One of the more perplexing things about the rankings lately is that the 7-2 Patriots have a net negative balance of offensive and defensive YPA. NE averages 6.5 net YPA but gives up 6.8 net YPA, while their other stats are very average. How are they winning and beating quality opponents (0.60 Opponent GWP)?
Perhaps part of the answer is consistency. Their offensive Success Rate, adjusted for opponent is 2nd in the league. They might only be getting 6.5 YPA, but if they got 6 or 7 yards on every attempt, they'd be unbeatable.
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.
GWP is based on a logistic regression model applied to current team stats. The model includes offensive and defensive passing and running efficiency, offensive turnover rates, defensive interception rates, and team penalty rates. If you're scratching your head wondering why a team is ranked where it is, just scroll down to the second table to see the stats of all 32 teams.
Efficiency Rankings - Week 11
Best EPA Performances of the Past 10 Years
Michael Vick blew up the Redskins Monday night with 333 passing yards, 4 passing TDs, 80 rushing yards, 2 rushing TDs, and no turnovers. It was an almost flawless individual performance from beginning to end, worth 29.4 Expected Points Added (EPA). How does it compare to the top individual performances since 2000?
The decade's top performance belongs to Tom Brady, 2007 edition. His performance in the Patriots' 59-12 win at Buffalo was worth 33.3 points. Here are the rest of the top performances:
Predictivity
Success Rate (SR) is a simple measure of whether or not a play improves an offense's expected net point potential. It essentially ignores the magnitude of a play's result, and instead focuses only on whether a play was simply a good outcome or bad outcome.
Although team SR statistics ignore important information in terms of explaining past wins, it may be able to predict future outcomes better than other measures. A team's SR on run plays is particularly informative, because it is not sensitive to the low-frequency but high-impact events that are largely subject to randomness, such as long broken runs or turnovers.
Compared to simple running efficiency, run SR correlates better with winning (0.39 compared to 0.15). This is telling and helpful, but it only accounts for past outcomes. How well a statistic predicts future outcomes is not just about the parlor game of picking winners. Stats that predict future outcomes measure the signal of how good a team really is, underneath all the noise of randomness.
In other words, there is no 'right now.' There is no is. There is the known past, clouded by randomness, and there is the unknown future, clouded by uncertainty. Now is merely the ephemeral intersection between the past and future. When trying to measure team strength or player ability, the focus should be on how well a team or player is likely to play in the future.
The Weekly League: Notes for Week Ten
This week's edition of The Weekly League features:
1. Previews of the Minnesota-Chicago, New England-Pittsburgh, and Philadelphia-Washington games.
2. The GWP win/luck table that makes all the ladies scream.
and
3. Hella chagrin.
The Four Factors you see for each game 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).
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.
The following games have been chosen as they'll be available to the greatest portion of the network-watching audience, per the NFL maps at the506.com.
Finally, a glossary of all unfamiliar terms can be found here.
Minnesota at Chicago | Sunday, November 14 | 1:00pm ET
Four Factors
Notes
• As noted by our host Brian Burke, Jared Allen -- despite having what appears to be an underwhelming year by his standards -- is still second among defensive ends with a 0.96 +WPA this season.
• Allen is, among other things, second in QB hits, with 15.
• That thing about Allen is bad, on account of -- through Week Eight, at least -- Chicago was sporting the worst offensive line (as measure by WPA) in the league.
• Probably a whole bunch of that is from the game where the New York Giants sacked Jay Cutler something like 43 times in the first half.
• Yep. Just checked it out. It was 43 times exactly.
Roundup 11/13/10
Should Antwaan Randle El be used in trick plays more often?
How lucky or unlucky have today's crop of QBs been? The Rivers Index tells us.
"Getting the most out of a professional athlete does not involve filling his head with useless facts and statistics and probabilities, and filling him with fear of what may happen if he forgets them." That's the perspective of Nate Jackson, a TE who was cut from the Browns in August. That seems right on the money to me. The picture he paints of the Browns' training camp reminds me of Plebe Summer. Don't miss the interview Jackson links to in his article.
John Candido has posted up to date play-by-play data for everyone over at the Community site.
The Lions are improving.
Ryan and Flacco
Matt Ryan and Joe Flacco are squaring off tonight. Both QBs were taken in the 1st round in 2008 and they're often compared. Their performance is amazingly similar this season in many different measures, but each player has taken a very different path to get where they are.
Both QBs improved over the course of their rookie seasons, and you can even see it clearly in their stats.
While Flacco rode his defense to success his rookie year, Ryan's play in 2008 was the reason for the Falcons' success. Since then, however, Flacco has improved, making the standard jump from his first year to his second.
Ryan is said to have regressed slightly in his second year, but his apparent decline was due primarily to situational factors. His EPA in 2008 and 2009 was nearly equal, but his WPA was cut in half.
Game Probabilities: Week 10
Weekly game probabilities are available now at the nytimes.com Fifth Down.
Mid-Season WPA All Stars: Defense
It's just past the halfway point in the season, and we recently took a look at the top offensive players in terms of Win Probability Added (WPA). Now it’s time to look at the top defenders. Instead of WPA, we’ll use +WPA, explained here.
Let’s start with DEs. Kyle Vanden Bosch leads all ends with a +WPA of 1.37. He’s credited with 37 total tackles, giving him a tackle factor of 1.42—meaning he has 42% more of his team tackles than you’d expect from his position. Vanden Bosch racked up 5 sacks, 1 pass defended, 10 QB hits, 9 tackles for losses, and a forced fumble. His biggest play was at the end of the now infamous Redskins game in which he caused Rex Grossman’s fumble returned by teammate Ndomukong Suh for a touchdown.
Jared Allen is the runner-up so far DE. The party line is that he’s having an off-year with “only” 4 sacks, but that’s not all a DE does. Allen has 15 QB hits, often forcing hurried passes or even interceptions. He also has 26 total tackles, 3 passes defended, 2 tackles for losses and an interception. Justin Tuck also deserves a mention with his insanely high +EPA. Tuck’s best plays have, unfortunately for him, come in low leverage situations. Sorry Justin, no Advanced NFL Stats sweatshirt for you.