The Weekly League: Notes for Week Nine

This week's edition of The Weekly League features:

1. Game previews for Indianapolis-Philadelphia, Dallas-Green Bay, and Pittsburgh-Cincinnati.
2. An untinentionally glowing review of Ben Roethlisberger.

and

3. Equal parts vim and vigor.

The Four Factors you see for each game represent each team's raw performance thus far in four important categories (pass and rush efficiency, pass and rush efficiency against) relative to league average (where 100 is league average and anything above is good).

Along with the Four Factors, you'll see two other numbers: Generic Win Probability (GWP) and Game Probability (PROB). The GWP is the probability a team would beat the league average team at a neutral site. It can be found for all teams here. The PROB is each respective team's chance of winning this particular contest. Your host, Brian Burke, provides PROBs to the New York Times each week, and those numbers (along with methodology) can be found here.

The following games have been chosen as they'll be available to the greatest portion of the network-watching audience, per the NFL maps at the506.com.

Finally, a glossary of all unfamiliar terms can be found here.

Indianapolis at Philadelphia | Sunday, November 07 | 4:15pm ET
Four Factors


Notes
• Per the Interweb, DeSean Jackson returns this week after nearly getting killt by Dunta Robinson in Week Six.
• Per the Interweb, Michael Vick returns this week after getting sandwiched by some Washingtonians in Week Four.
• In Weeks One through Four -- i.e. the ones where Vick played -- DeSean Jackson was targeted 33 times, an average of just over eight per game. In Week Five, started by Kevin Kolb, Jackson was targeted only three times.
• Eight targets is kinda a lot to average. Consider: only 35 WRs were targeted 100+ times last season, and that only requires 6.25 targets per game.
• What this suggests -- but, of course, does not prove -- is that Vick looks for Jackson more than Kolb does.

Dallas at Green Bay | Monday, November 08 | 8:30pm ET
Four Factors


Notes
• Dallas had the 12th-ranked defense per GWP last year.
• This year, they have the 28th-ranked one by that same measure.
• "What changed?" is a question that a sane-type of person would ask.
• The answer: probably a lot of things.
• But mostly: this year, they've conceded 6.5 yards per pass; last year, it was 6.0.

Pittsburgh at Cincinnati | Monday, September 20 | 8:30pm ET
Four Factors


Notes
• Adjusted Yards per Pass Attempt (AYPA) for Pittsburgh, Weeks One through Four (Charlie Batch and Dennis Dixon): 4.0
• AYPA for Pittsburgh, Weeks Six through Eight (Ben Roethlisberger): 7.1
• Rank, by Offensive GWP, after Week Four: 12th.
• Rank, by Offensive GWP, after Week Eight: 4th.
• Sacrebleu, amirite?

GWP Records and Luck
Here's the table, through Week Eight and sans comment, of GWP wins and losses as compared to actual wins and losses.

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3 Responses to “The Weekly League: Notes for Week Nine”

  1. Anonymous says:

    Why aren't the Eagles favored against the Colts when their four factors are so much higher? When I average together the factors for the Colts, I get an average of about 98, compared to 108 for the Eagles.

    I assume there's some other category in which the Colts are much better than the Eagles? Or do you just weight pass efficiency a lot more than run efficiency?

  2. bb says:

    The Eagles penalty rate is much higher.

  3. Anonymous says:

    The Eagles ARE favored against the Colts buddy

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