Roundup 12/31/11

The Packers have allowed more yards than they've gained, yet are 14-1. How is this possible?

Be suspicious of the narrative.

Drafting QBs according to Career Approximate Value.

Devin Hestor: folk hero.

Tom Tango is offering a class for the SABR-minded.

Remembering the longest NFL game ever.

2011 All-WPA Teams: AFC Defense

Let's get right to it. Here is the 2011 All-WPA defensive squad for the AFC. Don't forget, you can click on the position headers to see the stat tables.

Defensive Ends
The NFC continues its dominance for a second year at the DE position. We have to dig down to #5 overall to get to Houston's J.J. Watt and his 1.40 +WPA. Watt is also #16 in +EPA, #6 in SC, and #4 in TF. Watt is not a big sack guy--just 6 on the season. He's generating his numbers in all around play. Oddly, his biggest play came in the big game-winning drive allowed to IND last Thursday night, in which he broke up a 2nd down pass with only 30 seconds to go. Last season, fellow Texan Mario Williams held the top spot in the AFC, but this year he's been absent due to injury. That's a credit to Watt, who's been effective without Williams to absorb double teams.

Andre Carter has been effective for NE, putting up 1.27 +WPA. He's also #8 in EPA, #4 in SC, and #7 in TF. His biggest play of the year was a forced fumble on WAS's Rex Grossman in the end zone, recovered by Vince Wilfork for a TD.

Alternates for the All-WPA Bowl, to be played in my backyard, will include CLE rookie Jaball Sheard (1.23 +WPA/ 42.5 +EPA/ 44 SC/ 8 sacks) and DEN's Elvis Dumervil (1.22 +WPA/ 33.8 +EPA/ 40 SC/ 11 sacks). Dumervil missed 3 games too. Good to see that he's regained his form after missing all of last season with an injury.

Defensive Tackles
Geno Atkins of CIN leads the AFC with 1.45 +WPA. He's also #1 in +EPA, #4 in SC, but #22 in TF. So he's making his impacts largly doing other things besides making routine tackles. He's #1 for DTs with 9 sacks, 15 QB hits (#2), 10 tackles for losses, and has 3 tipped passes and 2 forced fumbles. Quite a year for the second-year DT. Lots of consistent play from Atkins, as he has no outlier big play. The biggest was a 4th quarter sack on 3rd down against CLE's Colt McCoy, good for 0.12 WPA.

The 2011 All-WPA Teams: NFC Defense

I was asked in a comment in one of the All-WPA offense posts about why I chose WPA as the stat of choice for the ANS all-star team. Why not EPA, SR or EPA per play, etc? It's a good question. There are a couple reasons. First, WPA is a powerful and unique measure of performance. It's novel, and something you can't get anywhere else. EPA largely mirrors conventional statistical performance--total yards and points. WPA measures heroism, as it accounts for time and score considerations, and it's able to put a number on who really made the most difference in terms of wins and losses. Second, this series of posts is intended as an end of the year retrospective, not a future-looking estimate of player talent. In that sense, it would be a mistake not to use the best past-looking narrative statistic available.

A stat is a tool, and like a tool, each stat has its purpose. I'm not a fan of trying to peddle one single uber-stat, just like Home Depot doesn't try to sell one single uber-tool. I favor looking at a line of stats that paints a full picture of a team or player, with each stat capturing a particular dimension of performance. WPA is the tool ideally suited for retrospective measures of documenting 'who did what' in terms of wins and losses.

With that, let's turn our attention to the NFC All-WPA defenders for 2011.

National Football Conference

Defensive Ends
Cardinals lineman Calais Campbell leads the league at DE with 2.15 +WPA. He's #5 in total EPA, #2 in Tackle Factor (TF), and #3 in Success Count (SC). 9 Sacks and 16 QB Hits, and 12 tackles for losses. His biggest play was a 4th quarter fumble recovery deep in CLE territory in a tight game. His second biggest play (which isn't even counted in player WPA because it was a special teams play) was a field goal block with only 4 sec to play against STL. The block kept the game tied and allowed ARI to win in OT.

Football Freakonomics: Incentives

I recently helped the Freakonomics folks and NFL Network with an installment of 'Football Freakonomics', the series of mini-documentaries on interesting wrinkles in fabric of football. This particular feature is on incentives, particularly big contracts and Super Bowl championships. They air periodically on NFL Network, I believe on GameDay Morning on Sundays.

Here is the feature.
 
After watching it, ANS readers will quickly say 'Wait! What? That's it? What about concepts like regression to the mean or the winner's curse? Wouldn't they explain what we see in the data? We did cover those considerations in detail on camera, but they just didn't make the cut. In defense of the producers, they only have a few minutes to tell an interesting story, and it has to appeal to a broad audience. It's just the nature of the medium.

For those curious, here's a brief discussion on why we see performance decline after big contracts:

Playoff Probabilities: Week 17

With the final week of the regular season upon us, it's time to see where things stand for the playoff contenders. As always, these numbers come courtesy of Chris Cox at NFL-forecast.com and are generated with the help of his NFL-Forecast software app, which uses the win probabilities generated by the team efficiency model to simulate the NFL season thousands of times. And if you don't buy the game probabilities from Advanced NFL Stats, you can tweak them as much as you like to generate your own playoff projections. I encourage everyone to download the app and test out your own scenarios.

The AFC West & Wild Card

All sorts of advanced degrees are required to parse the melange of tiebreakers and scenarios that surround the final two playoff spots in the AFC. The Bengals, Jets, and Titans are all still eligible for the final wild card spot, in addition to the Raiders, who also could beat out the Broncos for the AFC West. There are plenty of places to get the full breakdown of the various clinching scenarios, but let's skip all the "strength-of-victory" and "if-then-and-unless" chatter and cut straight to the numbers:

Weekly Game Probabilities

Weekly game probabilities are available now at the nytimes.com Fifth Down. This week I regurgitate what I wrote earlier on the importance of playoff seeding.

The 2011 All-WPA Teams - NFC Offense

I actually care about stats.

This is the second installment of the 2011 All-WPA Teams. This time we'll look at the NFC offense. As I wrote in the intro for the AFC offense: Keep in mind what these stats measure. They are not necessarily the best players in the league. They are the players who actually played the best when it mattered most. It's a narrative statistic, highly sensitive to the circumstances of score and time. For those who are uninterested in WPA, feel free to sort the columns however you like. Click on the position headers below to go to the full lists of players and their stats, and the links behind each player's name will take you to a game-by-game break down of their 2011 season.


With that, to the selections. Envelope, please. The 2011 WPA's go to... 

National Football Conference

Quarterbacks
Aaron Rodgers tops the NFC with 5.83 WPA. He's by far #1 in the league in EPA, which suggests a lot of his gaudy numbers have come when the game was already in hand. He's #3 in SR, and #1 in AYPA. Rodgers had a monster game against NYG, good for 0.94 WPA.

Drew Brees is second with 4.94 WPA in his record-breaking season. Brees is #2 in total EPA, #2 in SR, and #4 in AYPA. His most heroic game came against CAR in a 30-27 win.

Just like Tom Brady in AFC, Rodgers and Brees had their WPA numbers inflated thanks to their below average defenses, which gave them ample opportunities to match TD for TD.

Running Backs
Jonathan Stewart tops the NFC with 1.11 WPA. He's #5 in the league in both  total EPA and SR. His 5.1 YPC is tied for #8 in the NFL so far this season. Cam Newton gets all the attention for the CAR offense, but Stewart deserves his share of the credit. Stewart was consistently positive all season, with just two negative WPA games. His two biggest games of the season came against DET in a 49-35 loss and against JAX in a 16-10 win.

The 2011 All-WPA Teams - AFC Offense

Yay, Stats!

2009 ushered in the first All-Win Probability Added team, and 2010 continued the tradition. Here's the 2011 All-WPA Team. We'll start with offense. Keep in mind what these stats measure. They are not necessarily the best players in the league. They are the players who actually played the best when it mattered most. It's a narrative statistic, highly sensitive to the circumstances of score and time. For those who are uninterested in WPA, feel free to sort the columns however you like. Click on the position headers below to go to the full lists of players and their stats, and the links behind each player's name will take you to a game-by-game break down of their 2011 season.

With that, to the selections. Envelope, please. The 2011 WPA's go to... 

American Football Conference

Quarterbacks

Top honors this year go to Tom Brady with 6.15 WPA, which is top for the whole league and just a few notches below his insane 2007 season with one game still to play. Brady, perversely, benefited from a very poor NE defense. The way things work, great QBs have more opportunities to gain WPA when their defense keeps giving up points, and Brady took advantage of those opportunities. 6.15 WPA equates to 0.40 WPA per game--which means his passing game carries his Patriots 4/5 of the way to each victory. Brady is #1 in Success Rate (SR), #3 in total EPA, and #3 in EPA per Play.

The NFC owns the #2 through #7 spots on the WPA list, so runner up goes to Joe Flacco with 2.88 WPA. Flacco has made the most of his 12th ranked 65.9 total EPA, playing well when it mattered most. Nearly half of his WPA came from an improbable comeback win at PIT, worth 1.12 WPA for that one game alone. Flacco is not an elite QB, but does appear to be able to manage games behind a league-leading defense. He's 23rd in SR, and tied for 18th in Adjusted Yards Per Attempt (AYPA).

These two guys traded spots from last year. Flacco was #1 and Brady was #2. It's no surprise both of their teams are currently sitting #1 and #2 in the AFC seeding.

Running Backs

Second-year player Ryan Mathews dominated at his position in WPA this season with 1.41 WPA, which is nearly 25% more than his next nearest rival. That's works out to 0.10 WPA in his 14 games. Mathews consistently racked up positive WPA each game, and had only 3 games of negative WPA. His biggest game was in a loss against DEN, with 0.55 WPA. His total EPA of 25.7 ranks 4th in the league, and his SR is tied for 15th with 43.7%.