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

Play-By-Play Data Updated

Play-by-play data through week 9 of the 2012 season has now been updated.

To Fake or Not To Fake: Fourth Down Decisions

After we wrote about Mike Tomlin's fake field goal decision in Week 9, it got me thinking about the general success rate of fakes versus typical fourth down attempts. Before moving forward, it should be noted that it is difficult to pull fake field goal and fake punts out of play-by-play data because they are not explicitly specified as such. So, you may be getting an aborted or bad snap or the field goal/punt formation may not have been recorded. We attempted to clean the data up as much as possible, which resulted in 213 fourth down fakes since 2000.

Similarly, we looked at the roughly 5500 fourth down normal go-for-it attempts. Granted, a lot of these will take place at the end of the game when teams are down by significant margins or must go for it in order to stay in the game, but that should not greatly affect their conversion rates. It may give us a sample bias, though, because those teams that are losing are typically worse offensively.

Fake attempts are exceedingly rare and given that there are only 200 or so attempts, we must be cautious of sample size issues. The most frequent fake attempts are on 4th-and-1 or 4th-and-2 which have happened about 30 times a piece. Compare that to over 2000 regular go-for-it attempts on 4th-and-1 and over 600 regular attempts on 4th-and-2.

Playoff Projections - Week 10

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 create a Monte Carlo season simulation. 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 wildcard competitors appear to be either BAL or PIT, depending on who loses the division, plus IND, MIA, SD, and NYJ. In the NFC, it's looking like either CHI or GB, whichever team comes in second, plus SEA, DAL, MIN, and a bunch at 10% or below. Despite what the numbers say, it looks like NO has improved significantly beyond their early-season lows and have a better shot than indicated.

These numbers do not count IND's win last night. Sorry about that. They were heavily favored by the model, so the effect is modest. For up to date numbers, you can always go straight to nfl-forecast.com.

Weekly Game Probabilities

Game probabilities for week 10 are up at the New York Times' Fifth Down.

This week the lead-in summarized my recent post on the dangers of misplaced confidence in analytic models of open, real-world systems.

Andrew Luck: Thriving In The Manning Shadow

Andrew Luck capped his first half-season in the NFL with an indisputably great performance Sunday, as his 433 passing yards on 48 attempts (9.0 yards per attempt) and two touchdowns pushed the Colts past the Dolphins, 23-20. The victory pushed what was a hapless Indianapolis team last season to 5-3 and into the playoff hunt. It's unclear if the Colts can keep riding so high -- they rank just 26th in our efficiency ratings and NumberFire has them in the playoffs in 51.5 percent of simulations.

Luck's sharp performance goes beyond just Week 9's effort. He'll enter Week 10 ranked fourth in WPA, eighth in EPA and ninth in EPA per play. His only advanced stat blemish might be his 5.4 AYPA, tied for 16th with Ryan Tannehill and Joe Flacco, stemming from his 30th-place 56.5 percent completion rate. But given the weight placed on Luck's shoulders in this Indianapolis offense -- his 336 attempts rank third in the league.

Given the 14 brilliant years of service Peyton Manning gave the Colts prior to his neck injury and subsequent release, the former Colts All-Pro will constantly be used as a measuring stick for Luck. Just looking at the rookie years, one would imagine Luck will become the greatest quarterback ever. Manning threw a whopping 28 interceptions (4.9 percent of passes) in year one and managed a rough 4.0 AYPA. Many players have posted superior rookie seasons leading into less-than-Hall-of-Fame careers. See, for example, Neil O'Donnell, Jim McMahon, Joe Flacco and Jake Plummer.

As such, it may be more educational to compare Luck to Manning's Colts career as a whole -- or at least the 12 seasons worth of data we have here at Advanced NFL Stats (dating back to 2000). Luck's games are in light blue, Manning's games are in gray and Manning's averages are in Bronco Orange.

Game Notes: Eagles fall to the Saints

Below are some observations the author noted while watching tape of the New Orleans Saints' 28-13 victory over the Philadelphia Eagles on Monday Night Football.

• On the Eagles' first drive, Michael Vick looked quite good when he had time to throw the ball. The drive ended when he fumbled the ball and set the Eagles back twenty yards.

Team Efficiency Rankings - Week 10

Week 10 already. The season seems like it's flying by. The biggest mover this week is PHI. They started the season high on the rankings. Their defense looked very strong, and their offense was moving the ball. The only thing holding them back was turnovers, which tend to regress very strongly. Well, they haven't in PHI's case, meanwhile their pass protection has collapsed and their defense has regressed to league average.

CAR is still the mystery team, so let's take a quick look at why a 2-win team is ranked 4th. They have the 4th most efficient passing offense, league-average run success rate, and a better than average offensive turnover rate. They have an above average defense, ranked 11th in both the run and pass--which makes them much better than 11th, by the way. Plus, CAR has a slightly better than average penalty rate. Add in that they've faced the 4th toughest schedule so far, and they look like a team that should win nearly 2 out of every three games.

Here are the efficient rankings for week 10. Click on the headers to sort. The efficiency components of the model are in the second table below.