Roundup 10/30/10

Football match-ups are intransitive. Team A beats team B, who beats team C. So we'd expect team A to beat team C, right? Not always. So far this year there have been 11 such cases of 3-team intransitivity.

"Second team" All-Pros from the AP are selected the wrong way.

How many Super Bowl-winning QBs are playing in the league in any given season?

Mitchel Lichtman on luck in baseball, but it applies to sports in general. It applies to the whole world, for that matter.

For those who missed it, Andy Steiner takes a look at 'momentum' following interceptions at the Community Site. Awesome.

The Weekly League: Notes and Ideas for Week Eight

This week's edition of The Weekly League features:

1. More bullets than a John Woo film.
2. The words "Randy Moss" six times, including this one.

and

3. The GWP Record and Luck table that is sweeping the nation.

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.

It's an adventure, America, and we're on it together!

Denver vs San Francisco (in London) | Sunday, October 31 | 1:00pm ET
Four Factors


Notes
• At 53 percentage points, the Broncos feature the largest split between pass and run efficiency relative to league average.
• Arizona and Buffalo are next -- at 38 and 37, respectively -- but both have considerably stronger running than passing games.
• Troy Smith will start at quarterback for the Niners, in place of Alex Smith, who suffered a left shoulder sprain last week.
• The former actually performed decently in 2007 with Baltimore, producing a 5.3 AYPA -- versus Kyle Boller's 3.8 and Steve McNair's 3.9. (League average that year was about 5.5.)
• Not that Boller and McNair were, you know, all-pros.

Raheem Morris Says Stats Are for Losers

Raheem Morris, head coach of the 4-2 Buccaneers, says that "Stats are for losers." Well, Raheem, I have just one thing to say to you.

I agree.

Most football stats are pointless. Total yards, field goal percentage, fantasy stats, total tackles, and the king of all bad stats--passer rating--are not much more than trivia. Coach Morris prefers to focus on wins, saying, "...you keep looking at stats and we'll keep looking at wins." Here, we are in complete agreement.

At the time Morris made the comment, he was confronted by a reporter with his team's standings in terms of total yardage gained and allowed. Those statistics can be very misleading and are often disconnected with winning. How do I know that? From other, better statistics.

NYT: Game Probabilities - Week 8

Weekly game probabilities are available now at the nytimes.com Fifth Down. This week I also look at how the Cowboys' downgrade at quarterback might affect their chances against Jacksonville.

Washington Post: Can One Player Single-Handedly Win a Game?

Today I've got another post up at the Washington Post's Redskins Insider site. This time I look at DeAngelo Hall's single-handed performance last Sunday against the Bears. Some other Redskins nuggets include:


-Just how hard did the Redskins offense try to lose Sunday's game?
-Lovie Smith's big replay blunder
-Albert Haynesworth's impact
-Former Redskins making waves in the league
-Why the Redskins have played in so many close games this season
-How badly the loss of Tony Romo hurts Dallas

Interceptions and Counter-Momentum

Over at the Community Site, contributor Andy Steiner has a very intriguing post. I normally link to the community posts in my weekly roundup, but this one was so interesting it merited some extra attention. Andy looks at whether teams tend to score more points following an interception than when they get the ball by other means.

I'd like to know what everyone thinks. I've been meaning to do a grand study of momentum, but haven't set aside the time to do it justice. Any suggestions on how to structure further research, using EP or WP perhaps, are appreciated.

Thanks, Andy.

Efficiency Rankings - Week 8

With the exception of San Diego still up at number 2 this week, the rankings are starting to make sense. Or, is it that perception is catching up with the stats? There were some big movers this week, including Tennessee, New England, Dallas, Atlanta, and Chicago.

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.

Offensive rank (ORANK) is offensive generic win probability, which is based on each team's offensive efficiency stats only. In other words, it's the team's GWP assuming it had a league-average defense. DRANK is is a team's generic win probability rank assuming it had a league-average offense.

Lovie's Latest Blunder

I already have a post this season called Lovie's Blunder, but I guess I'm just not terribly imaginative, much like many coaches in the NFL.

In a tight game against the Redskins, Smith decided not to challenge Jay Cutler’s fumble on first and goal from the one. Most accounts claim the replay clearly showed the ball crossed the plane of the end zone prior to the fumble. Had the play been a touchdown, the Bears would have been up 11 points early in the third quarter, giving them an 89% chance of winning. Instead, the fumble put the Bears’ chances at 70%, a difference of 19%. To put that in perspective, only two of the game's plays were more significant, and they were the two interception returns for touchdowns.

Smith had lost a challenge on the prior play, and you have to think that must have affected his judgment.

Just for the sake of argument, let's assume that the Bears eventually found themselves down by 3 points inside the two-minute warning. (They were up by 4 at the time of the play.) If we value a timeout as a full 40 seconds between plays, the difference in Win Probability (WP) between having 2:00 left to play and 1:20 left to play at their 30 yard line would have been 0.04 WP (0.24 WP compared to 0.20 WP). The difference between having 60 and 20 seconds to play is 0.07 WP. The biggest difference in the value of a timeout is between 40 seconds and zero seconds (a certain loss), which is 0.10 WP. Assuming the challenge had a reasonable probability of being upheld, he should have thrown the flag.