November 2012

Previewing the Conference Championship Games

November 30, 2012 College

There are six conference championship games this weekend. Here’s a short preview breaking down this weekend’s action. All times Eastern. MAC Championship (Detroit, MI) Friday, 7PM: Kent State vs. Northern Illinois (-6.0) Weeknight MACtion doesn’t get better than this, and this is one of just two conference championship games featuring two 11-1 teams. The SRS [...]

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A four team playoff in college football would be great, except for the teams left out

November 29, 2012 College

I’ve got a real post ready for tomorrow, so Thursday is Rant Day this week. There’s been a lot of talk this week about how this would be a great year to implement the four-team playoff that’s coming to college football for the 2014 season. I suspect part of that reason is because people are [...]

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Week 12 Power Rankings

November 29, 2012 Power Rankings

The contenders have emerged in both conferences. The numbers say that the Broncos, Patriots, 49ers, and Texans are legit, while there are still question marks surrounding Atlanta, Baltimore, and Chicago despite their records. What to make of the Giants? No one ever knows. Are we headed towards a rematch of Super Bowl XXIV? That year [...]

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Interview with Aaron Schatz

November 28, 2012 Strategy

Last week, I sat down with Brian Burke and discussed the work he’s done with NFL teams. Aaron Schatz, founder of Football Outsiders, an indispensable resource for fans of advanced football statistics, has been consulting with NFL teams for years. Schatz is also the lead writer, editor, and statistician on the book series Football Outsiders [...]

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NYT Fifth Down: Post-week 12

November 27, 2012 NYT

My article for the New York Times this week takes a look at one interesting statistic for each of the eight division winners.   Atlanta Falcons – Record in Close Games In 2010, Atlanta raced to a 10-2 record on the strength of an improbable 7-1 record in games decided by 7 or fewer points. [...]

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Game Scripts, Part II: Analyzing team seasons

November 27, 2012 Statistics

Yesterday, I rolled out Game Scripts, a way to measure the flow of every game since 1940. The sum of each team’s Game Script in each game can be used to give us an average Game Script score on the season. You might think that this number would be a good proxy for how dominant [...]

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Checkdowns: Lane Kiffin’s 4th down decision

November 26, 2012 Checkdowns

Lane Kiffin is not a very good coach, and that’s putting it mildly. He’s one of the most hated men in college football and he’s the face of a USC team that has had the worst season of any preseason favorite since at least 1964. With a 7-5 record, no one is defending Lane Kiffin. [...]

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Introducing Game Scripts – Part I

November 26, 2012 Statistics

From 1991 to 1995, Emmitt Smith and the Cowboys were one of the dominant teams in the NFL. As you probably heard, the Cowboys were pretty successful whenever Smith had a lot of carries. Over that five-year span, the Cowboys went 49-7 whenever Smith had 20+ carries in a regular season game, and an additional [...]

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Week 13 College Football SRS Ratings

November 25, 2012 Coaches

We all know the big story of the weekend: Wake up the Echoes, Notre Dame is in the National Championship Game. While it may be trendy to rip the Fighting Irish, they earned their golden ticket to Miami. Notre Dame’s opponent will be the champion of the Southeastern Conference, decided next weekend when Alabama and [...]

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Checkdowns: FCS ratings and the FCS playoffs

November 25, 2012 Checkdowns

In connection with calculating my college football SRS ratings at the FBS level, I also calculate them at the FCS level but rarely publish them. But with the FCS playoffs underway, I figured, why not? Here are the FCS ratings as of November 25th, 2012: Tweet

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