Football as a state machine.
ESPN's Total QBR ranked Tebow ahead of Rodgers for their week 5 games. Some people thought that was ridiculous. Here is ESPN's response. ESPN is correct. There are four important considerations. First, TQBR is a rate stat, not a counting (cumulative total) stat. Second, TQBR excludes YAC, something the GB receivers generate by the bushel. Additionally, TQBR over-weights clutch play. And lastly, TQBR includes QB rushing, something many people overlook because conventional stats rarely report it. Here's one way to look at it: When Rodgers entered the game, the score was tied and he helped create a +11 net point advantage over two halves. When Tebow entered the game, Denver trailed 23-10 at halftime, and in one half of play he helped generate +8 net points.
With teams coming off of byes for the first time this season, it's a good idea to review this interesting post by Denis O'Regan at the Community site. It appears that there is a considerable advantage for road teams coming off byes, particularly those who are already favored to win.
Modeling turnovers in football and basketball.
If there is anyone's thinking that has provided the theoretical bedrock to understand the curiously poor decision making in football, it's this guy.
I've been harping on this for years. In baseball, the league scorer can decide if a play is a hit or an error. NFL scorers should be able to do the same thing with interceptions, or at least classify them as clean, tipped at line, tipped by receiver, etc.
Greetings, good people of Advanced NFL Stats. This week we'll take our first look at the state of the NFL playoff races, in a post complete with numbered lists, bullet points, and made-up numbers. Note: The data below was all calculated using the NFL Forecast app developed by Chris Cox over at NFL-forecast.com, which uses the win probabilities generated by the team efficiency model to simulate the NFL season 5,000 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 projection. I encourage everyone to download the app and test out your own scenarios. Since this is the first week, it'd probably be good to review some things to keep in mind when interpreting the numbers:
Weekly game probabilities are available now at the nytimes.com Fifth Down. This week's (triple guarantee lockdown put-it-in-the-bank) upset special is the Panthers-Falcons matchup.
In a fun matchup last Sunday, two rookie quarterbacks faced off during the Cincinnati Bengals-Jacksonville Jaguars contest. Thanks to a strong fourth quarter in which Cincinnati rallied for 17 points, the club won the game 30-20.
Freshman quarterback Andy Dalton led his club over fellow first-year chucker Blaine Gabbert. To be honest, neither QB was overly sharp, although Dalton clearly had the edge. He posted a 3.3 EPA (0.09 EPA/P), compared to Gabbert's ugly -11.4 (-0.33). The Jaguar QB also fumbled twice, resulting in 26 lost yards. Dalton's completion rate was also a full 10% better at 63.6%. The WPAs for the game were 0.02 to -0.12 in favor of the Bengal, showing that neither player had a truly strong game.
It wasn't all bad for Gabbert, a graduate of the University of Missouri. He bested his opponent - and Texas Christian U alum - with 221 yards (vs 179) and avoided the interception. Gabbert also tried to make up for his two fumbles with five carries of his own, which resulted in 11 yards gained.
In Sunday night's tilt between the Atlanta Falcons and the Green Bay Packers, one thing was clear from the get go: the Packers were losing the ground game. First they watched the Falcons use rushes of 15, 11, and 17 yards to advance into Packers' territory en route to an opening touchdown. Then, Michael Turner punched in the Falcons' second touchdown to give them a 14-0 lead early in the second quarter. Meanwhile, the Packers struggled to get the running game going, picking up only four successful rushes on 10 attempts in the first half. The Packers would end up with only 58 rushing yards, succeeding on only 37% of rushes (7-for-19). The Falcons, somewhat inexplicably, only rushed 18 times, but they succeeded on a 63% of them (12/19) in picking up 86 yards.
