Team Efficiency Rankings - Week 13

The toughest schedules so far this year belong to AFC East teams, Miami and New England in particular. Jacksonville has also faced a tough slate of opponents to date. Aside from the NFC West teams that get to play each other twice, the softest schedule so far belongs to San Diego.

The team rankings below are in terms of generic win probability. The GWP is the probability a team would beat the league average team at a neutral site. Each team's opponent's average GWP is also listed, which can be considered to-date strength of schedule, and all ratings include adjustments for opponent strength.

New Offensive Line Page

Aboutt a month ago, I introduced a method for valuing offensive line play using advanced statistics. The full explanation can be found in the original post, but the basic concepts goes like this:

The offensive line's job is, ironically, defensive. Lineman protect the quarterback or the rusher from tacklers. The best an offensive line can do is prevent their opposition from making plays, either by hitting or sacking the QB, by tackling a rusher for a loss or short gain, or by deflecting a pass. The impact that an opposing front seven defenders make can be measured by their +EPA or +WPA. These stats count only plays in which the defense scores a 'victory' by forcing a setback on the offense. An offensive line can be measured by how few 'victories' they allow, measured by how little +EPA or +WPA they forfeit to their opposing front seven.

In this implementation, the +WPA/+EPA of opposing defensive lineman are counted for all plays, and the +WPA/+EPA of linebackers are counted in only runs and pass rushes. In other words, pass defense plays by linebackers are excluded because the offensive line has no influence on linebackers in pass defense roles.

For example, the Patriots' offensive line leads the league with opposing defensive front sevens totaling the least +EPA with 84.6. The league average allowed +EPA for offensive lines is 127.6. That makes the NE offensive line 43.0 EPA better than average.

New Matchup Pages

You've probably noticed the win probability scoreboard at the top of the page. Compared to the old drop-down menu, it should be a much easier way to navigate from game to game to check out the graphs or leave comments. On Sundays it's a great way to stay on top of all the simultaneous games.

Clicking on a live or final game will take you directly to the WP graph for the game, but until now, there was nowhere to go by clicking on an upcoming game. Starting today, there is a matchup page for all forthcoming games, complete with one-stop shopping for a comparison of each team's stats. There's team efficiency stats, advanced team stats, plus conventional and advanced player stats for each team. I plan to add more features in the near future.

The matchup page started as something I thought might help Carson with his Weekly Notes feature or me with my contributions at the Post or Times, but I quickly realized it would be something everyone would like. It's a bit of an eye chart, but there's lots of good stuff in there. The efficiency table, which is the first one, might be the simplest and most useful.

For example, looking at Sunday's game between MIA and OAK, I can quickly see that MIA has the edge in passing, but OAK has the edge in running. On defense however, OAK has a hard time stopping the run. Both team have slightly better than average pass defenses. The difference in this game might come down to penalties, as OAK has one of the worst penalty rates in the league.

Roundup 11/27/10

Reader Gautham Venugopalan alerted me to this article that describes how Packers defensive coordinator Dom Capers grades out his defense. It sounds similar to a simplified success rate stat.

Behind the net on the randomness of NHL win-loss records.

What are the most prominent "wrong football beliefs?" Punting all the time, maybe. Running back overuse? The importance of running?

Bruce D shares his breakdown of lucky plays at the Community Site. He tracked each team's "lucky" plays, defined as non-repeatable things such as kick returns for TDs or fumble recoveries. He scores out each team in terms of these plays. Bruce then demonstrates that these plays do not correlate from one half of the season to the next, at least for 2009, suggesting they really are lucky plays. Awsome. I'd love to see more from Bruce and more from all you guys crunching numbers on your own.

This site appears to have some sort of EI algorithm for telling you which games on your DVR you should watch and which ones you should delete. Interesting idea, but how many people would use this? Helmet-knock: Tech Crunch and premium subscriber Borat. (For Christmas this year, I'm renewing Borat's premium subscription for half-price. I was raised to be very generous like that.)

Manning vs. Brady using EPA and WPA.

There's a great new ESPN stats blog, simply called Stats & Info. According to the site, it started as an in-house source of content for producers and analysts, but now it's publicly available. Nice blend of conventional and advanced statistical insight. Here are some example posts. Look for more advanced stats, including for football, from ESPN in the future. It's a niche they're looking to fill, and they have some very bright guys working on their stats team.

The Weekly League: Notes and Ideas for Week Twelve

This week's edition of The Weekly League features:

1. Previews of the Green Bay-Atlanta, Philadelphia-Chicago, San Diego-Indianapolis, and San Francisco-Arizona games.

2. A photo of a player relevant to the article -- always a good technique to attract the attention of readers.

and

3. Over 100 points of joie de vivre.

The Four Factors represent each team's raw performance 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).

Generic Win Probability (GWP) is the probability a team would beat the league-average team at a neutral site. It can be found for all teams here. Game Probability (PROB) is each respective team's chance of winning this particular contest. Those numbers (along with methodology) can be found here.

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

Green Bay at Atlanta | Sunday, November 28 | 1:00pm ET
Four Factors


Notes
• Pop quiz, America.
• What's more surprising:
• That (a) Green Bay is third in the NFL, with a 0.74 GWP, despite a rushing attack fronted by Brandon Jackson, or
• That (b) Atlanta is a very pedestrian 19th overall, with a 0.47 GWP, despite a glistening 8-2 record?
• In any case, as the Increasingly Renowned Brian Burke noted mid-week, the latter shouldn't be very surprising at all.

Roethlisberger's 2010

In several aspects, Ben Roethlisberger may be having a career year. 6.5 AYPA, +0.25 EPA/Play, and 2.3 sacks per game (which is good for him). Six games is not a big sample, but the Steelers offense has been firing on all cylinders since his return.

What's the Deal with the Falcons?

The Falcons are 8-2, tied for the best record in the NFL, but in terms of efficiency they are below average. The efficiency model has them ranked 19th out of 32 teams. So what's the story?

I often hear the refrain that Matt Ryan had a down year last year, but he's back as one of the best QBs in 2010. But he's throwing at a 6.2 net YPA pace, exactly average this season. The defense is giving up 6.7 net YPA, over a standard deviation worse than average. Their running game is nothing special either, gaining an average 4.1 YPC, while the defense gives up 4.3 YPC.

Atlanta hasn't faced a terribly tough schedule either. Their opponent GWP is slightly below average at 0.48.

So could it be a consistency thing? Do their SR numbers indicate they are deadly consistent, inching the ball up the field on offense and forcing frequent 3-and-outs? Nope, their opponent-adjusted team SR is the same as their efficiency ranking--19th.

Washington Post: Another Game Comes Down to the Final Play

Today's post at the Washington Post's Redskins Insider looks at how the Redskins were able to pull out another close one. Yet another Redskins game comes down to the final play.

-Where to the Redskins' games rank in terms of excitement this year?
-How is Donovan McNabb performing compared to his career averages?
-How big a role did penalties play in overtime?
-The 'Skins are 5-5. What are their chances at making the playoffs?