Post by spreadattack on Jul 5, 2006 10:58:46 GMT -6
I've posted more narrowly targeted versions of this topic at a couple other boards, but I wanted to get some feedback here on what the big brains here have been doing and maybe some criticism of what I've been thinking. Basically, I think a lot of football common sense is wrong, and even if it's only half or partially right, maybe we can exploit that to win more games. Also, as important as watching film is or even watching practice, we really can only see so much and tend to just remember a few plays or two.
We talk a lot about schemes and systems to "help us win with inferior players," but I wanted to look at a bit at how we grade our offenses and defenses, and how we evaluate those players. In fact, what if they weren't inferior at all, but instead just had skills we didn't appreciate enough or didn't possess skills we overvalued, such as the old "looking like a football player."
Anyway, here's a quck rundown of some of the team stats I tend to focus on, mostly offense to try to evaluate what I'm doing right or not. As I said in another thread, I'm not looking for a magic number or even a "killer stat" in general--those are for gamblers trying to beat the spread--but instead things to help me better understand the game and appreciate it objectively. I'm not looking for a magic bullet. I think this is what a lot of gameplanning is all about. Also, I'm not an NFL team and I don't have a director of research or anything, so I still try to keep it fairly simple.
The stat with the strongest correlation to wins and losses is, unsurprisingly, point differential. So, no surprise, my goal on offense is to score points and on defense to get shutouts. Nothing shocking there. A "field position" team and a "wide-open" team tend to try to achieve them in different ways. One way of course is to just keep scoring at a rate your opponent cannot keep up with, the other is to prevent them from scoring hardly at all so any scoring you do should be the difference in the game. To some extent I think you pick one or the other or try to be a blend of both, and just go from there.
To start, I think time of possession is fairly meaningless. I *do* believe in protecting leads: If we get up by 7-10 points or more, you can believe we are going to try to shorten the game and run more time off the clock. This really though is an effort to reduce the number of plays in the game, any TOP differential is usually derivative of the number of plays run and further can be misleading if you scored on the first play of your first two drives and then on special teams and then, even if you spent the rest of the game trying to run the clock down you may get a TOP no more than even.
All that said here we go:
1. Turnovers per play - This is just a way to see how often we force turnovers. My games tend to have more plays than the other guy so the number of turnovers per game can be misleading. I'll also look at turnover differential, as that is the number one stat that goes with winning and losing.
As a digression, some studies have shown that interceptions count more against you than fumbles, but for the most part a turnover kills you because possessing the ball on a certain part of the field carries with it a certain "expected scoring value"--i.e. with the ball 1st and 10 on their 20, I expect to score a TD a certain amount of time, or a field goal another amount of time, and thus simply having the ball there is worth say 4.5 points to me. Then, if I turn it over on the next play and they run it back to the 50, they now have say an expected value of 2.8 points, which is a point swing of more than a touchdown on one play. That hurts a lot.
2. Redzone Percentage: I break this down in 25 yardline, 15 yardline, and 5 yardline (and have other numbers going farther out). Typically the winning teams are very good at getting touchdowns, while losing teams do not. Total yards tends to get washed out and doesn't correlate well with winning and losing, but this does. No secrets here.
3. Yards per rush: My favorite rushing stat. As I said in the rushing thread, I tend to focus this number on 1st and 2nd down rushes (and I will get more down and situation specific as well), but I want to know how many yards I expect to get from my team and certain plays. I ignore third downs because I don't want 7 yard runs on 3rd and 9 inflating my run stats.
4. Yards Per Pass Attempt: My number one passing stat behind interceptions. This is so important. The key to this stat is that it is a function of yards per completion and completion %, along with losses from sacks. So the more you get per completion the less your passing % needs to be. This is true also of your individual plays. Stick is a great play because it routinely completes over 70% for me, but it does not average a lot of yards. A play that only completes about 50% needs to get more yards, either through consistency or big play potential. I usually with also use the Sharpe ratio at the end to judge how widely some of my passes vary to see which are the consistent gainers (like stick) or that have results that vary (like post-corners where sometimes we get the 25-30 yard gain or sometimes we drop it off to the RB).
The key to this stat is you can compare it to yards per carry to see what your balance is doing to you. Also, because other teams respond to you, the more you pass, the more your yards per rushing attempt should go up, and the more you run, the more your yards per passing attempt should go up. The goal is to find the "balance", which simply means what combination will let your offense be the most effective. Whether you are 80/20 run pass or 20/80 probably depends more on your kids and what you teach and work on in practice.
Nevertheless, this stat is important to me because it makes sure that I'm moving the chains. As you'll see from the others, I'm really big on "efficiency" on offense, as my goal is to always get positive yardage, get first downs, but have the chance to score a TD at any time.
5. Third Down %/Average yards per third down: No shocker here either, but teams good on third down win more. However, all strategy aside, the best way to determine how good you are on 3rd down is to have manageable third downs. This means getting positive yardage on 1st and 2nd.
6. % of total plays that are 3rd downs: This is another effiency stat. One thing I realized is that teams that score points and win games aren't the ones with the most 1st downs, but the ones who get those first downs on 1st and 2nd down. The game totally shifts to the defense on 3rd down. Your options are limited, you have t react to them, often you simply have to make a call to not put them in great field position, but on 1st and 2nd down the world is yours and good teams get first downs on 1st and 2nd. The higher the percentage of your plays that are 1st downs the better you'll be.
7. Explosive plays: I want to generate them, as a simple 20 yard gain can often be a 3-5 point swing in terms of your expected points based on field position. Runs over 12 and passes over 20. That is most important to me.
Anyway, I can also post on how I rate individual players but along similar lines. It's hard to really objectively judge them since there's so much going on and a RB on one team can't really compared to a RB on the other, and sometimes even on your own squad. Looking for discussion
We talk a lot about schemes and systems to "help us win with inferior players," but I wanted to look at a bit at how we grade our offenses and defenses, and how we evaluate those players. In fact, what if they weren't inferior at all, but instead just had skills we didn't appreciate enough or didn't possess skills we overvalued, such as the old "looking like a football player."
Anyway, here's a quck rundown of some of the team stats I tend to focus on, mostly offense to try to evaluate what I'm doing right or not. As I said in another thread, I'm not looking for a magic number or even a "killer stat" in general--those are for gamblers trying to beat the spread--but instead things to help me better understand the game and appreciate it objectively. I'm not looking for a magic bullet. I think this is what a lot of gameplanning is all about. Also, I'm not an NFL team and I don't have a director of research or anything, so I still try to keep it fairly simple.
The stat with the strongest correlation to wins and losses is, unsurprisingly, point differential. So, no surprise, my goal on offense is to score points and on defense to get shutouts. Nothing shocking there. A "field position" team and a "wide-open" team tend to try to achieve them in different ways. One way of course is to just keep scoring at a rate your opponent cannot keep up with, the other is to prevent them from scoring hardly at all so any scoring you do should be the difference in the game. To some extent I think you pick one or the other or try to be a blend of both, and just go from there.
To start, I think time of possession is fairly meaningless. I *do* believe in protecting leads: If we get up by 7-10 points or more, you can believe we are going to try to shorten the game and run more time off the clock. This really though is an effort to reduce the number of plays in the game, any TOP differential is usually derivative of the number of plays run and further can be misleading if you scored on the first play of your first two drives and then on special teams and then, even if you spent the rest of the game trying to run the clock down you may get a TOP no more than even.
All that said here we go:
1. Turnovers per play - This is just a way to see how often we force turnovers. My games tend to have more plays than the other guy so the number of turnovers per game can be misleading. I'll also look at turnover differential, as that is the number one stat that goes with winning and losing.
As a digression, some studies have shown that interceptions count more against you than fumbles, but for the most part a turnover kills you because possessing the ball on a certain part of the field carries with it a certain "expected scoring value"--i.e. with the ball 1st and 10 on their 20, I expect to score a TD a certain amount of time, or a field goal another amount of time, and thus simply having the ball there is worth say 4.5 points to me. Then, if I turn it over on the next play and they run it back to the 50, they now have say an expected value of 2.8 points, which is a point swing of more than a touchdown on one play. That hurts a lot.
2. Redzone Percentage: I break this down in 25 yardline, 15 yardline, and 5 yardline (and have other numbers going farther out). Typically the winning teams are very good at getting touchdowns, while losing teams do not. Total yards tends to get washed out and doesn't correlate well with winning and losing, but this does. No secrets here.
3. Yards per rush: My favorite rushing stat. As I said in the rushing thread, I tend to focus this number on 1st and 2nd down rushes (and I will get more down and situation specific as well), but I want to know how many yards I expect to get from my team and certain plays. I ignore third downs because I don't want 7 yard runs on 3rd and 9 inflating my run stats.
4. Yards Per Pass Attempt: My number one passing stat behind interceptions. This is so important. The key to this stat is that it is a function of yards per completion and completion %, along with losses from sacks. So the more you get per completion the less your passing % needs to be. This is true also of your individual plays. Stick is a great play because it routinely completes over 70% for me, but it does not average a lot of yards. A play that only completes about 50% needs to get more yards, either through consistency or big play potential. I usually with also use the Sharpe ratio at the end to judge how widely some of my passes vary to see which are the consistent gainers (like stick) or that have results that vary (like post-corners where sometimes we get the 25-30 yard gain or sometimes we drop it off to the RB).
The key to this stat is you can compare it to yards per carry to see what your balance is doing to you. Also, because other teams respond to you, the more you pass, the more your yards per rushing attempt should go up, and the more you run, the more your yards per passing attempt should go up. The goal is to find the "balance", which simply means what combination will let your offense be the most effective. Whether you are 80/20 run pass or 20/80 probably depends more on your kids and what you teach and work on in practice.
Nevertheless, this stat is important to me because it makes sure that I'm moving the chains. As you'll see from the others, I'm really big on "efficiency" on offense, as my goal is to always get positive yardage, get first downs, but have the chance to score a TD at any time.
5. Third Down %/Average yards per third down: No shocker here either, but teams good on third down win more. However, all strategy aside, the best way to determine how good you are on 3rd down is to have manageable third downs. This means getting positive yardage on 1st and 2nd.
6. % of total plays that are 3rd downs: This is another effiency stat. One thing I realized is that teams that score points and win games aren't the ones with the most 1st downs, but the ones who get those first downs on 1st and 2nd down. The game totally shifts to the defense on 3rd down. Your options are limited, you have t react to them, often you simply have to make a call to not put them in great field position, but on 1st and 2nd down the world is yours and good teams get first downs on 1st and 2nd. The higher the percentage of your plays that are 1st downs the better you'll be.
7. Explosive plays: I want to generate them, as a simple 20 yard gain can often be a 3-5 point swing in terms of your expected points based on field position. Runs over 12 and passes over 20. That is most important to me.
Anyway, I can also post on how I rate individual players but along similar lines. It's hard to really objectively judge them since there's so much going on and a RB on one team can't really compared to a RB on the other, and sometimes even on your own squad. Looking for discussion
