Roundup 10/15/11

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.



We are so economically illiterate in this country, even among many economists. Economists measure dollars, simply because they're easy to count. Something like consumer surplus is nebulous and hard to measure, but it's what really matters. It's no different than sports stats. Most people count total yards, because it's easy. Win probability and point expectancy are hard, but they're what matter.

The fallacy of the 100-yd rushing game lives on. "The 49ers are 18-7 when Gore reaches triple digits since 2006." ESPN Stats & Info deserves a big C'mon Man! for that.

Here's an interesting way to look at ESPN's TQBR stat--as TQBR differential by game. It's like a head-to-head matchup of each QB's scores through week 5.

SF is luckiest. PIT is unluckiest.



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2 Responses to “Roundup 10/15/11”

  1. Jason says:

    Aaron Rodgers, not Rogers. #corrections

  2. Anonymous says:

    I so agree about assigning blame on the int's! too bad the world doesn't seem to have caught up with this yet

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