Here are the selections:

First Team

QB: Peyton Manning, Broncos.
RB: Adrian Peterson, Vikings (unanimous), Marshawn Lynch, Seahawks.
FB: Vonta Leach, Ravens.
TE: Tony Gonzalez, Falcons.
WR: Calvin Johnson, Lions; Brandon Marshall, Bears.
OT: Duane Brown, Texans; Ryan Clady, Broncos.
OG: Jahri Evans, Saints; Mike Iupati, 49ers.
C: Max Unger, Seahawks.
DE: J.J. Watt, Texans (unanimous), Cameron Wake, Dolphins.
DT: Geno Atkins, Bengals; Vince Wilfork, Patriots.
OLB: Von Miller, Broncos; Aldon Smith, 49ers.
ILB: Patrick Willis, 49ers; Navorro Bowman, 49ers.
CB: Richard Sherman, Seahawks; Charles Tillman, Bears.
S: Earl Thomas, Seahawks; Dashon Goldson, 49ers.
P: Andy Lee, 49ers.
K: Blair Walsh, Vikings.
KR: Jacoby Jones, Ravens.

Some quick thoughts: [continue reading…]

I was on vacation last week, so I provided just a bare bones set of NFL playoff predictions. Technically, my picks went 4-0 on Wildcard Weekend, but that doesn’t count for much when you pick the favorite in every game. With a little more time on my hands, here’s an in-depth preview of Saturday’s games. Tomorrow I’ll be previewing Sunday’s action.

Baltimore Ravens (10-6) (+9.5) at Denver Broncos (13-3), Saturday 4:30PM ET

Most of the signs in this game point squarely in the favor of Peyton Manning and the Broncos. Baltimore has wildly underachieved on the road the last few seasons, and in Denver does not seem like the optimal place for that trend to reverse itself. From 2002 to 2010, Manning went 8-0 against the Ravens, including a 2-0 mark in playoff games. If you double his numbers in those games (to approximate a 16-game season), Manning would have thrown for 4,044 yards and 28 touchdowns against just 12 interceptions, while averaging 7.8 Y/A and 7.9 AY/A to go with a 65.6% completion rate and a 97.7 passer rating. Manning was similarly lethal in Denver’s win over the Ravens in Baltimore earlier this year.
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Regular readers surely recall my “What are the Odds of That” post from this summer. In that article, I referenced an obscured Jacoby Jones stat: in 2011, he gained three times as many receiving yards against teams at the back end of the alphabet as he did against the teams he faced in the front of the alphabet. Then I asked, “what are the odds of that?”

This is a very good reason why it’s often inappropriate to apply standard significance tests to football statistics. Surely Jones’ splits would pass any standard significance test, signaling that his wild split was in fact “real” even though we know it wasn’t. With a large enough sample, you would expect to have false positives, which isn’t a knock on standard significant testing. If something is statistically significant at the 1% level, that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t expect to see a false positive if you have 100 different samples…
…
Some in the statistical community refer to this as the Wyatt Earp Effect. You’ve undoubtedly heard of Wyatt Earp, who is famous precisely because he survived a large number of duels. What are the odds of that? Well, it depends on your perspective. The odds that one person would survive a large number of duels? Given enough time, it becomes a statistical certainty that someone would do just that. Think back to the famous Warren Buffett debate on the efficient market hypothesis. Suppose that 225 million Americans partake in a single elimination national coin-flipping contest, with one coin flip per day. After 20 days, we would expect 215 people to successfully call their coin flips 20 times out of 20. But that doesn’t mean those 215 people are any better at calling coins than you or I am. The Wyatt Earp Effect, the National Coin Flipping Example, and my Splits Happen post all illustrate the same principle. Asking “what are the odds of that?” is often meaningless in retrospect. If you look at enough things, enough players’ splits, enough 4th quarter comeback opportunities, enough coin flips, or enough roulette wheel spins, you will see some things that seem absurdly unlikely.

In December, I highlighted Matt Schaub’s struggles in night games compared to day games as yet another example. Well now, Ray Rice is the latest protagonist in What are the Odds of That? In case you missed it, Rice fumbled twice in Baltimore’s playoff win over Indianapolis, with the Colts recovering both times. Rice has struggled with fumbles in the playoffs in the past, but he’s always been outstanding during the regular season at holding on to the ball. In 2012, he lost just one fumble — which went harmlessly out of bounds — giving him a clean record for the season. So what’s going on? Here’s what Bill Barnwell wrote earlier this week:
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For the second time in three years, the Atlanta Falcons are the NFC’s number one seed. Just like in 2010, the Falcons started this season 13-2 but ended the year with only 11 Pythagorean wins. In 2010, Atlanta lost its first game to the #6 seed Packers, who sported the highest SRS of any NFC team in 2010. This year, Atlanta hosts the #6 seed Seahawks, who finished 2012 with highest SRS of any NFC team. History suggests that this is a difficult challenge for Atlanta, regardless of the Falcons’ lofty record.

One of the obvious topics the mainstream media has hit on this week has been Matt Ryan’s inability to win in the playoffs. As everyone knows, Atlanta is 0-3 in the playoffs in the Mike Smith/Matt Ryan era. As Ryan prepares for his fourth playoff start on Sunday, history offers some comfort: four other quarterbacks (since 1950) have been in exactly the same situation, entering their fourth playoff start with an 0-3 record. Those quarterbacks went 3-1 in their fourth game. Let’s stroll down memory lane.

• At age 37, Y.A. Tittle and the New York Giants went to Soldier Field to battle the famed 1963 Bears. Tittle had gone 0-3 in his previous three NFL playoff games, and had lost his lone playoff game in the AAFC, too. In 1957, Tittle was on the wrong side of the most famous comeback in playoff history prior to Bills/Oilers. In that game, Tittle threw three touchdowns against the Lions as San Francisco opened up what looked to be an insurmountable 27-7 lead. But Tittle finished the day with three interceptions, and the Lions came back and won, 31-27. In 1961, Tittle was with the Giants, and was part of an embarassing 37-0 shutout on the quite literal frozen tundra of Lambeau Field. Tittle was a miserable 6/20 for 65 yards with 4 interceptions. The next year, the Giants and Packers met again, this time at a frozen and windy Yankee Stadium, with the Packers again topping the Giants. ^[1]This was the first game Ed Sabol filmed for the NFL, under the label Blair Motion Pictures. So you can imagine that when Tittle and the Giants had to travel to Soldier Field in 1963 — the Giants third straight year in the title game — Tittle probably carried the choker label. With a wind chill of -11 degrees, the weather was again miserable, and the result was more of the same for Tittle and New York. The Giants lost 14-10, and Tittle threw 1 touchdown against 5 interceptions.
• Jack Kemp took the Chargers to the AFL title game in the league’s first two seasons. On New Year’s Day 1961, Kemp was outplayed by Houston’s George Blanda, and Billy Cannon put the final nail in the coffin as the Oilers won, 24-16. The Oilers and Chargers met again in the title game the following year — this time in San Diego — but Kemp had a miserable game, throwing 4 interceptions as the Chargers lost, 10-3. By 1963, Kemp was with the Bills, and Buffalo had finished the year tied with the Patriots, setting up a one-game playoff for the division title at War Memorial Stadium. But Kemp struggled and was benched for Daryle Lamonica at halftime, as the Bills lost 26-8. In 1964, the Bills went 12-2, and entered the AFL title game against Kemp’s old team, San Diego. At this time, Kemp had an 0-3 post-season record, and surely Chargers fans taunted the citizens of Buffalo by calling Kemp the Mayor of Chokesville. While Kemp did not produce stellar numbers, the Bills managed to defeat the Chargers and capture their first AFL championship. The hero of the game may have been Mike Stratton, who produced the “hit heard round the world” early in the game, knocking out San Diego’s Keith Lincoln. In any event, the Mayor of Chokesville was able to abdicate his throne.

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Much has been written this season arguing that the Falcons are not as good as their 13-3 record. Conversely, the Seahawks have emerged as a favorite among some in our advanced statistical community: Brian Burke ranks Seattle as the third most efficient team, Aaron Schatz ranks them number one, and Pro-Football-Reference ranks Seattle second in the SRS behind only the Patriots.

Here’s a quick way to summarize the Falcons-Seahawks game on Sunday: Atlanta won two more games than Seattle this season but the SRS says that the Falcons are 5.7 points worse than the Seahawks. That’s based on the fact that (1) Seattle has outscored opponents its by 2.9 more points per game than Atlanta outscored its opponents this year, and (2) Seattle faced a schedule that was 2.8 points per game harder than Atlanta’s schedule.

How often does it happen that a home team in the playoffs won 2+ more games than its opponent but was at least 5 points worse than that opponent in the SRS? This is just the second time such a matchup has occurred in the last 10 years… and the first involved the 2010 Falcons. In fact, this scenario has only unfolded five times since 1970:

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AFC East and NFC East Season in review
AFC North and NFC North Season in review
AFC North and NFC South Season in review

In the case of the AFC West, a picture can say a thousand words.

Denver Broncos

Pre-season Projection: 8.5 wins
Maximum wins: 13 (after weeks 10 through 16)
Minimum wins: 9 (after weeks 3, 5 )
Week 1 comment: Watching Peyton Manning work his magic was a thing of beauty on Sunday night. The less John Fox touches this offense, the better, but I think everyone in Denver already knows that.

Once Peyton Manning proved that he was healthy and back, the AFC West race was effectively over. Officially, that happened in the week 6 comeback over the Chargers. That win only made them 3-3, but here is what I wrote then: According to Advanced NFL Stats, Denver is the best team in the league. Their remaining schedule is absurdly easy, so I’m going to perhaps prematurely give them a two-win bump. Their week 15 game in Baltimore may be for a bye, and I now think Denver is the favorite.

Kudos to Brian Burke’s model for correctly identifying how good the Broncos were early in the year. After week 9, I pegged Denver at 12 wins, and wrote: As a matter of principle, projecting a team to finish 7-1 is never advised. But this seems to be a good place to make an exception.

The next week, I bumped them to 13 wins, and never moved off that number. They got a late Christmas present from Manning’s old team, and now the AFC playoffs will have to go through Denver.

San Diego Chargers

Pre-season Projection: 9 wins
Maximum wins: 9 (after weeks 1, 2, and 4)
Minimum wins: 6 (after weeks 10 through 13, 16)
Week 1 comment: Unimpressive on Monday Night Football, but the schedule lines up for them to succeed. Philip Rivers is still elite, so expecting them to only go 8-7 the rest of the way is probably more of a knock on them than anything else. A healthy Ryan Mathews back will help.

The Chargers schedule was ridiculously easy, but they lost to the Browns, Saints, and Panthers, and couldn’t beat the Ravens, Bengals, or Bucs. The decline of Philip Rivers from elite quarterback to throw-it-out-of-bounds master is depressing, and it’s easy and probably appropriate to point the blame at the general manager. Going into 2013, San Diego will have a new head coach and GM, and we’ll see if that is what was needed to resurrect Rivers’ career.

It’s not easy to remember, but the Chargers were actually 3-1. At that point, I wrote: An unimpressive 3-1 team with a struggling offensive line. I really wanted to keep them at 8 wins, but their schedule is too easy and Philip Rivers — even in a down year — is good enough to lead them to a .500 record the rest of the way.

But by the time they were 3-4, I had already started with the “I can’t think of anything positive to say about the Chargers right now” comments. I summed up the Chargers season after week 13, when I wrote: This team started 2-0 but hasn’t beaten anyone but the Chiefs since then.

Of course, San Diego being San Diego, the Chargers did finish with 7 wins, but it was another disappointing season for the franchise. It’s hard to think back to September, but Vegas really did project the Chargers to win this division.
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A couple of weeks ago, I heard my buddy and co-worker Sigmund Bloom say on the Footballguys Podcast that Jamaal Charles was having one of the craziest seasons ever. As Sigmund noted, Charles has been an incredibly frustrating fantasy player. This year, he had three games with 10 or fewer rushing yards… and he also became the first player in NFL history with two games with over 225 rushing yards in the same season.

Did you know that Kansas City finished 2012 fifth in carries? Under Todd Haley, Chiefs fans and fantasy football players were constantly frustrated by Thomas Jones, who Haley seemed to always find a way to give an extra ten carries to. This year, under Romeo Crennel, Peyton Hillis was the complementary back, but he was not nearly as predatory. Still, while Charles finally received the lion’s share of the carries, he was once again an inconsistent fantasy player.

Take a look at Charles’ weekly game logs:

That’s a pretty incredible distribution, but how crazy is it?

I looked at the standard deviation of every game by every player in a season with at least 1,000 rushing yards from 1960 to 2011. As it turns out, Charles has had one of the most inconsistent seasons ever. While he gained 1,509 rushing yards, he had a standard deviation of 71.4 yards. That may not mean anything to you in the abstract, but it would place him as the 4th most inconsistent back since 1960.
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Last week I reviewed the seasons of the teams in the AFC East and NFC East and in the AFC North and NFC North. Today we’ll review the interesting seasons from the AFC and NFC South divisions.

In the AFC South, I had the bottom three teams projected for between 5 and 6 wins for a five week stretch starting after week two. As we now know, that was resolved quite definitively by the end of the year:

Houston Texans

Pre-season Projection: 10 wins
Maximum wins: 14 (after week 15)
Minimum wins: 10 (after week 1)
Week 1 comment: Going to win the AFC South going away; this team could win 12 games, but concerns about injuries and the potential to rest starters late keep them at 10 wins for now.

A miserable December ruined what should have been a marvelous season in Houston. At no point did I project any of the other AFC South teams to finish within even three games of the Texans. When they were 5-0, I wrote: Not only do the Texans still have 6 home games remaining, but they have 4 more games against the AFC South and get the Bills and Lions. Even without Brian Cushing, I don’t see why they don’t win 8 more games.

The Texans schedule was easy, but they also had dominant seasons out of J.J. Watt and Andre Johnson. Left Tackle Duane Brown was outstanding, and Houston is as good as any other team in the league when they’re at their their best. Unfortunately, they might be undermanned in a gunfight with the Broncos or Patriots, and it looks like now they’ll have to beat both of those teams to get to New Orleans. Still, I give the Texans a fighting chance; Matt Schaub has struggled in primetime games, but that doesn’t really mean anything. In the end I think the week 17 loss submarined their playoff hopes, and the team will be left wondering how good they could have been if Cushing stayed healthy.

Indianapolis Colts

Pre-season Projection: 5.5 wins
Maximum wins: 10 (after week 12 through the end of the year)
Minimum wins: 4 (after week 1)
Week 1 comment: There will be growing pains in Indianapolis. But nobody feels bad for their fans, nor should they; the Colts will be contenders each year for a decade, starting next season.

I never got on board with the Colts this year and it only looks worse in retrospect. On the other hand, even though Indianapolis finished 11-5, they were still outscored by 30 points in 2012. They struggled to beat Brady Quinn and the Chiefs and split with the Jaguars. The Colts won just two game by more than a touchdown.

While I missed on the Colts overall, I was on board the Andrew Luck bandwagon early on even when his numbers were terrible. I wrote this before the Colts-Packers game: Andrew Luck–Aaron Rodgers I won’t steal the spotlight from Tom Brady–Peyton Manning XIII; by the time these two teams play again in four years, we may be looking at the best two quarterbacks in the league. I highlighted how Luck was being undervalued by conventional statistics after week 7, and wrote this after week 8: A wildcard darkhorse? I don’t think the Colts are very good — they’re just 29th according to Football Outsiders — but a win over Miami this weekend puts them in the driver’s seat. I finally projected them at 10 wins after week 12, and noted: Basically clinched a playoff berth with win over Buffalo and Steelers loss. Hard not to like this team.

They may not be very good, but they certainly are likeable. Even after the upset win over the Texans, Houston is just the 10th team to make the playoffs after being outscored by at least 30 points.
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Last weekend, I looked at career rushing stats in wins and losses, and yesterday, I did the same for quarterbacks. Today we will check out the splits for receivers.

I looked at all games, including playoffs, from 1960 to 2011, for all players with at least 4,000 receiving yards over that time period. The table below lists the following information for each player:

– His first year (or 1960, if he played before 1960) and his last year (or 2011, if still active)
– All the franchises he played for (which you can search for in the search box)
– His number of career wins, and his career receptions, receiving yards, yards per reception, and receiving yards per game in wins
– His number of career losses, and his career receptions, receiving yards, yards per reception, and receiving yards per game in losses

You might be surprised to see Andre Johnson at the top of the list, but his career average should decline the longer he plays; that said, 2012 didn’t drop his numbers. On the flip side, Calvin Johnson moves up into the #2 slot; part of that was due to a great season (although Detroit didn’t get many wins) and part of that was due to Randy Moss slipping. Larry Fitzgerald comes up high on the list for the same reason as both Johnsons, although it’s often easy to forget how great Fitzgerald can be thanks to his current situation.

The table is sorted by receiving yards per game in wins:

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Last weekend, I looked at career rushing stats in wins and losses; today I will do the same but for quarterbacks.

I looked at all games, including playoffs, from 1960 to 2011, for all quarterbacks with at least 5,000 career passing yards over that time period. The table below lists the following information for each passer:

– His first year (or 1960, if he played before 1960) and his last year (or 2011, if still active)
– All the franchises he played for (which you can search for in the search box)
– His number of career wins, and his touchdown rate, interception rate, yards per attempt and Adjusted Yards per Attempt (which includes a 20-yard bonus for touchdown passes and a 45-yard penalty for interceptions) in wins ^[1]Unfortunately, I excluded sack data from this study due to its general unavailability for most of the covered time period.
– His number of career losses, and his touchdown rate, interception rate, yards per attempt and Adjusted Yards per Attempt in losses

The table is sorted by AY/A in wins; unsurprisingly, Aaron Rodgers — who is the career leader in that metric — tops this table, too. In fact, Rodgers is also the leader in AY/A in losses. Note that this table includes all games played by the quarterback, not just his starts.

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This is mostly a huge end-of-regular-season data dump, but I’ll explain a little before the table…

PFR’s Simple Rating System can be broken into offensive and defensive components, which represent the number of points per game the team scored/allowed per game compared to the league average, after adjusting for the strength of opposing offenses and defenses faced. If you want to derive an expected winning percentage from that, you have to “back out” to total points scored/allowed again. To do that, you just add OSRS (or subtract DSRS) to the league’s average PPG, then multiply by the number of games the team played. This will give you adjusted points scored/allowed totals for the season.

To get that into a winning percentage-like form, you then need to plug those totals into the Pythagorean Formula. It usually takes the form of

(Pts Scored ^ x) / (Pts Scored ^ x + Pts Allowed ^ x)

where x was determined to be around 2.4 for the NFL in the 1990s, when current Houston Rockets (yep, basketball) GM Daryl Morey researched it for STATS, Inc. Last year, Football Outsiders decided to employ a “floating” exponent that varies with the scoring environment in which a team played, recognizing that a single point is more important to winning in lower-scoring environments. To that end, they used what’s known as the “Pythagenport” method of determining the exponent, which is

1.5 * log10((PF + PA) / G)

I was poking around in the data the other day, though, and found that the so-called “Pythagenpat” variant actually correlates slightly better with teams’ actual won-lost records since the NFL-AFL merger. That formula suggests for each team an exponent of

((PF + PA) / G) ^ 0.2466

This gives you a 1.204 RMSE vs. wins since 1970, a very slight improvement over the 1.205 RMSE you get using FO’s formula.

At any rate, I applied the Pythagenpat exponent to each team’s schedule-adjusted points scored/allowed totals since 1970, and tweaked the pythagorean win/loss totals up/down at the league-season level to match actual league-wide win/loss totals. The result was a definitive set of pythagorean ratings for every team since the merger:

Now, as an aside, I wouldn’t go plugging those directly into the log5 formula to predict this weekend’s games just yet. You first need to regress to the mean to account for the uncertainty we see in any observed result. To do that, just add about 17.65 games of .500 performance to each team’s pythagorean Wpct, and you’ll get a “true talent” number that should yield more accurate probabilities regarding future outcomes.

Before the playoffs start, I figured I should write down my predictions somewhere. I encourage everyone to post that predictions in the comments. Here are mine:

Wild Card Round
Saturday, Jan. 5, 4:30 p.m.: Bengals at Texans — Texans
Saturday, Jan. 5, 8:00 p.m.: Vikings at Packers — Packers
Sunday, Jan. 6, 1:00 p.m.: Colts at Ravens — Ravens
Sunday, Jan. 6, 4:30 p.m.: Seahawks at Redskins– Seahawks

Divisional Round
Saturday, Jan. 12, 4:30 p.m.: Ravens/ Colts/ Bengals at Broncos — Broncos
Saturday, Jan. 12, 8 p.m.: Packers/ Redskins/ Seahawks at 49ers — 49ers
Sunday, Jan. 13, 1 p.m.: Redskins/ Seahawks/ Vikings at Falcons — Seahawks
Sunday, Jan. 13, 4:30 p.m.: Texans/ Ravens/ Colts at Patriots — Patriots

Conference Championship Round
Sunday, Jan. 21: 3:00 p.m.: Seahawks at 49ers — 49ers
Sunday, Jan. 21: 6:30 p.m.: Patriots at Broncos — Broncos

Super Bowl
Sunday, Feb. 3, 2013 – 6:30 p.m.: Broncos vs. 49ers — Broncos

On Monday, I examined the seasons of the teams in the AFC and NFC East. Today I will do the same for the AFC and NFC North, starting in the AFC.

Pittsburgh Steelers

Pre-season Projection: 10 wins
Maximum wins: 11 wins (after weeks 2, 5, and 9)
Minimum wins: 8 (after week 16)
Week 1 comment: Sunday Night was one of the best games I’ve seen from Ben Roethlisberger. An elite team that will be favored to win most weeks, although questions remain about the offensive line, the running backs, and the age of the defense.

Pittsburgh started off 6-3 and looked like a contender, but tanked in the second half of the season once Roethlisberger went down. Even when Roethlisberger returned, the offense never quite looked right. Jonathan Dwyer, Isaac Redman, and Rashard Mendenhall were unexciting plodders, which is an improvement over the 25 carries that went to Baron Batch. No Steeler finished the season with more than two rushing touchdowns. In the passing game, Mike Wallace and Antonio Brown both failed to match last year’s lofty numbers. The potential was there, but the results were not in Pittsburgh in 2012.

On the other side of the ball, Pittsburgh’s defense performed well by conventional measures — through week 16 (which is when they were knocked out of the playoff race), they ranked 1st in yards allowed and first downs allowed, and ranked 2nd in net yards per attempt allowed, rushing yards and rushing yards per carry allowed. But the defense wasn’t really up to Steelers standards — through week 16, they ranked 10th in points allowed and, more damningly, had forced more turnovers than just three teams. Pittsburgh allowed 5 4th quarter game-winning drives, which ultimately cost them the playoffs.

Baltimore Ravens

Pre-season Projection: 10 wins
Maximum wins: 11 wins (first after week 3, last after week 13)
Minimum wins: 9 wins (after week 15)
Week 1 comment: Great performance on Monday Night, but I have to imagine missing Terrell Suggs is going to hurt this team. He’s too good to simply expect business as usual in Baltimore, and their schedule (AFC West, NFC East, Houston, New England outside the division) is riddled with traps.

The schedule was riddled with traps, but the Ravens rode some late-game success and excellent special teams to a 9-2 record. At that point, I wrote: I still don’t believe in this team, because they aren’t going to have amazing special teams or amazing 4th and 29 conversions every week.

Joe Flacco had a solid but not great year, while Ray Rice continued to prove effective when given the carries. The big issue for Baltimore was defensively. Through 16 weeks, the Ravens ranked 20th in yards allowed, 18th in NY/A, and 24th in first downs allowed. While the Ravens won the North, 8 games out of Terrell Suggs, 6 games of Ray Lewis, and 6 games of Lardarius Webb simply wasn’t enough to give them the defense Ravens fans were used to seeing.
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At the New York Times Fifth Down Blog this week, I explain my choices for the major awards this season.

Offensive Player of the Year: Adrian Peterson, Minnesota Vikings

Generally, the Most Valuable Player award is given to the best quarterback, while the Offensive Player of the Year is usually the player with the most impressive statistics. In the last five years, Tom Brady — first in 2007, and then again in 2010 — is the only player to take home both awards in the same season. Last year, Drew Brees won the award while Aaron Rodgers took home the M.V.P., but running backs Priest Holmes (2002), Jamal Lewis (2003), Shaun Alexander (2005), LaDainian Tomlinson (2006), and Chris Johnson (2009) have all won the award in the last decade. While Calvin Johnson will probably get some support for breaking Jerry Rice’s single-season record for receiving yards, Adrian Peterson has had this award locked up for a month, and finishing the season with 2,097 yards was the icing on the cake.

I don’t think you’ll find too many people arguing about this one. Peterson’s story is outstanding, and it’s hard to argue that he didn’t provide the single most impressive performance by an offensive player this year. Quarterbacks may be more valuable, but it’s hard not to just sit back and admire what Peterson’s done. Johnson’s also had a magnificent season, but he was greatly aided by the Lions also breaking the record for pass attempts in a season.

Defensive Player of the Year: J.J. Watt, Houston Texans

The shine is off the Texans, but there’s no denying that their star lineman has been outstanding this year. If the stars were aligned slightly differently — say, the Texans were streaking towards the end of the year, and Watt had a monster primetime game late — he’d have a legitimate chance at the M.V.P. award. Last month, I talked about how this award was a three-man race with the stars all coming from the 2011 Draft. In that article I also mentioned Geno Atkins as a possible darkhorse, and he’s been ever better since. But Watt has 20.5 sacks and the national reputation as the Sultan of Swatt, so this award is pretty easy to predict.

And well justified. Watt’s production as a 3-4 defensive end is remarkable. He now owns the single-season record for sacks by a player at that position, but he’s far from one dimensional. We know that he is fantastic at tipping passes at the line of scrimmage and is excellent in run support. He’s a complete player in every respect, a dominant force at a position that rarely receives media attention.

I’d select Von Miller as my runner-up and give Atkins the bronze. While Aldon Smith gets more attention because of his lofty sack totals, he’s a one-dimensional player. While he’s outstanding at that one dimension, just being a dominant pass rusher only makes him the fourth best defensive player this year. He also disappeared down the stretch, which not coincidentally began when star defensive end Justin Smith went down with a triceps injury.

Comeback Player of the Year: Peyton Manning, Denver Broncos

Peyton Manning missed the entire 2011 season, but as soon as he took the field in 2012 he became the favorite to win Comeback Player of the Year. A quarterback has won this award each of the last four years — Chad Pennington (2008), Tom Brady (2009), Michael Vick (2010), and Matthew Stafford (2011) — and the trend should continue in 2012. Comeback Player of the Year is a two-man race, and there’s no wrong answer when choosing between Manning and Peterson. If the voters could, surely the majority would pick that Manning and Peterson split the award. If ever an award called for a split, this was it.

Peyton Manning’s neck injury was considered career-threatening this time last year. Many questioned his arm strength in the pre-season and in September, but by the end of the year he was once again the best quarterback in the league. It’s simply splitting hairs picking between Manning and Peterson, who tore two ligaments in his knee just over a year ago and rebounded to rush for 2,000 yards. And let’s at least recognize Jamaal Charles, who in any other year would likely take home the award. The Kansas City running back tore the anterior cruciate ligament in his left knee last season, and rebounded to rush for over 1,500 yards in 2012. My guess is that those voters looking for a tiebreaker focus on the fact that Manning missed the entire 2011 season while Peterson ran for 970 yards and 12 touchdowns last year, making Manning more of a “comeback” story.

You can view the full post here.

Three weeks ago, I set forth the argument that perhaps Calvin Johnson was not even the most productive receiver in his own division. While Megatron racked up the numbers, I argued that you have to account for the situation. The relevant situation here is that the Lions ran an incredible 1,160 plays compared to just 999 for the Bears, and Detroit attempted 740 passes while Chicago threw only 485 times.

When one team throws 255 more passes than the other, I don’t think it’s appropriate to compare the receivers based on their raw receiving yards. One thing we could look at is yards per team attempt. The table below lists the number of team attempts for each wide receiver, his raw receiving statistics, and also his yards per attempt. The table is sorted by yards per team passing attempt. And while it is not relevant when discussing Marshall and Megatron, I have also included a Pro-rated Yards per Attempt column, which pro-rates the number of team attempts for the number of games played by the receiver (this helps Percy Harvin, of course).

As it turns out, Calvin Johnson was neither the best Johnson nor the best receiver in his division, at least as measured by this metric. I’m not convinced or even arguing that yards/attempt is the best way to rank receivers, but I do think the statistic represents an improvement on just receiving yards. Since receiving yards are so highly correlated with attempts, some adjustment needs to be made, and I plan on providing more analysis on how to grade wide receivers this off-season.
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