Risk Taking In The NFL

Judy Battista, the New York Times national NFL correspondent, just did an article titled Coaches Take More Risks, but Perhaps Not Enough. I helped do some of the analysis for the piece. David Romer is also interviewed.

Roundup 9/4/10

In basketball, don't call a timeout at the end of close games. You'll be more likely to draw a foul and win.

A salary cap also needs a salary floor.

The historical distribution of talent in the NFL.

A neuroscientist's struggle to understand regression to the mean.

The Sports Reference sites, including PFR, was named among Time's 50 best websites. Congrats, guys.

Tony Romo is not a mirage.

Advanced Public School Stats. What's next, Fantasy Teachers leagues? ...With his first round pick, Brian Burke selects Jaime Escalante, math teacher, Garfield High School... Stand and Deliver-great flick by the way. Escalante passed away earlier this year.

Navy 4th Down Strategy

Navy plays a triple option offense, a somewhat rare scheme even in college these days. The triple option allows Navy to compete against much bigger and faster opponents using discipline and execution as their weapons. They tend to be at or near the top of all Division I (FBS) schools in running every year, partly because they rarely pass and partly because they run the option so well.

Navy has enjoyed tremendous success in recent years, especially for a school that offers its recruits a rigorous and austere lifestyle, an extremely challenging curriculum, and virtually no chance of an NFL career. Last year they won 10 games, including their second win over Notre Dame in three years and a 35-13 drubbing of Missouri in the Texas Bowl. It was their seventh consecutive winning season and seventh consecutive bowl appearance. QB Ricky Dobbs broke Tim Tebow's record for rushing TDs by a QB last season. As my favorite Navy blog put it, archrival Army looked at their two-touchdown loss to the Midshipmen last year as a cause for optimism.

One thing about option football is that there is always a very good chance of a gain of at least a few yards. There aren't sacks or incomplete pass attempts. Navy always seems to be able to gain at least 2 or 3 yards when they need to, even when the defense knows exactly what is coming.

Navy's kicking game isn't anything special, to put it kindly. Their place kickers and punters don't have nearly the range and accuracy of the those at the top schools, much less the NFL.  Plus, Navy needs an edge against the bigger and faster opponents they typically play. So my theory was that Navy would be the perfect team to implement an aggressive 4th down strategy.

Passing = Winning

Advanced NFL Stats owes its start to an old water cooler debate: What's more important, offense or defense? Running or passing? A few years ago, I still had some statistical software left over from grad school loaded on my laptop, so I thought, "Hey, maybe these are questions that can be definitively answered." I tried to answer those questions with one of my original posts three years ago, What Makes Teams Win. When I read my older stuff, I sometimes want to cringe, but not with that one. It holds up very well, and it's well worth revisiting for newer readers, this time with more data. In this post, I'll do just that, focusing on the relative importance of running and passing.

When I was little, my dad taught me the inanity of the 'running leads to winning' fallacy. We'd watch a game on Sunday, and invariably we'd hear the announcers talk about how a team always wins when their star RB got at least 25 carries or so. They'd wax poetic about the noble nature of pure, old-fashioned, run-it-up-the-gut football. My dad would say, "Yeah, by that logic, teams should start kneeling in the first quarter. Kneeling leads to winning, right?"

A Fantasy League Minus The Randomness?

Carson Cistulli, contributor-extraordinaire at my favorite baseball site Fangraphs, wrote me to ask an interesting question. He wanted to know how someone would set up a fantasy football league using commonly available scoring options that would remove most of the luck and leave mostly the results of skill. Personally I think the randomness of sports, including fantasy sports, is part of what makes them so compelling. But draining a lot of the randomness from a fantasy league would be an interesting experiment. Here's what I suggested:

"First, turnovers are extremely random. The correlate weakly from week to week and even less from season to season. Especially on the defensive side of the ball. I would exclude turnovers from your scoring (including TDs directly occurring on turnover plays).

2010 Koko Fantasy Rankings - WRs

Next up in the 2010 Koko fantasy rankings are the WRs. These projections are intended to establish the baseline minimum accuracy as the most reasonably naive predictions. The general explanation of the system along  can be found in the 2009 QB post. Details on how WRs are projected can be found in the 2009 WR post.

One thing to note--This year I included an estimate of receptions per game for those whose scoring system credits each catch. I did not add them into the total projected points column, but it's easy enough to do on your own. The TE rankings did the same thing.

2010 Koko Fantasy Rankings - TEs

The next installment of the 2010 Koko fantasy rankings are the TEs. These projections are intended to establish the baseline minimum accuracy as the most reasonably naive predictions. The general explanation of the system along  can be found in the 2009 QB post. Details on how TEs are projected can be found in the 2009 TE post.

2010 Koko Fantasy Rankings - RBs

The next installment of the 2010 Koko fantasy rankings are the RBs. These projections are intended to establish the baseline minimum accuracy as the most reasonably naive predictions. The general explanation of the system along  can be found in the 2009 QB post. Details on how RBs are projected can be found in the 2009 RB post.

I tried to remove guys who are injured for the year or who have retired, but I may have missed someone. If you find one, just remember the classic line from Major League when Coach Lou Brown was given the list of players from the management. "This guy here is dead." "Well scratch him off then!"