Is 2012 Peyton Manning's Best Season Since 2004?

The Broncos are still holding onto the top spot in the Advanced NFL Stats efficiency rankings this week, and they can thank Peyton Manning. Manning the Elder put together his most efficient game of the season Sunday night against the Saints, throwing for 305 yards and three touchdowns on 30 passes without an interception or a sack. His 10.2 adjusted yards per passing attempt was the best mark since Alex Smith carved up the Bills for 12.6 per attempt back in Week 5 (303 yards on 24 attempts).

Due to the bye, Manning is a bit behind some of his competitors in counting stats, but he has been elite this season by rate statistics. His 0.27 EPA per play is behind just Matt Ryan (0.29) and tied with Ben Roethlisberger for second in the league. His 7.0 AYPA gives him a runaway lead -- the difference between him and second place Tom Brady (6.5) is bigger than the difference between Brady and 9th place Carson Palmer.

But Manning has had utterly transcendent seasons before. How is his performance standing up to his Colts career? Let's look on a game-by-game level. Each orange bar represents a game with Denver, each blue bar a game with Indianapolis:

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Alex Smith: Counterexample

I think that in almost all cases if a young QB doesn't demonstrate consistent above average performance within a couple seasons, he's not worth sticking with. It's very uncommon for a young QB to toil for several years of below average performance and then suddenly blossom into a winner. Coaches and GMs, analysts, and fans alike all make excuses for poorly performing QBs. They have no 'weapons', no line, the wrong scheme, and so on. Those are certainly valid considerations, but it's the QB himself that mostly drives his numbers.

Sure, you might be able to point to a QB here or there who came on strong to become a consistently above-average player several years his starting career, but for every guy like that (Steve Young might be the most notable) I'll give you multiple Joey Harringtons, Kyle Bollers, Rex Grossmans, and David Carrs.

Alex Smith would have been on that list too, at least until the last couple seasons. He might be the exception to the rule. After Smith's phenomenal game Monday night in which he went 18 for 19 with three TDs, I wondered what really made the difference. A lot of credit has been given to second-year head coach Jim Harbaugh and a new offensive scheme. It's hard to argue otherwise, but I will anyway. Looking at his career trends, he began a significant and consistent improving trend immediately following his missed season of 2008. His improvement from 2009 to 2010 in terms of WPA, EPA, SR, and AYPA under Singletary was as big as his improvement in 2011 after Harbaugh took over. It's as if Smith has had two different careers, a brief, erratic, injury-plagued three-year span from 2005 to 2007, and a middling but improving span since 2009.

Team Efficiency Rankings - Week 9

ATL finally moves into the top tier of efficiency to match their undefeated record. The biggest curiosity to me has to be CAR, ranked 6th despite being 1-6. I can see why they're ranked 6th in terms of efficiency--their offensive pass efficiency is 5th in the league, their defense has been a little better than average, and they've had a relatively tough schedule so far. They've been undoing themselves with critical turnovers and have come up short on very high leverage situations. I doubt seriously they are the 6th best team in the league, but they are probably much better than their record currently indicates.

Here are the full efficiency rankings for week 9. Click on the table headers to sort.

Risk-Seeking Behavior?

Michael N. wrote me Sunday to suggest that coaches aren't so much risk-averse as they are simply operating without any sound knowledge of the odds. Maybe it's not risk-aversion as much as a lack of clear utility information. Maybe they're just as risk-seeking as they are risk-averse, erring on either side of the equation depending on the question asked.

Mike makes risk-seeking pretty clear with an example: "You'd think a person would pay $1 for a 1% chance to win $100. But they don't. They're willing to pay $5.50! For a 10% chance of winning $100, they're willing to pay $18.60."

I've been looking for examples of risk-seeking behavior in the NFL for years, and although there are a few examples of coaches going for it on 4th down when they probably should kick or punt, these examples are extremely rare. In fact, coaches are so reliably risk-averse on 4th down, I use such counter-examples to identify bugs in the algorithm or errors in the NFL's data.

So I thought I'd throw it out to the smartest readership in football--you guys. Are there any examples of consistent risk-seeking behavior in football? What about in all of sports--soccer, cricket, rugby?...I know there are some diverse fans out there.

What about in finance?

First Falcons Drive & Botched Bears Field Goal

Andy Reid had never lost coming off a bye week in his head-coaching career. Matt Ryan did not care. Leading the Falcons on a 8 minute 44 second opening drive, Ryan and company marched 80 yards down the field over 18 plays before hitting Drew Davis on a 15-yard touchdown. Up 7-0, the Falcons were 72% favorites to win the game and that probability would never dip below that the rest of the day.

Here is a quick look at Matty Ice's first drive -- on which he went 6 for 7 for 62 yards -- using our Markov model:

The Field Goal Likelihood Nexus

I'm not sure why meaningless things like this fascinate me so much. I was doing some experimentation modeling how often offenses are normally able to score given the various down/distance/yard line combinations. I always plot the results to make sure they make sense.

In this case I was looking at the probability of ending a drive with a made field goal in 2nd and 3rd down situations. (Second and third down modeling is especially challenging because there are fewer cases of each successive down. Plus there is an entire other dimension to consider--to-go distance. By comparison, first downs are almost always 10 yards to go.) After seeing the plots I thought there was clearly something wrong.

You'd expect that having fewer yards to go would lead to scoring more often, but once you think about it that's not always true when looking at only field goals. For most of the field, having fewer yards to go is better, but once a team passes a certain point, having more yards to go means it's more likely that a drive will stall inside field goal range.

Sunday's Numbers Have Been Crunched

Sunday's numbers are now available, including advanced stat box scores, top players of the week, team stats, and season leader boards.

• Advanced stat box scores
• Top QBs of the week
• Top RBs of the week
• Top WRs of the week
• Top TEs of the week
• Top Defenders of the week
• Advanced team stats
• Offensive player season leaders
• Defender season leaders
• Team Viz
• QB Viz
• RB Viz

2012 Is the Year of the Comeback, So Far

I did some analysis for Judy Battista's recent New York Times article about the flurry of big comebacks this season. Don't overlook the article's graphic link to see some cool details.

Big, unlikely comebacks, in which teams overcame chances of winning of no better than 1 in 10, have occurred about twice as often so far this season as they did in the previous dozen seasons...Twenty percent of the games in the first seven weeks of the 2012 season had a comeback factor of 10 or more, meaning a team overcame at least a 1-in-10 chance of winning at some point in the game; only 11 percent of the games from 2000 to 2011 featured such turnarounds. Ten percent of the games this season had a comeback factor of 20 or more, meaning a team overcame at least a 1-in-20 chance of winning, but only 5 percent did so from 2000 to 2011.

You can find the biggest comebacks for any team or season using this tool.