Sunday's Numbers Have Been Cruched

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

It's All about the Gear

The passing explosion we saw at the onset of the season has mostly imploded in recent weeks, but the fact remains that passing has been exploding in slow motion over the years. There are probably several causes, including rule changes, early player development, and tactical innovations. But one theory I haven't heard is that equipment is helping receivers, specifically their gloves.

Have you seen these things? I was in a sporting goods store yesterday, and there was a prominent display featuring special gear Nike created for the Army Navy game next Saturday. For some reason the main focus was on $75 'Vapor Jet' receiver gloves. Being a Navy guy I couldn't resist the display, so I grabbed a pair of the gloves. My God, there is no way a receiver should ever drop any pass wearing these gloves. Whatever the material is on the palms and fingers, it was probably developed by NASA so astronauts could snag meteors while out on spacewalks.

Now all those miraculous, acrobatic one-handed catches suddenly make more sense to me. I'm not sure when gloves like that got so good, or exactly what the effect has been, but it's hard to imagine they haven't made a substantial difference.

I'm sure other developments in gear have influenced the sport. The trend is toward smaller and lighter pads, and today's helmets are lighter too. Modern cleats in conjunction with the trend toward field turf may also have an effect.

Meet an Offensive Line: Green Bay Packers

I'm saying nothing that will suprise the reader very much when I state that, in football, there's a great deal of interaction between the game's constituent elements. In these pages, for example, we've considered concepts like run-pass balance, fourth-down strategy, and one- versus two-point conversions. In each case, an emphasis on one element will change the effectiveness of the other.

If a coach, for example, announced before a game that his team would be running on every down, the opposing team would have an advantage in knowing that. If that same coach called a single pass play at some point, it would likely take the defense by surprise and would also therefore have a better chance of being successful.

There's also a great deal of interaction between players. If Packer quarterback Aaron Rodgers completes a 15-yard pass up the middle to wide receiver Jordy Nelson, we know that both Rodgers and Nelson probably did something right on the play. Statistically, we credit both players with a certain quantity of Expected Points Added (EPA) for their respective roles in the play.

Of course, a bunch of other stuff probably had to happen for the play to work. Like, Greg Jennings had to cross the path of Jordy Nelson's defender to give Nelson a step's worth of space. And left tackle Marshall Newhouse had to hold off the blind-side defensive end for a long enough period to give Rodgers time to throw. And, before any of that -- like, months or years before -- offensive coordinator Joe Philbin had to conceive of and implement the play.

Roundup 12/3/11

It's hard to be rational.


Is it the end of the Rex era?

Rookie of the Year watch.

Get your nose out of the spreadsheet and watch the game.

Using PFR's AV to value draft picks. Great work, Kevin Meers. Good comments there too. Would be interesting to redo Massey-Thaler paper based AV but using the new CBA rookie wage scale. Minor caveat--the draft only gives a team rights to a player in his initial contract, not his entire career.

Also from Kevin, the biggest over- and under-achievers according to their draft position.

"He is an irony-free individual who seems uninterested in developing an athletic persona based upon rehearsed machismo or wink-wink self awareness."

The Real Power Rankings

I usually save these for the Roundup, but because this is so clever it gets its own post.

Implied power rankings according to point spread markets, complete with a very clever Moneyball reference.

WP: Hidden Value of the Deep Vertical Pass

This week at the Post I took a look at how deep vertical passes are a vital part of an offensive scheme. This is another bit of research that applies league-wide, but uses the Redskins win over the Seahawks last Sunday as an example.

Here's an excerpt:

Playoff Probabilities: Week 13

Welcome to this week's edition of playoff probabilities, in which we bastardize Bible verses and take a closer look at the NFC wild card race all in the same post! 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 simulate the NFL season 5,000 times. 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.

Let us therefore come boldly to the throne of Tebow, that we may obtain touchdowns and find victory in time of need. (Broncos 4:16)

In addition to further feuling Tebow-mania, Denver's win in last week's high-leverage game bumped the Broncos' overall playoff probability up 18 points to 36%, putting them right in the middle of things in the AFC. And no one's loving it more than this guy. On the other side of the ball, after starting the season 4-1, San Diego's sixth straight loss all but eliminated them from playoff contention, dropping them 14 percentage points to just 1%.

In the NFC, meanwhile, the Falcons were the big winner, as an Atlanta win combined with losses by both Detroit and Chicago to leave all three teams at 7-4 and tied for the lead in the NFC wild card race. Below we'll take a look at each team's remaining schedule in turn. The number in parentheses is their overall playoff probability, and, for reference, I've listed the degree of difficulty (DOD) of their remaining schedule, obtained by averaging the GWP of their remaining opponents after adjusting to reflect home-field advantage.

Weekly Game Probabilities

Weekly game probabilities are available now at the nytimes.com Fifth Down. The write up is a condensed version of the Tebow analysis I just posted.