The 3-4 defense appears to be the wave of the future. Over the course of the recent decade, the number of teams that have employed the 3-4 defenses went from 3 to 14. This season, almost half the league will be fielding a 3-4 to one degree or another.
As the pass has become more important, it makes sense that defenses are adapting by replacing larger, slower players with faster, more agile ones. The unpredictability of the 3-4 front makes the offensive line's job that much harder. The success of defenses such as the Steelers, Ravens, Jets, and even now the Saints, suggests there may be a substantial advantage to the 3-4.
Using the concepts of Expected Points Added (EPA) and Win Probability Added (WPA), we can compare the effectiveness of the two defensive schemes over the past 10 seasons. EPA measures every play in terms of the change in the potential gain of net point advantage. WPA measures every play in terms of how much it changed a team's chances of winning the game at hand.
Comparing The 3-4 And 4-3 Defenses Part 1
Vick as a Passer and Runner
Michael Vick intrigues me, his personal behavior aside. I suppose his playing style just stands out in a league full of clones. Last year I wrote that Vick was a better passer than most people think. His conventional statistics, such as passer rating and completion percentage, obscured his true performance. The difference isn't just the running yards he could gain, but the fact that he tended to throw deep because he was his own check-down option. He's back starting this Sunday, so it's a good time to take another look at Vick's career, this time through the lenses of Expected Points Added (EPA) and Win Probability Added (WPA).
Live Win Probability Graphs Available
Advanced individual player stats from week 2 are already crunched and available. The WP graph for tonight's game is up and running today for all games.
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Roundup 9/18/10
Here's a cool team ranking site. It's based on only score and home field advantage, but I like the algorithm, and the presentation is cool. It reminds of Beat Graphs, which has a new look.
I really enjoy watching the NFL Films series America's Game. Now you can watch them on Hulu. Here's the Ravens 2000 season. Man, am I glad Ray Lewis is on my team.
Florida Danny at Niners Nation does some extra homework on how bad NFL pre-season predictions really are.
A couple interesting posts at Fifth Down. Week 1 winning teams make the playoffs 52% of the time, while week 1 losing teams make the playoffs only 23% of the time. (In case you think that this implies 75% of teams make the playoffs, like I did, that's not the case. 16 teams are 1-0, half of them--8 teams--make the playoffs. 16 teams are 0-1, and a quarter of them--4 teams--make the playoffs. That's a total of 12.) There's two things at work. First, 1-0 teams now have a numerical head start toward earning enough wins to qualify, and second, it's an indication of a good team.
ANNOUNCEMENT: Community Re-Launched
About a year and a half ago, I launched Advanced NFL Stats Community, a site where anyone could contribute a post. It received a few dozen submissions, some more interesting than others, and it was a great start. Unfortunately, the time I devoted to reformatting the articles and their tables of data took away time I wanted to spend on other projects. I decided to gradually let the site fade into the background.
But one of my goals continues to be helping building a collaborative community of football stat heads without “premium” content or “proprietary” black-box stats, and I’d like to offer readers a platform for sharing ideas and analysis. In the recent off-season, I completed a long-standing goal of building an open NFL play-by-play database suitable for research and making available to everyone. Immediately, readers started parsing the data, adding fields for various things, and sharing their insights in the comments section of the post.
The Weekly League: Notes and Ideas for Week Two
This week's edition of The Weekly League features some brief notes about the Miami-Minnesota game and then some less-than-brief notes about the New York Jets-New England match-up.
The following games have been chosen as they'll be available to the greatest portion of the network-watching audience on Sunday, per the NFL maps at the506.com.
The Four Factors you see for each game represent each team's ability 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). They're also for Week One games only. In other words, they're to be taken with the giantest grain of salt ever.
Miami at Minnesota | Sunday, September 19 | 1:00pm ET
Four Factors
The Miami Defense
I suspect that last week's Buffalo-Miami game was painful to watch in its entirety. We in the Upper Midwest joined the game with a couple minutes left, and even that was probably too much. With the exception of a fourth quarter drive on which he went 7-for-7 with 82 yards (including lost yards from a sack), quarterback Trent Edwards looked absolutely lost, checking down almost instantly despite his team being down by five and deep in their own territory.
Taking a Closer Look at Forte’s Week 1
CHI RB Matt Forte was named the NFC offensive player of the week for his amazing 7-catch, 151-receiving yard, 2-receving TD game against the Lions. When I looked up the advanced stats for RBs, I expected to see him near the top of the list for WPA. I was surprised to find him more than halfway down, posting a net negative WPA. I thought there must be some bug in the system. There’s no way a guy with 151 receiving yards and 2 TDs could have a negative effect on his team’s chances of winning, especially in a victory.
I’m not suggesting that WPA should be the ultimate stat for handing out awards, but taking a closer look at Forte’s plays can reveal a lot about WPA and what kind of events truly affect a team’s chances of winning.
2010 Individual Player Stats Now Available
Advanced statistics for individual players are now available for week 1 of the 2010 season. Win Probability Added, Expected Points Added, Success Rate, Tackle Factor, and a myriad of other numbers will be tracked throughout the season. (Check out the glossary for definitions of each statistic.)
Who was the hero of week 1? Eli Manning with +0.58 WPA in the Giants' victory over the Panthers.
Miles Austin tops the wide receivers with an incredible +0.68 WPA in the Cowboys' loss to the Redskins. But that was mostly due to a +0.60 WPA play at the end of the game. Austin's 30-yard catch over the middle set Dallas up for what was almost a miraculous victory, if not for Alex Barrons' clothesline hold on Brian Orakpo.