The designer statistic is the NFL’s silent assassin. Seemingly every outlier performance, both good and bad, is accompanied by a computer-generated information nugget that lets us know that teams in a similar position are a combined 987–1 when leading by three touchdowns in late September, when the temperature crests 72°, and the crescent moon hangs over the meadow. The songbirds sing of lovers’ past, with your idiot team being the only one that has lost in that situation. I never know what to do when I see those, and also is anyone else with a supercomputer fact-checking these? I’m not saying the computer is wrong, but it would be pretty easy for me to drop a stat like this into the ether, and everyone else would be like, Yeah, that sounds right.
Anyway, this one is infinitely more verifiable but similarly useless. I don’t know what to do with the information that Klint Kubiak is the first head coach to begin the season 3–0 after his team had the No. 1 pick the previous season since Vince Lombardi. Similarly, I don’t know what to do with the information that the previous two Raiders coaches to start their first season 3–0 were John Madden, who went to the AFC title game in that 1969 season, and Bill Callahan, when the Raiders made it to the Super Bowl in 2002.
