A lot of movement in the rankings this week. The Giants catapult to #2 on the backs of the Bears who fall from #1 to #9 thanks to that historic beat-down Sunday night. That kind of performance will be hard to repeat
San Diego's offense does not appear to be missing Vincent Jackson one bit, and their pass defense is giving up the second fewest yards per attempt. The model heavily regresses team stats, particularly so early in the season. Nevertheless, the Chargers look like a team about to rattle off a bunch of wins.
Two of the curiosities are the Cowboys and Redksins at #4 and #5. To figure out whey they're so high, all you need to do is scroll down to the team stats at the bottom of the post. Both teams are throwing the ball very well, and they've played against tougher-than-average opponents. Keep in mind these rankings aren't about who has won the most games in the past, but who is likely to win the most games in the future.
Week 5 Efficiency Rankings
The End-Game in BAL-PIT
There were two critical decisions at the end of the Ravens-Steelers game Sunday. The first was a 4th down call, and the second...was also a 4th down call, but not the kind I usually harp on.
Down by 4 with 2:44 left in the game, John Harbaugh made the right call to go for the touchdown on 4th and goal from the 2. The fade pass to Anquan Boldin was unsuccessful (are they ever?), but Baltimore went on to win anyway. I won’t bore you with the actual numbers, but this is a perfect example of why going for it is usually the better call. Even when the play fails, it’s far from a death sentence.
The second and more interesting 4th down call came with 1:15 left. The Steelers faced a 4th and 10 from their own 3. An NFL statistician-emeritus asked me if the right call would have been to take an intentional safety. My first reaction was, ‘of course not.’ That cuts the lead to 2 points, making the lead vulnerable to a FG. I thought, what’s harder to do, drive 40 yards for a TD or drive 25 yards for a FG? Little did I know I was falling into the same trap many coaches do.
How Coaches Think: Run Success Rate
Before tools such as EPA and WPA were available, I relied on team efficiency stats to estimate team strength. Yards per pass attempt or per run attempt worked out to be very good estimators of how good a team was, especially if ‘good’ is defined as being likely to win forthcoming games. Efficiency stats had the added benefit of being relatively simple, widely available, and easy to calculate.
Efficiency stats also worked well in regression analysis. In a regression model, it’s best if the predictor variables are independent of each other. In other words, the less each predictor variable correlates with the others, the more valid and reliable the resulting model will be. Passing and running efficiencies in the NFL correlate weakly. Over the past 10 seasons, offensive passing and running efficiencies for each team correlate at 0.09 (where 1 would mean lock-step correlation and 0 would mean complete independence.)
Live WP Graphs + Updates Are Up
Live WP graphs are up and running for today's games.
Almost forgot. Mobile WP graphs are running too.
Advanced stats for individual players and teams are updated following the 1 pm games.
Roundup 10/2/2010
Are Hall of Fame coaches really just products of great quarterbacks?
You've heard of WOWY stats (With Or Without You), like hockey's adjusted plus/minus. Now here's a WOWRM stat: With Or Without Randy Moss. I did something (primitively) similar with Troy Polamalu last season.
Gregg Easterbrook thinks the 3-4 defense is part of a cyclical fad. He also says that good players are far more important than schemes. He's right. The small advantage I found for the 3-4 is just that--small. The rest of the variance in performance among defenses has to be attributed to other things, most notably player ability. On the other hand, every advantage counts, no matter how slight.
The Weekly League: Notes and Ideas for Week Four
This week's edition of The Weekly League features notes on Sunday night's game between Chicago and the New York Football Giants. It also features some idle thoughts on American filmmaker Woody Allen. I apologize for that in advance.
The Four Factors you see below represent each team's raw performance thus far 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 only for this season's first three weeks of games, however, so some regression is likely.
Along with the Four Factors, you'll see two other numbers: Generic Win Probability (GWP) and Game Probability (PROB). The GWP is the probability a team would beat the league average team at a neutral site. It can be found for all teams here. The PROB is each respective team's chance of winning this particular contest. Your host, Brian Burke, provides PROBs to the New York Times each week, and those numbers (along with methodology) can be found here.
Finally, a glossary of all unfamiliar terms can be found here.
Some Notes on Football and "High Culture"
It's very possible that you, reader, have one or more objections to American filmmaker Woody Allen. It's also very possible that your objections to Mr. Allen and/or his work are entirely reasonable. I don't care to dispute that notion.
What I'd like to submit is that one of Mr. Allen's strengths -- and I think it's indisputable -- is both his ease with high culture and his ability to mock it simultaneously. (Basically his entire filmography is a testament to this notion, although, if you're looking for examples, the Marshall McLuhan scene from Annie Hall is a strong one.) At his best, Allen is teaching us an important lesson -- namely, that we ought to be curious about, and humble before, the Great Works, but also that, insofar as everything is fallible, so are the same Great Works.
Game Probabilities - Week 4
Weekly game probabilities are available now at the nytimes.com Fifth Down. This week I also lead-in with a discussion of the kinds of things I'm looking at this time of the year.
Week 4 Team Efficiency Rankings
The team rankings below are in terms of generic win probability. The GWP is the probability a team would beat the league average team at a neutral site. Each team's opponent's average GWP is also listed, which can be considered to-date strength of schedule, and all ratings include adjustments for opponent strength.
Offensive rank (ORANK) is offensive generic win probability which is based on each team's offensive efficiency stats only. In other words, it's the team's GWP assuming it had a league-average defense. DRANK is is a team's generic win probability rank assuming it had a league-average offense.