I would love to see a Seattle/New England Super Bowl, and for Deion Branch to catch the game-winning TD. In all likelihood, that's not going to happen, though.
Someone apparently found and destroyed Norv Turner's phylactery. Now we just need to keep the Hand and Eye of Norv from being found.
Lovie got a lot of mileage out of some very bad Bears teams, including a Super Bowl appearance with Rex Grossman under center and strong seasons the last couple of years despite a turd of an offensive line and between zero and one wide receivers.
Close game? It was a 3 score game until a yee-haw bombing TD near the end of the game by the Cardinals. SF should have had 6 more points scores but our kicker is terrible. I don't what the hell happened to the Giants.
Maybe you should look at post timestamps, Bill. :) Wisenhunt is out in Az. Not surprising; he's basically done nothing since the Super Bowl run several years ago.
The Lions, of course, won't make any changes to the front office or coaching staff, because... Fords. For your convenience: PFT's 2013 Hiring and Firing Tracker
I'm not sure I fully get the Smith firing in Chicago. Yeah, they stumbled down the stretch, but they also still finished 10-6, which would have been enough for the playoffs most years. And it sounds like he would have gotten another year if they'd made the playoffs. So he essentially did a good enough job but had the bad luck of it being one of those years where 10-6 wasn't quite enough. And its not his fault that the team is aging on defense.
Lovie would be a lame-duck coach next season and I guess they wanted to move on now. I don't know either, I always find firing coaches who post winning records dubious as well.
Example 1: The firing of Schottenheimer to replace him with one Norval Turner... You know, because while Schottenheimer's teams didn't have much success in the playoffs, Turner's teams never made the playoffs, so that's better, right?
Yeah though even Peyton Manning behind that line would have issues. It is sort of interesting that Wisenhunt - for all his reputation as a QB guru - never had success developing anyone at that position in Az. The one good QB he had was a veteran who didn't need development!
Football Outsiders has their final regular season DVOA numbers out. They have Seattle as the best team in the league, followed by Denver, New England, San Fransisco, and Green Bay. Seattle is also ridiculously well balanced, ranked in the top four for offense, defense, and special teams. Denver has the #2 and #5 offense and defense respectively. New England has (as usual) the best offense, but their defense is literally middle of the pack, ranked at 15. Just for fun, here are the overall rankings for the playoff teams: NFC: Washington: #9 overall, #6 weighted (basically a heavier emphasis on recent games), #6 offense, #17 defense Atlanta: #10 overall, #13 weighted, #12 offense, #12 defense Green Bay: #5 overall, #4 weighted, #3 offense, #8 defense San Fransisco: #4 overall, #5 weighted, #5 offense, #2 defense. Seattle: #1 overall, #1 weighted, #4 offense, #4 defense. Minnesota: #14 oerall, #17 weighted, #15 offense, #21 defense. AFC: New England: #3 overall, #3 weighted, #1 offense, #15 defense. Baltimore: #8 overall, #11 weighted, #13 offense, #19 defense. Their relatively high rank is due to having the best special teams in the league. Houston: #11 overall, #19 weighted, #16 offense, #3 defense. Houston has really collapsed down the stretch, as evidenced by the disparity between their overall and weighted DVOA numbers. Denver: #2 overall, #2 offense, #5 defense. Cincinnati: #12 overall, #7 weighted, #17 offense, #10 defense. Indianapolis: #25 overall, #25 weighted, #18 offense, #31 defense. By their numbers Indianapolis is by far the worst team in the playoffs, and one of the worst in the league. The explanation FO has for the disparity is that their record comes from winning close games against shitty teams. DVOA can and will count a win negatively because it's adjusted for the quality of your opponent; if you're winning two and three point games against shitty teams you will not end up having high DVOA. According to FO, the Colts had the easiest schedule in the league this year; they played a bunch of chump teams and did not do very well at all. Their Pythagorean Wins (basically a way of estimating how many wins you'd expect a team to have based only on points scored vs. points given up) is 7.2, which indicates major overperformance. Notably, in terms of predicting a team's performance next season, pythagorean wins is more reliable than actual wins. They've also got position data updated through week 17. Here are the top five quarterbacks by DYAR: Brady, Manning, Brees, Rodgers, Ryan. Yawn. Big surprise. Of the notable rookies, Russel Wilson is ranked #8 overall, RGIII is at #11, and Andrew Luck is down at #19. DYAR is a cumulative stat (measures a player's contribution over the entire season); so Griffin's injury effects him here. In DVOA terms (which measures per-play value), Wilson is ranked #6 and Griffin is ranked #8. Luck is ranked 19.
Interesting data point: Seattle has played against a deficit larger than 7 points for 25 minutes total this season. Most of those came against the Patriots, against whom they trailed by 13 before coming back. Take that game away and Seattle has trailed by more than one score for about ten minutes all season. Despite the Colts' lowly statistics, they are the only AFC playoff team with a winning records against playoff teams (they're 3/2).
The 49ers starters (even without Justin Smith) gave up 6 points in about 50 minutes. The touchdown drive was scored against such well-known stallwarts as Jerod-Eddie, Brock, Spillman and Ian Williams.
Yeah; be suspect of them. Their methodology (which is proprietary and they won't explain it at all) sometimes comes out with extremely bizarre results. Like after week 3 how they were proclaiming based on their rankings 2 sure bets to go to the playoffs were the Bills and Jets. Another example: Really? First of all, he wasn't on the field for passing downs, so you can't objectively nail him as "below replacement level as a receiver" because he wasn't put in a position to catch the ball, ever. Second, 1613 rushing yards and 13 TDs isn't one of the top 10 rookie seasons of the past 20 years? It was the 3rd most yards for a rookie in NFL history. I mean it's rare for a rookie to hit 1000 yards rushing...yet alone for more than 1500. Plus, never mind that FO ranks him below Ahmad Bradshaw and um...Joique Bell? You know the guy who had 414 yards and 3 TDs rushing, and 485 yards and zero TDs receiving? That doesn't seem to make a whole lot of objective sense. I also fail to understand how Andrew Luck's rushing contribution to his "value" statistic is worth more than Robert Griffin III, by a long shot (roughly 20% more). You know, Luck who had 255 yards and 5 TDs rushing, versus Griffin who had 815 yards and 7 TDs. That also doesn't make much sense. Finally, the Seahawks, who are a good team, are ranked by FO as the 6th best team since 1990. Better than any of the Niners teams from the 1990s (barring the 1995 Niners who lost in the 1st round...weird and the 1994 Niners, one of the best teams I've ever seen isn't even on the list), all of the Cowboys of the 1990s, the Ravens of 2000, etc. This year's Denver is the 8th best team (also above all the teams I listed above, and above their Super Bowl winning teams of the 1990s, who didn't make FO's list). And this year's Patriots are the 11th best team (ahead of all of the teams mentioned above but the 1992 Cowboys). So...according to their statistics, 3 of the top 12 teams of the past 22 years come from this year. Really?
Am I wrong in that a big part of that ranking is record + how many points the team outscored the other team? So if you get a handful of blowouts in your favor, you move up the rankings? Seems like it devalues teams because they didn't have an easier schedule and played tougher games, I don't know that for sure though. I like this Seahawks team for sure but they were pretty shaky in the first half of the season, not sure how a team where around week 6 or 7 there was talk of benching the starting QB is the 6th best team ever.
Those best of all time type rankings are definitely fishy. Seattle seems to be getting too much credit by the FO system for that three game stretch. The Rams game last week is much more typical of how they play. I expect close games that come down to the final series or two, not blowouts.
And winning those kinda games should never be devalued. Edging out tough opponents (and anyone who doesn't think the Rams aren't tough, wait until next season) should carry more weight than blowing out a shitty one.
That's why the 2000 Ravens won't make their list...because they played low scoring games. I mean obviously a team that allowed 10 points a game for a season (with 1/5 of their total points allowed happening in one game), one that allowed less than 10 points in 12 of 20 games played (counting playoffs) with 4 shut outs and 3 games allowing 1 field goal isn't one of the best teams of all time. I like the 2012 Seahawks, but honestly if they played the 2000 Ravens they'd get the crap kicked out of them. Even in Seattle. Or the 1995 Niners, etc. And those rankings highlight the absurdity of their statistics, because they're built upon team DVOA etc.
Haha not a lot of FO fans in this thread! Let's see if I can address specifics: This sort of highlights a misunderstanding of how prediction works. The question isn't "Was their prediction correct," the question was "Was their prediction correct given the things we knew at the time." Even more to the point: was the system's prediction correct given the things the system knew at the time. DVOA did not know that the Jets are a hiliarious shit-show of a team. What it knew is that they played pretty well in their first three games. What's more, DVOA is notoriously volatile and crazy early in the season (when there's not much data to go on, especially in terms of defensive adjustments). I'm pretty confident that nobody at FO claimed that the Bills and Jets were "sure things" to go into the playoffs in Week 3, that's you misinterpreting something somewhere along the line. Ultimately though your specific criticism (DVOA early in the season is inaccurate) is correct; it gets more accurate as more data comes in. SHOCKING! re Alfred Morris: he actually was on the field for passing plays, and when he was he was not very good. What's more, you don't seem to understand DYAR. DYAR is a cumulative stat, you aren't penalized for plays you're not on the field for (you're also not rewarded for them). The purpose of DYAR is to measure a player's contribution over the course of a season. Note that Morris's passing DYAR was -1; he wasn't dreadful, he just wasn't very effective in the few passing plays he was involved in. The cumulative nature of DYAR is why Wilson finished ahead of RGIII, they were neck and neck and then RGIII missed a game while RW had a huge game that put him ahead. re Luck/Griffin: good question! RGIII destroys Luck in cumulative DYAR (you can just add the two together, it's convenient like that). Luck has 379 total DYAR, off of 255 passing and 124 rushing. RGIII has 838 DYAR, off of 729 passing and 109 rushing. I have no idea why Luck ends up with more rushing DYAR; I have a friend who writes for FO and I'll ask him! Maybe defensive adjustment (the D in DYAR) matters? Maybe Griffin rushed in a bunch of situations when he'd be expected to succeed (lower DYAR....) while Luck was successfully rushing in situations when you'd expect failure (relatively higher DYAR). I really dunno on that, though! re cross season comparisons: I'm not sold that DVOA can do this effectively; I think it's much more powerful when restricted to single seasons. DVOA does like blowouts. That's a deliberate decision, historically given two teams with equal records, one which beat a bunch of good teams close and one that blew out a bunch of bad teams, the latter tends to be better. Obviously not true in all cases, but it's a pretty demonstrable historical trend. So DVOA likes likes blowouts! DVOA also adjusts for opponent schedule (That's the D part; Defense-Adjusted). That's one of the reasons the Seahawks ended up as the best team this year; they beat some pretty good teams, blowing out several of them (including SF) and when they lost it was only by small margins. Keep in mind: Seattle beat some of the league's elite teams. They beat Green Bay (DVOA does not see the Fail Mary), and what people forget because of that one play is that the Seattle D abused the Packers in the first half in a way that hasn't happened before or since. Seattle beat the Patriots. They absolutely manhandled San Fransisco. They beat Chicago. They obliterated the Bills and Cardinals. re why edging tough opponents doesn't count more: football games involve random chance. There's no precise estimate of how much, but it seems like it's probably at least a three point swing in either direction. Maybe more, depending on various variables (fumble recoveries, etc). This is why DVOA somewhat devalues close wins: they aren't decisive. A team that wins a game by three points or fewer may - based on a couple of bounces - have lost that same game. While beating a good team close is obviously better than losing (and obviously better than beating a bad team close), it's simply not as decisive as whupping up on a bad team.
I thought you guys knew about FO. You don't have to buy into their methods but they do explain the basics. It's all about situational success. Given a specific situation does that player earn a "success" in their performance. I believe, broadly, for a 1st & 10 situation, getting a third of those yards is considered a success. On 2nd & 7 getting half those yards is a success, and on 3rd, only a first down is a success. Loss of yards is penalized, so much worst than failing to gain successful yards. FO stats don't consider the work rate of a player, so guys like Alfred Morris, who's essentially the only one getting handed the ball, might not compare as favorably as you want to a guy like Danny Woodhead, who's one of four guys that get handed the ball every game. Woodhead looks good in DVOA because he often earns the "successful" amount of yards, and he rarely loses yards. A lot of that is from the design of the play, but this is supposed to be a measure of how the player performs in a giving play, not how good his play calling is. The point is to provide a different perspective and not just spew out another stat that only confirms the total yardage stats, which let's face it, is not informative. I for one applaud their work, but by no means should anyone take those numbers as gospel. The years will tell us if Morris is another TD or a Mike Anderson (or likely somewhere in between.) edit:arg, I have a flu, so I'm slow, plus Jeff30's answer is better
For fun, strictly if-you're-interested level information: here's DVOA's methodology. While it's true that certain specifics aren't public, the methodology very much is: - Every offensive play for every team over the course of the season is rated as a success or failure (this is not a binary rating). DVOA recognizes that game situation matters, especially with respect to first downs: "five yards on third-and-four are worth more than five yards on first and ten and much more than five yards on third and twelve." Success points are also added for field position, game situation (time and score), &c. The very basic rating system: on first down, a play is a success if it picks up 45% of the yards necessary for the next first down (4.5 yards, in the typical case). On second down, the play must get 80% of the needed yards. On third down, you convert or you don't. In these scenarios, a success is valued at 1, a failure at 0. Negative values (for losing yards) are possible, likewise for turnovers, etc. All fumbles count against the offense regardless of who recovers them. Likewise, turnover returns are not counted for the defense (research indicates they're basically random). Note that at this point in the process scoring is zero sum; I'm not sure what the base sum is. - The outcome of each play is then compared to the league average for every play that's occurred in that situation. The average of these averages gives you VOA, or Value over Average. The idea is that you can measure how good a team is on a per-play basis relative to league average. - But whupping up on the Cardinals is obviously different than a close games against San Fransisco. Enter DVOA, which adjusts every play for the quality of the opposing defense. This gives you DVOA, which ends up being the final metric. - Note that defensive VOA is effectively the same as the opposing offense VOA (I think). In other words, if an opposing offense performed against you at say 10% VOA, your defense was 10% VOA... Which effectively means that a defense wants lower (preferably negative) VOA. The statistics are all based off of offensive stats. - I believe the "average" part of DVOA is historical average; it spans multiple seasons. The D part obviously doesn't.
DYAR is a totally different stat; while player DVOA exists it measures their average contribution over however many plays they were in. It's entirely possible for a player to only play a few plays and be "better" in DVOA terms because those few plays were successful. Enter DYAR; which is a cumulative stat which measures how valuable a player was over the course of a season.
There's a lot in your post, but for now I'll simply address the following: One: I know how they've described their statistics, but I want to know more. How do they actually derive them? What are their average numbers based on? A yearly slice, or historical? Second: Really? As a Skins fan who watched every single one of the Redskins plays this year, and knows they had Evan Royster as a 3rd down back until Morris took the job at game 12, I'm curious why you say this? Because that would appear to be only 25% of the time, but what do I know? And he blocked most often when he was in (against Dallas he was out for 2 pass patterns on 11 3rd downs...). So he was on the field, but not to catch passes. How does FO weight pass blocking in this case? And by DYAR, Ahmad Bradshaw is ranked very closely to Morris, in just rushing alone. But...he barely had 1000 yards. Not sure how I understand how that makes sense. Also, could not disagree with the following more: This was the Philadelphia Eagles for the first half of the 2000s. They would just whup up on bad teams, but couldn't win tight games against good teams. They were set up for the blowout; pass a lot to get the opposition into throwing the ball all day, and then blitz the hell out of them. However, against good teams, they couldn't run up a big lead, and often got ground into pieces. Style doesn't count; winning does. Blowouts are essentially meaningless in the grand scheme of things. The 2000 Ravens winning 13-3 is about the same as a normal team winning by 30; in either case, there's no hope of coming back...but the FO metrics will devalue the defensive win because the margin of victory (which can be fluky as well...see the Titans win this weekend based on 2 defensive return TDs and 2 punt return TDs) is not as much? Why?
Good question! I believe the "average" part of DVOA is based on all of their data, which goes back to 1990. The defensive adjustment is obviously based on a single season. Not very much, at least with regards to DYAR! :) I just read the Quick Reads article you quoted. Morris's passing DYAR was -1 yards. That's basically insignificant in either direction, which is entirely consistent with what you're saying. He simply wasn't involved in many passing plays; when he was he didn't do much. In terms of the entire season, it was negligible. Which is fine, except lots of other backs have success rushing while also having some success receiving. This is the difference between DVOA and DYAR: you seem to be in DVOA mode (average per-play contribution), DYAR is a cumulative statistic that adds up every contribution on every play over the course of the season. All things considered, over the course of two seasons, a back who can rush successfully and play successfully as a receiver is more valuable than a back who can rush successfully but cannot play successfully play as a receiver. It doesn't. DYAR specifically applies only to when he was a pass target and/or ball carrier. Situation matters. As FO says: rushing for five yards on third and four is better than rushing for five on first and ten, which is better than rushing for five on third and twelve. The central insight that drives FO's analysis is that yardage stats, unadjusted for game situation, are fairly garbage. That'd be my guess, at least. The central insight that motivates DVOA and the associated states is that comparing yardage numbers in a vacuum is garbage; you get a far more useful statistic when you account for game situations. Good for you! You found one example that's contra the historical trend. Such is the nature of aggregate statistics. Nonetheless, you'll find that if you look at every team over the past twenty-four years you'll discover that winning big is more predictive of success than winning close. Here is where you are going into basically useless territory; at least insofar as making meaningful statements about football is concerned. As far as your specific question re: Titans: turnover returns are random events.
re Luck/Griffin rushing DYAR: Griffin had seven fumbles, Luck has zero. Turnovers are a disaster for the offense and are punished accordingly.
I can't recall the game well enough, but I'm pretty sure it was Cleveland vs. somebody else, and the stats were so lopsided that by all measures the Browns were destroyed -- but they won. Due to a significant number of near random events going for them (defensive return for TDs, special teams scoring). IIRC they literally had something like 90 yards of total offense but won. I wish had an idea how to look it up, but my guess is that it was a game from the mid/early-2000s?
DYAR isn't based on total yardage, it's another composite stat expressed as yardage. Morris and Bradshaw both had pretty similar yards per attempt, so it's not a huge surprise that they'd be ranked similarly.
sadly I don't think FO lets you view individual game stats without a Premium membership. I will tell you that - guaranteed - the DVOA of that game will be wacky. DVOA gives defenses a lot of credit for forcing fumbles and interceptions. Fumble recoveries/returns and interception returns are not valued at all, regardless of outcome.
Holy crap, found it: http://www.pro-football-reference.com/boxscores/200212080pit.htm 2002 Houston def. Pittsburgh 24-6 First downs: 3 Total offensive yardage: 47
Look I look at their statistics as interesting, but until I understand how they derive their baseline values (e.g., how is DYAR actually calculated?) it's essentially a giant black box. I look at them the same way I do ESPN's bizarre QBR statistic. Interesting, but hardly dispositive. Either way, the answer was no. No, their predictions were not correct given what we knew at the time. In fact, their predictions were way off. But that's pretty common for FO; look at their predictions before the season. ESPN Insider link. Some highlights: Steelers win the division and 10 games, Texans win 8 games, Colts win 6 games, Broncos and Chiefs both have 8 wins, Eagles have 8.6 wins (and the division), Vikings win 6, Lions win 7, both the Niners and Seahawks win 7 (I'm ignoring the predictions they got within 2...because that's almost standard deviation). It's more surprising that they got the NFC North half right (11 wins for Packers, 10 for Bears)...because the rest of the predictions are just so off. Again, you're just devaluing defensive oriented teams, which just by the way the teams are run, won't have huge margins of victory. Also, every team? Have you looked at them? Because a few off the top of my head would completely disabuse you of that notion, assuming of course your definition of success is a Superbowl victory. If it's just regular season hurrahs, then, cool, I'm fine with that...but no one remembers or cares about the 2007 Patriots. Just look at last year's Superbowl champions. 9 wins, 5 by less than 4 points, biggest margin of victory 17 points, biggest margin of defeat 25. Looks like they're on the wrong end of that predictive measure of "success." But somehow they went on and won the Superbowl. Likewise, the 2007 Giants won the Superbowl despite a delta in points for/against of only 22, which was less than the 2007 Redskins had, or the 2006 Colts, likewise...delta of 67, whereas the 8-8 Jaguars had a point differential of 97...more blowouts...but less overall victories and no Superbowl. Ok, well what does a blowout victory mean, then? The Skins in 2011 blew out the Giants twice (won by 13 and 14 points). What does that mean? That the Skins were a better team...or just happened to match up to them well? Those 8-8 Jaguars absolutely blew out the Colts and the 10-6 Jets. But so what? The Seahawks absolutely destroyed the Niners the second time they met this year...what does that blowout mean? Was it chance (catching them on the right time, matching up well, having the Niners defense an off day, etc.), or does it objectively mean the Seahawks are 29 points better than the Niners? What does blowing out a Buffalo Bill team that clearly quit mean? What does it show? Is it worth more objectively than winning a tough tight game against a team still in the playoff hunt? To FO, it does. Does that make any sense to you? Likewise, they make a false equivalency in their "great teams" post about losses. According to FO: So...what? Those blowout losses didn't end up meaning much. In the end...many of those teams won Superbowls. One of the greatest teams of all time, the 1985 Bears, lost their only game by 2 touchdowns...but that still didn't stop them from winning the Superbowl. They never tell me why I should care. Those blowout losses in the end meant nothing. And as far as the prediction of the Jets and Bills making the playoffs, it came from Aaron Schatz during this podcast.
Well, I read their description as DYAR is their way of trying to value those who carry the ball more. From FO itself: Yet Bradshaw was replaced by Wilson...who performed well. Whenever Morris came out for a breather, the backup (Evan Royster, who was highly ranked by DVOA the year before) was noticeably worse. How does any of their description make sense when you look at Morris?
