What Kind of Teams Are Super Bowl Winners?

What's the profile of a Super Bowl winner in the modern era? Does defense win championships? Are they predominantly elite offenses? Do they have to be above average on both sides of the ball? Are champions always dominant in the regular season? Is your team out of the mix for the Lombardi Trophy?

Here's the plot of every team's regular season Expected Points Added (EPA) for every team from 1999-2013. The horizontal axis represents their offensive EPA per game, and the horizontal axis represents their defensive EPA per game. The best teams are in the upper-right quadrant, while the worst are in the lower-left. (Click to enlarge...it's suitable for framing!)

Sunday's Numbers Have Been Crunched

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
Team Viz
Position Leaders Viz
QB Viz
RB Viz

Seahawks Stumble, Should Have Allowed TD

In one of the most anticipated games of the week, the San Francisco 49ers took over down 17-16 to the Seattle Seahawks with 6:20 remaining. After a huge Frank Gore 51-yard run, the Niners lined up for a 1st-and-Goal from the 7-yard line with 2:39 remaining. Seattle had no timeouts remaining. Should the Seahawks have tried to intentionally allow the Niners to score a touchdown? Let's look at Brian's graph for this situation in his intentional TD study:

Dome at Cold Revisited

There were 4 dome teams playing in wintery weather today, and all four lost. DET lost at PHI, MIN lost at BAL, IND lost at CIN, and ATL lost at GB.

A few years ago I looked at how dome teams tend to struggle in cold weather. I wanted to know if dome team underperformance in the cold was indeed true and if so how big was the effect. The answers were: Yes and huge. Last season I redid things using actual game temperatures and found just as big an effect.

With the weather as it is on the east coast today, I looked at this phenomenon once again. We have two more years worth of data thanks to the addition of 1999. Plus, I was able to reconstruct nearly another half season worth of data by replacing missing game temperatures from the gamebooks. I also broke out teams that played in retractable-roof stadiums by season.

Here are the results if we count retractable teams as dome teams. There's a case to be made that retractable home environments are closer to dome environments than open air stadiums. The chart below plots road team winning percentage according to game temperature.

Roundup 12/6/13

West coast teams have a big advantage in night games. I think I buy the numbers here. Backed by a solid theory.

Do nice players make their team worse? Perhaps a lesson for teams looking at Richie Incognito next season.

Stat leader rewind at PFR. I think football stats (the trivia kind anyway) need to be put in context of the era, especially compared to baseball. This will help.

Are football player lifespans shorter because of football or simply due to weight (or maybe other lurking factors)?

There are only 11 minutes of action in a 3 hour football game. And there are over 100 commercials.

Who are the best deep passers?

An article by Harvard's Nieman Journalism Lab on the brave new world of the 4th Down Bot. (It's a good thing I didn't show them this.)

I'd also like to take this opportunity to call out the call-out from that article: "The model and the bot are starting points for analysis. It's not meant to be the final arbiter of coaching decisions." I understand some of the negative reaction to Riverboat ROM (as podcast host Dave Collins nicknamed it). It's undeniable that in-game decisions aren't really as cut-and-dry as the Bot makes it seem. We tried to make that clear up front, in its introduction at NYT and here at ANS. Besides, we all have instant opinions for 4th downs when watching games as fans. It's not the worst thing in the world for those opinions to be informed by what the numbers suggest.

Sports Illustrated looks at last Saturday's big decisions in the Alabama-Auburn and Ohio State-Michigan games using (a modified) WP Calculator. For the record I disagree with the article's analysis of Alabama's long FG.

Saban's Hyperbola: Analyzing Alabama's Long FG Attempt

Way late to the party here, but let's do this because it's so interesting. As every football fan on the planet knows, Alabama attempted a 57-yd FG with 1 sec to play in regulation against Auburn. The kick fell short and was returned for a stunning game-winning TD. The consensus analysis seems to be that the FG attempt wasn't necessarily a bad decision, but the big mistake was that Alabama was not prepared with appropriate personnel to cover a potential return.

Let's look at the FG decision more closely. I won't use the WP model, but instead apply some math and logic. There were three options for Alabama:

1. Kneel
2. Hail Mary
3. Attempt the FG

Let's make some assumptions. First, OT is a 50/50 proposition. Alabama was favored in this game, but Auburn was playing strong. Plus, OT is a bit of a dice roll to begin with. Second, Hail Marys (Maries, Mary's?) from that range are probably no more successful in college than they are in the pros, which is around 5%. Lastly, for the sake of the argument, let's say there is zero chance of a defensive TD return on the Hail Mary.

We don't really know the probability of a successful FG attempt or the probability of a successful return or block & return from a range like that, especially in college ball from a kicker without many attempts. But let's set that aside for a moment.

Playoff Projections - Week 13

All of the numbers below come from Chris Cox at NFL-forecast.com. His app uses the win probabilities from the ANS team efficiency model to run a Monte Carlo simulation of the remaining NFL games thousands of times. Based on current records, our estimates of team strength, and knowledge of the NFL's tie breaking procedures we can come up with some pretty interesting predictions of how each team will fare come the end of the season. If you want to use a different model or just fiddle with the numbers by hand, go ahead and download the app yourself.

Week 13's biggest movers

With a little help, Miami was able to boost their playoff probability 29%. A victory over the Jets plus losses by the Steelers, Titans, and Chargers made the Dolphins the clear favorite for the AFC 6th slot.

Game Probabilities - Week 14

Game probabilities for week 14 are available at the New York Times. This week I look at the Kansas City Chief's unusual season.

...The efficiency model never thought the Chiefs were a dominant contender. At their peak after Week 7, they were ranked seventh over all. Since then, they’ve slipped to 22nd.

Admittedly, two of the Chiefs’ three losses came against a very good Broncos team, but the efficiency model accounts for opponent strength. In fact, despite being outplayed in their most recent loss, they rose one notch in the model’s efficiency rankings....