Upgrades to the Team Stat Visualizations

If you've been visiting the team stat visualizations you've certainly noticed some significant additions and changes in recent days.

First, due to popular demand, I've added previous seasons. Now you can use the slider bar at the top left to choose any season back through 2000. Playoff games and Super Bowls are included, so if you'd like to narrow things down to the regular season, you can use the Week Filter slider to see only weeks 1 through 17. This new feature allows us to compare the statistical signatures of champions of the recent past with the current contenders.

Because playoffs and previous season are now included, I've changed most of the stats to be displayed on a per game basis. For example, instead of saying that the Packers' offense has accumulated 210 Expected Points Added, it's far more intuitive to say their offense has notched 16 EPA per game. That's easier to wrap your head around--16 net points per game. WPA is reported on a per game basis as well.

I've also added breakdowns for defensive EPA per play. There's now an additional tab with defensive run EPA/P and pass EPA/P.

Like before, you can hover your cursor over a team logo to highlight the teams in the same division for comparison and to see their game-by-game performance below the main chart.

There are still some things I'd like to perfect, but there are tradeoffs inherent in making a versatile, interactive graph. I'd like to keep the scales on the x and y axes the same. That way we get an accurate comparison of offense vs defense and run vs pass. It turns out there are various outliers in any given year, and to make a fixed axis scale that includes all the outliers compresses all the other teams into a tiny space at the center of the graph. For that reason, I've chosen to have flexible axes. For the most part, the axis scales remain very similar.

As always, up and right are good. Down and left are bad. Defense is on the vertical axis, and offense is on the horizontal. Running is on the vertical axis, and passing is on the horizontal.

Next up--player graphs.

  • Spread The Love
  • Digg This Post
  • Tweet This Post
  • Stumble This Post
  • Submit This Post To Delicious
  • Submit This Post To Reddit
  • Submit This Post To Mixx

3 Responses to “Upgrades to the Team Stat Visualizations”

  1. X says:

    Nifty. Can you add something that would highlight the teams that made the playoffs and the eventual champion?

  2. Will says:

    Actually, Brian, to that end, you could establish a playoff probability function = a*oEPA + b*dEPA by fitting. And perhaps use this to determine if defense really does win championships.

  3. Will says:

    While I'm brainstorming, being able to select any two columns from the advanced team stats page to generate a plot would be a nice feature too.

Leave a Reply

Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.