Peter King Podcast

I was on PK's podcast today. We talked about people shooting at me, my days as a young Colts fan, firing coaches, hiring coaches, what to do with Andy Dalton, and which surviving teams look strongest going into this weekend.

What if KC Had Just Kneeled Out the 2nd Half?

With 13:39 left in the 3rd quarter, KC led IND 38-10. Obviously, 3rd grade math tells us IND needed at least 4 touchdowns just to tie the game at this point. A little more arithmetic might illustrate just how badly KC bungled this game.

There were a total of 1,519 seconds left in the game. KC can burn 40 seconds between plays and 6 seconds during a typical play just by calling a super safe run (that stays in bounds) or even a kneel. Even if KC doesn't try to convert a single first down, they can burn 144 seconds on a series. However, IND can use its 3 timeouts to make one series only take 24 seconds off the game clock.

Because IND is due to receive the kickoff at 13:39 in the 3rd, KC was guaranteed to have at least three possessions--one between each theoretical IND TD. That means that just by kneeling, KC can burn a total of 456 seconds (7:36) off the game clock, which leaves a total of 1,207 seconds of game time (20:07) and no timeouts for IND to score 4 touchdowns.

Live Super Bowl Probability

It won't be nearly as much fun as the live playoff probability widget from last week, but I thought it would be interesting to put together a similar live Super Bowl probability widget for the games over the next couple weeks. It's now out of beta and ready for prime time. More notes below the widget.

LIVE SUPER BOWL PROBABILITIES

The chances each remaining team will make it to the SB and win it are tracked live as each game progresses. The probabilities take into account the current game's live win probability, weighted by pre-game estimates of team strength and home field advantage. It also accounts for all future permutations of remaining games, weighted according to their likelihood of occurring. Those future games are also weighted by team-strength and home field according to seed.

Worst Article about Football Analytics of 2013

I came across this article from a website called Trending Buffalo just yesterday. It's from September, but unfortunately it's one of the top 10 results if you google football analytics. Although the author is misinformed or uninformed or both, I sense that his feelings are shared by a large number of fans and traditional analysts in the media. So I thought I'd respond point by point.

From 'Trending Buffalo' Sep 13, 2013
http://www.trendingbuffalo.com/sports/buffalo-bills/5-reasons-football-analytics-arent-as-great-as-you-think-they-are/

1. YOU DON’T KNOW WHAT YOU DON’T KNOW
Precise breakdowns of every player on every play of every game can be found on countless websites [countless?] but “Player X failed to execute his route” and “Player Y is responsible for the B gap” ring pretty hollow when you don’t know what the players were supposed to do. [The author doesn't understand what analytics is. It's not amateur scouting.] Remember when Doug Flutie discredited analysts because “You watch the game. We watch the film”? He should’ve added “and we know the play calls.” Without that crucial information, your analysis is a really, really in-depth GUESS. [Football analytics is a lot of different things, combining tools from several disciplines, but it's not about guessing assignments on plays. I suppose the author doesn't care for Pro Football Focus, which isn't strictly 'analytics' on its own. But I'd submit that even though PFF doesn't know 100% of the assignments, most can be easily inferred. It's far from perfect, but it's a big step forward for public player evaluation and a giant leap beyond traditional punditry.]

Can Late-Season Momentum Explain Playoff Upsets?

Outcome bias is a powerful habit in forming mainstream opinion, and one of the most common NFL-related ones entails "momentum."  It's easy to look at a team that wins the Super Bowl and point to a late-season three-game winning streak as a sign that the future champs "figured things out" or "got the ball rolling."  Fill in your favorite cliche and voila, instant storyline.

But how often does so-called momentum play a role in playoff success?  This isn't a new question, and many analysts and fans have realized that success at the end of the regular season is not a prerequisite for a deep postseason run.  Last season's Baltimore Ravens won it all despite losing four of their final five regular season games.

Game Probabilities - Wildcard Round

Game probabilities for the wildcard round are available at the New York Times. This week I take a look at the matchup between KC and IND.

When the Colts host the Chiefs on Saturday in the first of this weekend’s four wild-card games, each team will feel as if it is looking into the mirror. The two teams are nearly statistically identical and tend to play disciplined, low-risk, ball-control football while letting their opponents make mistakes...

The two opponents are even more similar on defense. Kansas City’s and Indianapolis’s net yards per pass attempt allowed are 6.4 and 6.2, both close to the average of 6.2. They both allow 4.5 yards per carry, a bit more than the league average of 4.1. Both teams have grabbed more than their share of interceptions, as the Chiefs intercept the ball on 3.3 percent of all pass plays and the Colts on 2.8 percent...

Special Playoff Team Viz

I put together a special version of the team stat visualization for the playoff field. It's a good, quick way to get a feel for how each contender compares on offense and defense, in the passing game and in the running game. The first three tabs depict the three key team stats: EPA, WPA, and SR. Two additional tabs break out run and pass EPA production.

What might be particularly useful is the week selector slider. It's handy for isolating recent trends or for isolating subsets of games, such as GB's games with and without a healthy Aaron Rodgers.

The dashed average lines for each stat represent the 2013 overall league average, not just the playoff field. Here's a version below, but a larger version can be found here.

Final Team Efficiency Rankings: Week 17

Since these are the final efficiency rankings of the season, I thought I'd take a look at not only where we are, but where we've come from.  Here is a link to an interactive chart displaying the progression of each team's standing in the rankings, which the HTML editor was not very happy with when I tried to embed it in this article.

Instead of focusing on a couple teams as usual, we'll be more broad in evaluating the final rankings.  Consider this a mega-version of the quick hits section that typically ends each write-up.