Anyone who's anyone knows that the peak hours for driving internet traffic are the late-afternoon ones on a December Saturday -- which is why, this late Saturday afternoon, Advanced NFL Stats presents the second installment of our acclaimed series Meet an Offensive Line.
Last week, we shook the proverbial hands of, and bought proverbial drinks for, the linemen of the Green Bay Packers' league-leading offense. One could, however -- without much effort, really -- make the case that New Orleans' o-line is better.
The Saint offense currently ranks third, behind Green Bay and New England, by GWP. Beyond that, the offensive line is second in -WPA and first, by quite a bit, in -EPA -- both of which metrics measure how good an offensive line is at preventing opposing defenses from making plays that result in losses (of WPA and EPA, respectively, in this case). Furthermore, the Saints feature the second-highest run success rate (Run SR), third-highest Pass SR, and highest overall SR in the league.
Meet an Offensive Line: New Orleans Saints
Roundup 12/10/11
I love safeties. They're one of the most exciting and interesting plays in football. But keep in mind they're not actually worth 2 points.
Jim Glass at the Community site: What clutch victories mean for a team and its coach.
Tyler Cowen on the economics of Moneyball. Phil Birnbaum's take.
An update to Michael Beouy's betting market power rankings.
Some interesting numbers on Denver's Tebow offense.
Here's an interesting article from The New Yorker on Jon Gruden, and stats are a part of the story:
WP: Better Play Calling with Twister
This week's post at the Washington Post's Redskins Insider site takes a look at tendencies of NFL signal callers and Kyle Shanahan in particular.
The laws of zero-sum game theory say that there are only two requirements for optimizing payoffs. First, plays should be called relative to their expected effectiveness. Offenses should proportionately favor their own strengths relative to its opposition’s weaknesses. And second, play calls should be unpredictably random. There could be no play caller in the league as unpredictable as a spinner from the game Twister. As silly as it sounds, whenever people are making decisions, they can’t help but create predictable patterns — patterns that can be exploited by the opposition. But even the most prescient defensive coordinator in the world can’t predict a Twister spinner.
Playoff Probabilities: Week 14
This week's edition of playoff probabilities debuts new tables indicating each team's probability of advancing to a given round of the playoffs. 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.
The Broncos continue their upward climb toward the postseason. Their win last week (coupled with a Raiders' loss) increased Denver's overall playoff probability 25 points to 61%, including a 55% chance to win their division and open the postseason at home.
With four games left to play, pretty much every game is a high-leverage game for teams in contention. Cincinnati has an opportunity for a big win against the Texans; Detroit is playing a game against the Vikings they do not want to lose; and if Baltimore wants to win the race for the AFC South, they certainly don't want to drop a game to the Colts. But two games in particular stand out as especially important this week.
Weekly Game Probabilities
Weekly game probabilities are available now at the nytimes.com Fifth Down. This week I focus on the NFC East showdown between the Giants and Cowboys, and discuss penalty rate, an often overlooked but important stat.
Aaron Rodgers Keeps Rolling
Although the Packers may very well have looked mortal Sunday against the Giants, Aaron Rodgers's Olympian season continued. The Packers' quarterback completed 28 of his 46 passes for 369 yards against New York, including four touchdowns. Rodgers did throw his fifth interception of the season, but despite the blemish, he went on to finish with a week-high +0.94 WPA and a 26.0 EPA, trailing only Cam Newton's 27.3 against Tampa Bay. Only Rodgers's 29-for-38, 408 yard, six touchdown game against Denver saw a better EPA, and Rodgers's first fourth-quarter game-winning drive of the year resulted in by far his best WPA of the season.
With the performance, Rodgers widened the statistical gap between himself and the rest of the league. His 209.9 expected points added gives him a 43.1 point advantage on second place Drew Brees and his 5.10 WPA gives him a 0.38 lead on second place Tom Brady. We are getting to the point with Rodgers's fantastic season where the 2011 season alone isn't sufficient for comparison -- his 7.9 adjusted yards per attempt is the highest in our sample (dating back to 2006), and his counting statistics are catching up to the best seasons of the new millennium.
Is Tebow's Clutch Play Sustainable?
Chris Bruce and Andrew Mooney of HSAC do a bang up job using WPA and EPA to analyze Tim Tebow's clutchitude.
So, broadly, Tebow has indeed exhibited “clutch” performance –– performing pretty ordinarily overall, but at a higher level when it matters most. Given our previous analysis of other quarterbacks who did this in their first year (including Tom Brady, Aaron Rodgers and Drew Brees), it’s unlikely that this is a sustainable course in the long run. However, it should be encouraging for Tebow fans that his performance has been improving in absolute terms.
Team Rankings: Week Fourteen
