In the third quarter on Monday night, I texted my Patriots fan buddy Matt, “Is it possible that we suck? Maybe the run is finally over.” Bill Barnwell mused on this, and Aaron Schatz also wrote about it. It was hard not to think that, given the way the Patriots were manhandled by a mediocre team playing without several key players. It looked every bit as bad as the 41-14 score and maybe worse.

I remember the last time I wondered if the Pats were done. In a 34-14 loss to the Browns in 2010, the Patriots looked pretty impotent. In that game, as in the Chiefs one, the Pats had just under 300 yards of offense. Peyton Hillis ran over the Patriots. Of course, that wasn’t the end. Maybe this time is different, though. If anything the Chiefs game was even worse, so it’s possible this time really is the end. ^[1]And those Pats were 6-1 at the time of the loss to the Browns.

Will the Patriots offense be good later this year? To provide a little insight into this, I went back and looked at performance trends for quarterbacks who have had long careers. The first table looks at quarterbacks since 1969 who have the biggest single-season drops in adjusted net yards per attempt (ANY/A) from the previous five year trend. I look just at quarterbacks with at least 100 attempts in a season and I weight by the number of attempts when calculating the average ANY/A over the previous five years.

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Ryan Fitzpatrick averaged 9.61 Adjusted Net Yards per Attempt in week 1, good enough for the 4th best grade of the week. But the Houston signal caller — who went 14/22 for 206 yards with 1 touchdown, no interceptions, and 1 sack — was not a very good fantasy quarterback. Using the Footballguys.com standard scoring system of 1 point per 20 yards passing, 1 point per 10 yards rushing, 4 points per touchdown pass, and -1 point per interception, Fitzpatrick had just 15.3 fantasy points (he rushed for 10 yards). That tied him for only the 25th best performance by a quarterback in week one.

Obviously there’s a big difference between ANY/A and fantasy points.  But while we use ANY/A as our main metric for lots of reasons, it’s always helpful to compare it to other statistics.  For example, RG3 ranked 17th in ANY/A in week 1, but only 27th in ESPN’s Total QBR. Why is that? Well, Griffin fumbled twice (losing one), and he completed a lot of very short throws (he had the third lowest air yards per throw and air yards per completion).  But another factor is that his third down performance was a bit misleading using conventional metrics, which is something Total QBR is good at identifying.

Griffin gained 75 net yards on 10 third down dropbacks in the game: that’s pretty good, but he only picked up first downs on 3 of 10 opportunities.   He had a 48-yard completion on a 3rd-and-7, which is great, but it also inflates his average gain; he also had a pair of 9 yard completions on third and very long that added little value.

We can also look at Football Outsiders’ main efficiency metric, DVOA, and compare that to other statistics.  Matt Cassel is an interesting player to analyze.  In DVOA, he ranked 5th.  In ANY/A, he ranked 10th.  In Total QBR, he was 15th, and in fantasy points, he was 21st!   So what gives?

As noted by Vince Verhei, Cassel’s “average pass traveled just 4.8 yards past the line of scrimmage, nearly a full yard shorter than the next shortest quarterback (Derek Carr, 5.6).” That would explain why QBR would be less high on Cassel than other statistics.  And since Cassel threw just 25 passes for only 170 yards, his fantasy value won’t be very high. Football Outsiders, on the other hand, gives Cassel credit for things like his a 9-yard pass on third-and-10 that created better field goal range.  Overall, comparing what Cassel did to the baseline, he looks really good according to FO, and just pretty good according to QBR.  As for ANY/A, it’s impressed by his 2 TD/0 INT ratio, but it’s hard to get a great ANY/A grade when you are averaging just 10.0 yards per completion.

The table below shows each quarterback’s stats in each metric.  For example, Matthew Stafford averaged 11.55 ANY/A in week 1, scored 31.5 fantasy points, had a Total QBR of 97.5, and a DVOA of 90.3%.  Those ratings, among the 33 quarterbacks in week 1 (curses, Rams!), ranked him 1st in ANY/A, 3rd in fantasy points, 1st in QBR, and 1st in DVOA, for an average rank of 1.5. [continue reading…]

Just above these words, it says “posted by Chase.” And it was literally posted by Chase, but the words below the line belong to Bryan Frye, a longtime reader and commenter who has agreed to write this guest post for us. And I thank him for it. Bryan lives in Yorktown, Virginia, and operates his own great site at http://www.thegridfe.com/, where he focuses on NFL stats and history.

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In February, Chase used a regressed version of Football Outsiders’ DVOA metric to derive 2014 expected wins. If you are reading this site, you probably have some familiarity with Football Outsiders and DVOA, FO’s main efficiency statistic. Given the granularity of DVOA, it is no surprise that Year N DVOA correlates more strongly with Year N + 1 wins (correlation coefficient of .39) than Year N wins does (correlation coefficient of .32).

By now, even casual NFL fans probably have at least heard of Pythagorean wins, and regular readers of this site are certainly familiar with the concept. Typically, an analyst uses Pythagorean records to see which teams overachieved and underachieved, which can help us predict next year’s sleepers and paper tigers. Well, I wondered what would happen if we combined the two formulae to make a “DVOA-adjusted Pythagorean Expectation” (or something cooler sounding; you be the judge).

Going back to 1989, the earliest year for DVOA, I used the offensive, defensive, and special teams components of DVOA to adjust the normal input for Pythagorean wins (points). Because DVOA is measured as a percentage, I adjusted the league average points per team game accordingly (I split special teams DVOA between offense and defense). Let’s use Seattle, which led the league in DVOA in 2013, as an example.

In 2013, the league average points per game was 23.4. Last year, Seattle had an offensive DVOA of 9.4% and a defensive DVOA of -25.9% (in Football Outsiders’ world, a negative DVOA is better for defenses).  The Seahawks also had a special teams DVOA of 4.7%.  So to calculate Seattle’s DVOA-adjusted points per game average, we would use the following formula:

23.4 + [23.4 * (9.4% + 4.7%/2)] = 26.15 DVOA-adjusted PPG scored

And to calculate the team’s DVOA-adjusted PPG allowed average, we would perform the following calculation: [continue reading…]

Last week, Brian Burke provided some excellent data on the value of a first down. I began working on today’s post last offseason, but as you’ll see in a few minutes, I wasn’t quite comfortable with the results. But here’s what I did.

For all teams from 1989 to 2012, I recorded for each team’s average:

• Yards per carry;
• Touchdowns per carry;
• First downs per carry;
• Rush VOA from Football Outsiders (DVOA is FO’s main statistic, but it is adjusted for SOS; VOA is the unadjusted metric).

Then, I ran a series of regressions to help better understand the “proper” weights on the running game. ^[1]Longtime readers may recall that Neil did something similar with passing metrics. First, I used yards per carry and touchdowns per carry as my input, and VOA as my output. The best-fit formula was:

-0.647 + 0.128 * YPC + 4.615 * TD/Carry

Understanding that formula isn’t important. ^[2]Although if you’re curious… Suppose a team averaged 4.50 YPC and rushed for 12 TDs on 450 carries. That team would have a VOA of 5.21%, slightly above average. What we care about is the correlation coefficient (0.65) and the relationship between the YPC variable and the TD/carry variable.

Here we run into our first problem: 4.615 is 36 times as large as 0.128. This would imply that a touchdown is 36 times as valuable as a regular yard (or 35, if you subtract the yard gained on the score). That seems very high, as 20 is the generally accepted standard conversion rate for a touchdown.

What if we introduce first downs per carry into the equation? Then we get this best-fit formula:

-0.761 + 0.081 * YPC + 2.954 * TD/Carry + 1.593 * FD/Carry

Here, the R^2 is 0.72, which is an indication that first downs matter (or, to put it another way, DVOA gives rewards for first downs, as it should). Unfortunately, the TD variable remains very high (it’s now nearly 37 times as large as the YPC variable), but we get the bit of insight I was looking for: a first down is worth 0.54 touchdowns.

The first down variable is about 20 times as large as the YPC variable, but that seems way off to me.  Instead, if we think a TD is really worth 20 yards, this puts the value of a first down at about 10.8 yards. That’s not too far off from Brian’s 8.7 average, which I think makes sense to round to 9.0 once you remember that a few first downs happen on 4th downs, which was ignored in Brian’s analysis.

What helps bridge the gap between the two valuations?  Burke’s method looks at the marginal value of a first down based on an Expected Points model.  What I did with Football Outsiders’ numbers was to try to correlate first downs with rushing value.  But that could lead to overstating the value of a first down, if first downs are correlated with other things (like say, short-yardage success in general).  Teams that are good at rushing for first downs might be better at X, Y, and Z than other teams, and being good at X, Y, and Z could lead to a higher DVOA grade.  As a result, I like Brian’s result better, and I think FO’s numbers serve as a good gut check.  And while the number is a few yards higher, that’s arguably the correct result, and at least the number is higher in the right direction.

As for the idea that touchdowns are worth 36 yards and first downs are worth 19 yards? Well, I’m not so sure about that.  My hunch though, is that Football Outsiders (wisely) cares a lot more about say, success rate, than just generic yards per carry.  So perhaps this represents a devaluation of YPC as much as anything else.

But I’ll open it up to the crowd: what thoughts do you guys have for finding the value of a first down?

By now, you know about guest blogger Andrew Healy, an economics professor at Loyola Marymount University and author of today’s post. There’s now a tag at the site where you can find all of his great work. He’s back with a cap to his excellent series about playoff performance, and today’s post will not disappoint:

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We know the teams that have experienced consistent heartbreak at the altar. But is it the Vikings, Eagles, or Bills that are the most unlikely to have never won a Super Bowl? On the flip side, we know the teams that stacked championships on top of championships. But is it the Packers, Steelers, or 49ers that have made the most of their chances?

For the latter question, it turns out that it’s option D, none of the above.  One mystery team has won four championships despite having had a pretty decent chance of never winning a single Lombardi.  The most unlikely team never to win a Super Bowl turns out to be a team that lost “only” two Super Bowls, but that has led the NFL in DVOA four times since 1979.

To figure this stuff out, I’ve utilized DVOA ratings and estimated DVOA ratings to rerun the NFL playoffs. In the simulations, the slate is wiped clean, which means there’s no reason The Fumble or The Helmet Catch or The Immaculate Reception have to happen this time around.

In last week’s post, I went decade by decade to look at the best teams, and also those that most let opportunity slip through their fingers. Today, I bring it all together. I compare what might have been with what actually was for the NFL from 1950 to 2013. I’ll also hand out awards for the teams that were the most unlikely winners and the most unlikely losers of all time. [continue reading…]