleans	25	12	4	19t	2	14	9t	10
NY Giants	11	4	2	9t	14	8	7t	3
NY Jets	19	3	9t	8	21	22	11t	15
Oakland	18	24	26	26	29	12	22	28
Philadelphia	16	8	14	2	12	5	6	5
Pitttsburgh	4	15	28	1	20	2	7t	1
San Diego	8	2	6	22	1	24	3	8
San Francisco	26	18	29	13	15	19	30	24
Seattle	13	19	25	28	30	29	26	27
St. Louis	30	32	30	21	28	27	28	32
Tampa Bay	17	20	19	11	16	6	16t	14
Tennessee	1	5	8	5	17	3	2	4
Washington	12	31	17	12	24	7	19	21

By Kerry Byrne