The Stat Hole: Stupid Sports Stats From the Past Week - October 20, 2026
Welcome in. Your Tuesday weekly batch of oddball stats from the past week of sports. NFL Week 6 gave us another crazy round of upsets. The MLB World Series is set. And given how much time the Brewers will have off I prepared for you an "MLB Playoffs Rest vs Rust" report. How much time is too much? What about time off adjusted for opponents time off?
This is The Stat Hole.
Let's start with last night on the banger stat of the week I wish I found:
It's official. Washington sealed the deal after dumb and dumber coach/QB combo had no clue it was fourth down in the redzone in easily the second dumbest blunder of the past several decades of NFL football and the worst in eight days.
But this stat isn't just about the Commanders or the irony of that being their name considering the level of stupidity of their leadership on the sideline and in the huddle. This is about the NFC East overall. Doing something that's never been done before. This all got me curious, so I dug into the numbers to figure out how many divisions missed out on this sad phenomenon by one selfish winner during any two-game span.
I have some answers.
Just this season the AFC South were a Jaguars win over the Browns in Week 1 from doing it in Weeks 1-2. They were also the last division to be one winner off during weeks 9-10 of 2024. Of all teams, the eventual 3-14 Titans staved off the Patriots in Week 9. Interestingly enough (is it though?) the last 11 divisions to be one loss away from a winless two-week span were either South or East teams of one conference or another.
This stat is why the word "stupid" appears in the thumbnail of this blog.
I do have a little surprise finding. I went into this fully expecting carnage from the NFC South. I was half-right. But it was the AFC South that leads the way in "almost winless two-week span" weeks. Seven two-week spans since the 2002 merger in which only one team won a game. Makes you think what could have been for the NFC South had Drew Brees never been traded. He was holding that division up from this disaster-stat.
That was a dumb stat. Let's do another.
How about a little NFL PED suspension talk? Always a fun time. I know we usually only hear about these things a couple weeks or whatever after the fact, but it's fun to think they get tested right after a big game. That seems to have happened before. Maybe sometimes it really is the day after. I'm going to think so for this bit anyway, because if Montez Sweat got tested after literally being the only defender to not record a meaningful stat for the Bears vs the Packers last Sunday, that's just plain funny right there. I see the graphic below is cutoff, but Montez is at the very bottom with one sad QB hit and nothing else which probably came after one of Jordan Love's bombs to Christian Watson.
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Was this the worst pre-PED drug test fail performance of all time? I did a little digging and for a defender, it sure seems so. I did find Jude Adjei-Barimah - cornerback for the Bucs - record zero tackles, INTs, or pass defenses in a game. But that's actually not bad for a corner. For all we knew he locked things down to avoid getting thrown at. Always be leery of corners with juiced up tackling stats.
We do have a great one on offense though. Jameson Williams in his rookie year. October 20, 2024. He played 43-snaps and recorded one catch on one target for -4 yards. That's what tipped off the NFL this speedster might not be all natural.
Let's talk a little baseball. World Series is set. Rays. Brewers.
I have to admit something as a Cubs fan. I don't hate this Brewers team. At all. Long are the days of guys like Ryan Braun. I know I'm supposed to hate these guys, but there's just nothing to latch onto. They are just a pure baseball factory. All just pieces of a machine working together as manufactured in the America's Pastime factory. They might be AI for all we know. That's my theory anyway. Nothing gets to them. They chewed up the red hot Padres like twin-shaft hydraulic shredders and made the players on the most expensive team in baseball history look like an overflowing return bin at Dollar General.
They did this by going all-in on analytics from the front office. Swaths of nerds have made this team a functioning machine learning model playing out in real life. Everything is by the book. Just like they were manufactured. But there's just one thing I'm not sure the nerd party thought of.
What happens when you don't use your machine for seven full days?
If this team is in fact a machine, then the rest vs rust debate sure doesn't seem on their side. Rest is for people. Rust is for machines. But maybe they are people after all. Even if they do live in Wisconsin. Now I'm not bitter for being maybe the only stats person not hired by the Milwaukee Brewers, and my I'm still available to take their call, but here's some analytics their stats army seemed to miss. Of the eleven teams to sweep a best-of-seven LCS, only four went on to win the World Series.
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You could say small sample size here. But I don't work for the Brewers yet, so I'm allowed to shoot the shit and have fun. Even so, you'd think we'd have a big selection bias here that would favor the teams that were good enough to sweep the runner-up of the conference. Then again, look at the Game 1 of World Series results shown in the graphic above. Teams that swept the LCS went 2-9 in Game 1. That certainly gives some credence to rust playing a role that might tip the balance out of their favor.
Now let's compare rest differential in the MLB playoffs overall. By the way, I don't think Rest Differential is a stat anyone has ever thought of so I'm claiming dibs on that. The difference in full days off a team had minus the full days off of their opponent. Putting this on my Brewers stat nerd resume now before I forget.
Here's how that looks ever since MLB went to a best of seven series in 1985.
With only one game each where a team had five or six days rest more than their opponent in the World Series, it's hard to say those two losses were meaningful for teams with a bunch more rest (both lost the World Series too FYI). But the data suggests perhaps three-days is the optimal Rest Differential (patent pending) with four days falling behind a touch. But giving up seven and 13 runs after such a long time off from your presumed best starter in a World Series certainly raises an eye brow.
Back to the Brewers possibly being AI. As you probably at least vaguely understand, LLMs are pretty much sourcing information to mirror back to you. If you don't think this team is AI, please explain how they didn't just use the 2025 NLCS as an AI training model for V2026?
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Ran out of time to crunch my own sad Bo Nix stats. Honestly though, we had guys on the job anyway.
See you next Tuesday.