You’re probably hearing a lot right now about how Matt Schaub is not a primetime player — literally. Schaub and the Texans struggled in embarassing losses on Sunday Night Football to the Packers earlier in the season and on Monday Night Football two days ago to the Patriots. Schaub posted terrible numbers in a defensively-driven 13-6 win over the Jay Cutler/Jason Campbell Bears.

For his career, Schaub is 2-5 (0.286 winning percentage) in night games and 41-31 (0.569) in day games. Among the 24 quarterbacks studied (more on that below), that drop in winning percentage is the largest such decline. You might think this is due to facing better defenses in night games, but that’s not really the case.

Schaub has averaged 7.8 Adjusted Yards per Attempt during day games and 6.0 AY/A during night games; that difference of 1.8 AY/A is the second largest among the twenty-four quarterbacks.

So yes, there is no debate: Schaub has been noticeably worse during night games in his career.

The table below shows all quarterbacks who have started a game this season and that have started at least five night games in their career. The data consist of all games throughout their career in which they were the starter. To make it a little easier to read, I’ve shaded the day and night categories differently:

QB	D_W/L	D_WIN%	D_Y/A	D_AY/A	N_W/L	N_WIN%	N_Y/A	N_AY/A	Y/A_DIFF	AY/A_DIFF	Win%_Diff
Jason Campbell	28-31	0.475	6.93	6.65	3-9	0.25	5.75	4.77	-1.18	-1.88	-0.225
Matt Schaub	41-31	0.569	7.93	7.79	2-5	0.286	6.94	6	-0.99	-1.79	-0.284
Jay Cutler	37-28	0.569	7.3	6.84	13-14	0.481	7.1	6.08	-0.2	-0.76	-0.088
Joe Flacco	46-21	0.687	7.11	6.9	12-7	0.632	6.64	6.19	-0.47	-0.71	-0.055
Ben Roethlisberger	67-27	0.713	7.94	7.79	29-14	0.674	7.85	7.14	-0.09	-0.65	-0.038
Matt Ryan	47-19	0.712	7.19	7.03	7-5	0.583	6.63	6.4	-0.56	-0.63	-0.129
Carson Palmer	48-58	0.453	7.25	6.74	5-10	0.333	6.55	6.27	-0.7	-0.47	-0.119
Matt Cassel	25-29	0.463	6.59	6.11	4-5	0.444	6.35	5.65	-0.24	-0.46	-0.019
Matt Hasselbeck	75-72	0.51	6.88	6.42	10-6	0.625	6.9	6.22	0.02	-0.2	0.115
Aaron Rodgers	40-20	0.667	8.21	8.68	14-7	0.667	8	8.49	-0.21	-0.19	0
Alex Smith	31-32	0.492	6.61	6.07	8-5	0.615	6.32	5.91	-0.29	-0.16	0.123
Sam Bradford	13-20	0.397	6.21	5.79	1-4	0.2	6.33	5.71	0.12	-0.08	-0.197
Michael Vick	43-38	0.53	6.97	6.55	15-8	0.652	7.06	6.52	0.09	-0.03	0.122
Mark Sanchez	29-20	0.592	6.64	5.82	8-9	0.471	6.42	5.83	-0.22	0.01	-0.121
Tony Romo	35-27	0.565	7.7	7.67	20-12	0.625	8.17	7.74	0.47	0.07	0.06
Eli Manning	61-39	0.61	7.13	6.54	24-19	0.558	6.96	6.68	-0.17	0.14	-0.052
Matthew Stafford	16-21	0.432	6.87	6.51	1-5	0.167	7.47	6.9	0.6	0.39	-0.266
Peyton Manning	120-62	0.659	7.58	7.39	40-18	0.69	7.7	7.79	0.12	0.4	0.03
Tom Brady	112-30	0.789	7.39	7.49	38-14	0.731	7.55	7.9	0.16	0.41	-0.058
Byron Leftwich	21-24	0.467	6.51	6	3-3	0.5	6.65	6.47	0.14	0.47	0.033
Philip Rivers	51-35	0.593	7.8	7.53	20-10	0.667	8.1	8.13	0.3	0.6	0.074
Drew Brees	79-62	0.56	7.39	7.18	23-11	0.676	7.7	7.84	0.31	0.66	0.116
Charlie Batch	16-27	0.372	6.72	5.78	9-3	0.75	7.73	8.22	1.01	2.44	0.378
Chad Henne	12-17	0.414	6.3	5.17	2-3	0.4	8.05	7.81	1.75	2.64	-0.014

[continue reading…]

I’ve noted a few times this year that Calvin Johnson, in his pursuit of Jerry Rice’s single-season receiving record, has quite an advantage on his side. The Lions have attempted more passes through 13 games of any team ever, and seem likely to break the pass attempts record.

Obviously it’s easier to gain more receiving yards when your team is throwing the ball nearly every play. That’s why when I came up with my Greatest WR Ever series, I looked at receiver performance per pass attempt.

I don’t have time for a nuanced analysis of wide receiver, but let’s just look at a simple statistic: receiving yards per team pass attempt. That’s what the table below shows, along with each player’s rank in receiving yards (the far left column). Brandon Marshall has 1,342 receiving yards while the Bears have only attempted 444 passes this year (including sacks). That means he’s averaging more than three yards per team pass attempt, which is incredible. Of course, it also speaks to the lack of other weapons in Chicago.

Ryds Rk	Player	Tm	Rec	Ryds	TD	TMATT	Yds/Att	Y/A Rk
2	Brandon Marshall	CHI	101	1342	9	444	3.02	1
7	Vincent Jackson	TAM	56	1145	8	442	2.59	2
4	Andre Johnson	HOU	82	1209	3	471	2.57	3
1	Calvin Johnson	DET	96	1546	5	618	2.5	4
6	A.J. Green	CIN	79	1151	10	478	2.41	5
5	Demaryius Thomas	DEN	74	1197	8	503	2.38	6
12	Steve Smith	CAR	60	999	2	425	2.35	7
9	Wes Welker	NWE	95	1116	4	519	2.15	8
3	Reggie Wayne	IND	94	1220	4	569	2.14	9
8	Roddy White	ATL	77	1140	5	535	2.13	10
11	Victor Cruz	NYG	76	1004	9	479	2.1	11
14	Brian Hartline	MIA	62	925	1	442	2.09	12
28	Michael Crabtree	SFO	66	761	5	383	1.99	13
13	Julio Jones	ATL	63	997	7	535	1.86	14
22	Dwayne Bowe	KAN	59	801	3	436	1.84	15
10	Dez Bryant	DAL	75	1028	9	567	1.81	16
45	Sidney Rice	SEA	45	658	7	365	1.8	17
26	Steve Johnson	BUF	61	776	5	432	1.8	18
24	Davone Bess	MIA	61	778	1	442	1.76	19
19	Anquan Boldin	BAL	58	828	4	482	1.72	20
35	Jeremy Kerley	NYJ	52	728	2	435	1.67	21
31	Mike Williams	TAM	46	736	7	442	1.67	22
20	Cecil Shorts	JAX	43	824	7	500	1.65	23
39	Greg Olsen	CAR	54	691	5	425	1.63	24
25	Randall Cobb	GNB	71	777	7	484	1.61	25
15	Marques Colston	NOR	65	889	8	559	1.59	26
42	Percy Harvin	MIN	62	677	3	429	1.58	27
23	Eric Decker	DEN	64	790	8	503	1.57	28
29	Torrey Smith	BAL	43	753	7	482	1.56	29
18	Tony Gonzalez	ATL	81	831	7	535	1.55	30
16	Jason Witten	DAL	92	880	1	567	1.55	31
27	Malcom Floyd	SDG	54	775	5	503	1.54	32
17	Lance Moore	NOR	53	848	4	559	1.52	33
32	Josh Gordon	CLE	42	732	5	487	1.5	34
21	Miles Austin	DAL	55	819	5	567	1.44	35
30	Rob Gronkowski	NWE	53	748	10	519	1.44	36
34	Mike Wallace	PIT	59	728	8	509	1.43	37
47	Hakeem Nicks	NYG	50	652	3	479	1.36	38
44	Jordy Nelson	GNB	46	658	6	484	1.36	39
59	Brandon LaFell	CAR	34	577	4	425	1.36	40
72	Golden Tate	SEA	37	492	7	365	1.35	41
40	Heath Miller	PIT	61	679	7	509	1.33	42
52	Jermaine Gresham	CIN	55	636	5	478	1.33	43
70	Vernon Davis	SFO	38	506	5	383	1.32	44
53	Owen Daniels	HOU	52	622	6	471	1.32	45
49	Nate Washington	TEN	39	648	4	499	1.3	46
33	Brandon Myers	OAK	70	728	4	561	1.3	47
38	DeSean Jackson	PHI	45	700	2	541	1.29	48
36	Jimmy Graham	NOR	64	710	8	559	1.27	49
58	Chris Givens	STL	36	584	3	464	1.26	50

This week at the New York Times, I take a look at how three defensive stars from the 2011 Draft have dominated the league and helped make their teams Super Bowl contenders.

The 2011 N.F.L. draft class was initially talked up for its star potential at quarterback: Cam Newton (the first overall pick), Jake Locker (8), Blaine Gabbert (10), Christian Ponder (12), Andy Dalton (35) and Colin Kaepernick (36).

Twenty months later, the  most dominant players have been guys named Smith, Miller and Watt. Those three are the front-runners for the defensive player of the year award:

Aldon Smith San Francisco took Smith, a Missouri linebacker, with the seventh pick in the 2011 draft. As a rookie, he was a role player who participated in fewer than half of his team’s snaps but recorded 14 sacks as the team’s designated pass rusher. This year, Smith is a full-time player and continues to be a dominant force. After sacking Miami’s Ryan Tannehill twice on Sunday, he has 19.5 sacks, the most of any player through 13 team games since the sack became an official statistic.

Smith has recorded more sacks in his first two seasons than Reggie White, Derrick Thomas or anyone else who has entered the league since 1982, the year the N.F.L. began officially tracking the statistic. Against the Bears on “Monday Night Football,” Smith recorded five and a half sacks against Jason Campbell, the most by a player in a game since 2007. He is within reach of Michael Strahan’s single-season record of 22.5, set in 2001. But as good as Smith has been, he is arguably just the third-best defensive player from his draft class.

Von Miller The Denver Broncos selected Texas A&M’s Miller with the second overall pick. He had an eye-opening rookie season that was somewhat overshadowed by Tebow Time, but he helped transform the Bronco defense and rightfully earned defensive rookie of the year honors. In 2011, Pro Football Focus rated Miller as the second-best defensive player in the league, and ranked him as the top linebacker against the run and the best pass-rushing 4-3 outside linebacker.

He has only gotten better in 2012. Miller has recorded a sack in each of the team’s last six games, all wins, and now has 16. More impressively, according to Pro Football Focus, Miller’s 16 sacks and 45 quarterback hurries are more than triple the numbers produced by the second-best 4-3 outside linebacker. He ranks as the best pass-rushing linebacker and the best run-stopping linebacker in the N.F.L., and neither race is particularly close. Miller is arguably the best all-around linebacker in the league and perhaps one of the three or four best pass rushers in the N.F.L., too. But Miller still isn’t the most highly regarded member of the 2011 draft.

J.J. Watt The presumptive favorite for the defensive player of the year award remains Houston’s Watt. With an 11-2 record, the Texans are tied for the best record in the N.F.L., and Watt, drafted out of Wisconsin at No. 11,  is a huge reason for that. According to Football Outsiders, entering Week 14, Watt led the league with 41 “Defeats” (a turnover, a tackle for loss or a play that prevents a third- or fourth-down conversion); the next-closest player was Miller with 33. According to an e-mail conversation Monday with Aaron Schatz  of Football Outsiders, who has been tracking the metric since 1996, only linebackers Ray Lewis (45) and Derrick Brooks (42) have recorded more “Defeats” in a full season, both doing so in 1999.

Watt’s production is remarkable for any player, let alone a 3-4 defensive end. Generally, defensive ends in a 3-4 scheme are not expected to fill up a stat sheet; they are supposed to absorb blockers to enable the linebackers behind them to achieve the glory. But Watt has recorded 16.5 sacks this season and became the first player to officially record 15 sacks and 15 passes defended in the same season. Pro Football Focus ranked Watt just ahead of Miller, and says he’s more than twice as valuable as the next best 3-4 defensive end in football, the Jets’ Muhammad Wilkerson.

Looking for a darkhorse? To identify the  man who probably should win the underrated player of the year award — watch a Bengals game. Defensive tackle Geno Atkins was taken in the same draft as Ndamukong Suh but has delivered  more production with a fraction of the hype. Atkins was at it again on Sunday against the Cowboys, delivering a sack and two other tackles behind the line of scrimmage, to go with two additional hits and six hurries against Tony Romo.

You can read the full article here, which notes that Calvin Johnson and Adrian Peterson are both chasing the 2,000-yard mark and highlights one really, really sad bit of Lions trivia.

Because I am an enormous narcissist, I wondered if I could find the very first article I ever wrote. And I did. While I doubt anyone visiting the site today wants to read an article by a first-time writer from the summer of 2002, if you do, here is my article discussing the fantasy relevance of a defense when ranking running backs. Here is the intro:

Being the most important position in fantasy football, running backs are analyzed and examined from just about every angle. Most fantasy footballers can tell you who slumped in the 2nd half, who had a great ypc, and who had a ton of “fluky” TDs last year that won’t likely happen again. One factor a lot of owners look into is the defense of a RB. Logic dictates that the RBs on good defenses are like gold mines: see Eddie George the past few years, Jamal Lewis and A-Train when their teams Ds had breakout seasons, and the original superstar of modern fantasy football, Emmitt Smith. 4 straight years as the number 1 RB, and his team’s D was in the top 5 all 4 years. Teams with great Ds are notorious for pounding the ball late in game, running a lot early in games(so as to not throw interceptions, and win the battle of field position and win it with your defense), and basically pad your RBs stats. While some put more weight than others on the importance of a strong D(some view it as very important, others as a deciding factor between 2 backs they rate similarly), it appears the correct weight to put on a defense when evaluating a RB is 0. Zilch. Nothing. Meaningless. Let’s take a look at last year:

RB	Yards	DPA	DPYA	DRYA	TDs	Year	DTR
Holmes	1555	23	13	27	8	2001	21
Martin	1513	12	5	28	10	2001	15
S. Davis	1432	13	3	20	5	2001	12
Green	1387	5	15	16	9	2001	12
Faulk	1382	7	10	3	12	2001	7
Alexander	1318	18	23	15	14	2001	19
Dillon	1315	14	14	11	10	2001	13
Williams	1245	27	20	14	6	2001	20
Tomlinson	1236	16	19	19	10	2001	18
Hearst	1206	9	18	9	4	2001	12
Avg	1359	14	14	16	9		15

Yards is the rushing yards, DPA is the POINTS ALLOWED RANK by that RBs defense, DPYA and DRYA are the rank that RBs team fared in Passing and Rushing yards allowed respectively, and TDs are rushing TDs for that RB. DTR is the average of the 3 defensive categories. The top 2 RBs last year were on teams with defenses who were in the bottom 5 of the league against the run. Using “common theory’, one would figure that teams that can’t stop the run, can’t control the clock, get behind early, and have to pass more. Those who backed off on Holmes and Martin due to their poor Ds(and Stephen Davis included) missed out. On average, the top 10 rushers in the league had well, average defenses. Middle of the pack in terms of points allowed, rushing yards allowed and passing yards allowed. Is this a one year trend?

I think it was Doug Drinen who once said if you don’t look at something you wrote five years ago and cringe, then you aren’t improving as a writer. For ten years old, this article seems to hold up okay although it could certainly use some editing. Fortunately, the conclusion is cringe-inducing enough for me to be convinced that I have improved from my first piece to my last.

Bill Barnwell wrote yesterday about the dominant fantasy performance by the Seahawks defense against Arizona on Sunday. The Seahawks scored two touchdowns, forced 8 turnovers, recorded three sacks, and pitched a shutout. That made me wonder: which defense produced the best fantasy in NFL history?

I used Footballguys.com’s scoring system in the Footballguys Players Championship to calculate every performance by a fantasy D/ST since 1940. Here it is:

Team Defense/Special Teams

1 point – Every sack

2 points – Every team takeaway (interception or fumble recovery)

6 points – Every TD (via interception return, fumble return, punt or kickoff return, blocked FG return, missed FG return, blocked punt return)

5 points – Every safety

12 points – Every shutout

8 points – Allowing between 1- 6 points

5 points – Allowing between 7 – 10 points

Because I decided to use the official scoring designation for every play and chose not to rewatch every game in NFL history, there is one error that will come up in every few hundred games. Occasionally, an offense will score a touchdown on its own fumble recovery and that goes down in the gamebooks as a fumble recovery just like a defensive touchdown. So, be warned, these are unofficial fantasy scores.

As it turns out, Seattle’s game against Arizona comes in tied for 10th place. Incredibly, the best performance by a fantasy defense — a whopping 52 points — came in a Steelers-Browns game but wasn’t delivered by Pittsburgh. The came in the 1989 season opener, and after losing 41-10 the following week, Pittsburgh rebounded to finish 9-7 and make the playoffs. In 1950, the New York Giants also scored 52 fantasy points against the Steelers. New York scored 18 points in that game — 2 safeties, two fumble return touchdowns — and forced 9 turnovers and 7 sacks. The table below lists the best performances by a fantasy defense:
[continue reading…]

In the preseason, I wrote a post showing what percentage of each receiver’s receiving yards came from each of their quarterbacks. Using that same methodology, here’s an updated look at the quarterbacks responsible for Larry Fitzgerald’s career numbers entering week 14. The second receiving yards column (and second games column) shows the percentage of Fitzgerald’s receiving yards came (and games) that came from that quarterback: ^[1]Note: To determine quarterback games, I gave each quarterback credit for his number of pass attempts in each game divided by the team’s total number of attempts in the game.

On Sunday, the Cardinals went into Seattle and played the type of game that leads people to wonder if a college football team could beat the worst NFL team. Coming into the game, Larry Fitzgerald had recorded a reception in 129 consecutive games, the second longest streak in football behind Tony Gonzalez. Against the Seahawks, Fitzgerald was kept off the stat sheet until seven minutes remained, and, when trailing 51-0, Ryan Lindley completed a two-yard pass to Fitzgerald to keep the streak alive. Fitzgerald, perhaps the best wide receiver of his era, has now recorded one catch in three of his last four games.

In 13 games this season, Fitzgerald has just 652 yards, an average of 50.1 yards per game. Entering week 14, Fitzgerald ranked 40th in receiving yards, and we can safely assume he is no longer ranked in the top forty.

How rare is it for an elite receiver to have such a miserable season at the age of 29? First we need to define what ‘elite’ means without asking ESPN. I came up with a quick and dirty system where I gave a receiver credit for his receiving yards over the Nth ranked receiver, where N represents the number of teams in the league in that season. For example, in 2011 Calvin Johnson receives credit for 794 yards, since he gained 1,681 yards and the 32nd receiver gained 887 yards. If you gained fewer yards than the Nth best receiver, you get zero yards for that season. The table below shows the career leaders using this formula (excluding 2012), and the column on the right pro-rates the data for non-16-game seasons.
[continue reading…]

Tonight ESPN aired You Don’t Know Bo, another excellent documentary in its 30 for 30 series. It’s often said that Bo Jackson’s greatness can’t be captured by statistics. While that’s undoubtedly true, there are still some ways to use Jackson’s numbers to give a glimpse into the type of player he was. A few years ago, Jason Lisk talked about Bo in this podcast and noted that Bo had the longest rush in the NFL in three of the four seasons he played. Jackson and O.J. Simpson remain the only two players to record the league’s longest rush in three different NFL seasons.

There are other ways to capture what Bo did in his brief career. Because he was busy being a baseball player, Bo missed the first third of the season each year. If we look at the data starting in week 7, from 1988 to 1990, Bo compares pretty favorably to the elite running backs of his day. Over that span he ranked third in rushing yards while averaging over five yards per carry:

[continue reading…]

I didn’t publish my college football SRS ratings last week, but with the conclusion of yesterday’s Army-Navy game, the college football regular season is over. But before we turn our attention to the Bowls, here is a look at the final regular season SRS ratings.

I’ve also updated the NCAA Games page, which displays every game in major college football this season.

The table below lists the Bowl matchups along with some SRS data squeezed in: the last four columns show the SRS rating of the favorite and the underdog, along with the difference between the two ratings (i.e., a projected point spread) and the average of the two ratings (essentially a ranking of how good the game is).
[continue reading…]

Scott Kacsmar, friend of Football Perspective and the leading writer on quarterback comebacks, noted that Andrew Luck has 5 game-winning drives in his first 12 games. Where does that rank historically?

To be clear, game-winning drives are not an official statistic, and while Kacsmar has gone through thousands of games to record data on the subject, we can’t confirm that the below list in 100% complete. With that disclaimer out of the way, the table below displays all quarterbacks with at least 3 game-winning drives in their first 12 NFL games:

If we look just at quarterbacks in their first 12 starts, well, a different name vaults to the top of the list. Tim Tebow launched a phenomenon known as Tebow-mania last year, thanks to his dramatic comebacks seemingly every week last November and December.

Luck’s career trajectory looks to be on a much better path than Tebow, Jay Schroeder or John Skelton, but hey, I don’t make the trivia, I just present it.

The table below shows how many game-winning drives were led by quarterbacks in their first 12 starts. Thanks to Scott Kacsmar and Pro-Football-Reference.com for the data.
[continue reading…]

It’s a special edition of Saturday rant day at Football Perspective.

I’m no Mark Sanchez apologist. But that doesn’t mean he’s the only one to blame for the Jets’ passing game struggles.

The Supporting Cast
Jeremy Kerley, Dustin Keller, Chaz Schilens, Stephen Hill, and Jeff Cumberland are the team’s leading receivers. Clyde Gates has started two games at wide receiver. Kerley would be a great #3 receiver, but he’s the Jets #1. Schillens and Gates are best left as fifth receivers, while Stephen Hill is incredibly raw and has struggled most of the year. Keller would be a good tight end on a good passing offense, but is overmatched as the team’s #2 target. I don’t think anyone would disagree that the Jets’ receivers (including stone-hands Shonn Greene) rank in the bottom five of the league.

Mike Tannenbaum

Tannenbaum has come under heavy criticism from Jets fans of late. While I think much of that is probably unfair, there are several areas to point the finger at Tannenbaum — starting with drafting Sanchez in the first place. The Jets general manager listens to eternal optimist Ryan too much when it comes to personnel decisions, which led the Jets to start Wayne Hunter at right tackle last year and enter the pre-season with him, somehow, still entrenched at the spot. The Vlad Ducasse pick has been a bust, leaving Matt Slauson to cover at left guard (you know, when he’s not being rotated out of the game). Trades for Braylon Edwards and Santonio Holmes yielded immediate dividends, but have only added to the disruption in the locker room without helping the 2012 version of the team. Sanchez is playing with one of the worst supporting casts in the league, so the man who picks the talent certainly bears some of the blame.

Rex Ryan

There are very few head coaches who are excellent on both sides of the ball, but Rex Ryan is one of the most specialized head coaches in the NFL. He’s a defensive mastermind — no doubt about that — but he’s as helpless on offense as he is strong on defense. He vowed this year to get more involved in the offense, which should start sending red flags to begin with since 2012 is his fourth season as head coach of the team. To the extent that he has been more hands on in 2012, the results aren’t any better.

Perhaps Ryan is the mirror image of a Gary Kubiak, who took awhile to find the right man to run the other half of his team. But from the standpoint of developing a quarterback, Ryan may even be counterproductive. The red light-yellow light-green light system he gave Sanchez in his rookie season was Ryan’s first attempt to right the ship and a sign of what the coach expects out of the quarterback position. The bottom line is Ryan is focused on playing good defense and running the ball, and as long as his quarterback doesn’t mess up, he thinks his team will win. That’s not the ideal environment for a young quarterback to blossom in, and we learned exactly what Rex thinks about his quarterback when this off-season he chose to hire as his offensive coordinator…

Tony Sparano (hat tip, Brian Schottenheimer)
[continue reading…]

An old friend of mine was always mildly irked at the praise thrown at Bill Parcells for turning around moribund franchises. In reality, making a team with a terrible record respectable isn’t all that challenging. Where Parcells added value was in making his good teams great, not in making terrible teams mediocre.

In 1992, one year B.P., the New England Patriots were 2-14, in part thanks to a 1-5 record in one-score games. Throw in some regression to the mean and the first pick in every round of the ’93 draft, and going 5-11 in 1993 wasn’t so much of an accomplishment as it was pre-ordained.

In 1996, one year B.P., the Jets went 1-15. New York was a horrific 0-7 in one-score games. Throw in the #1 pick in every round, and they were an attractive target. Parcells did do a masterful job cleaning up the mess left by Rich Kotite, but getting them to 9-7 looked very impressive in large part thanks to the poor fortunes of the team the prior year.

The Big Tuna again went after the low-hanging fruit again when he took over as the Executive Vice President of Football Operations in Miami (it is here my old friend would get particularly annoyed, noting that Parcells found a way to have his cake and eat it too. If the Dolphins succeeded, Parcells would have “done it again.” Had they failed, well, he wasn’t the coach.) He took over a 1-15 team that was bad but not 1-15 bad; they had faced one of the harder schedules in the league and gone 1-6 in close games. Enter Jake Long, Chad Pennington, and the Wildcat, and the Dolphins went 11-5. Parcells did it again!

In any event, that’s just background. The 2013 Panthers are the real topic today — and they are the lowest hanging fruit any potential coach has seen in decades. Consider:

• The Panthers are currently 3-9, and little is expected of them going forward. They are now just 9-19 in the Cam Newton era.
• Despite that, Carolina ranks 4th in Brian Burke’s Advanced NFL Stats efficiency ratings. Now maybe they aren’t the 4th best team in the league, but Brian’s system is purely predictive and minimizes events that shape our views but are unlikely to impact future records. I have no doubt that they’re closer to the 4th best team in the league than the 4th worst, which is where they are by record.
• Football Outsiders ranks Carolina 18th — which, by the way, still means they’re much better than their record — but even that is misleading. Schatz ranks Carolina 32nd in special teams — a unit that Burke ignores — but instead has them 15th in offensive DVOA and 14th in defensive DVOA. That means excluding special teams the Panthers are above average, and special teams performance is notoriously fickle.
• So why are the Panthers 3-9? Carolina is currently 0-7 in one-score games.

There’s an even simpler way to show how the Panthers are massively underachieving this year. Net yards per attempt isn’t the only stat in the world, but it’s one of the most important indicators of an offense’s effectiveness. Net yards per attempt is just as important on defense; NY/A differential, the difference between how many net yards you gain per offensive attempt and how many you allow per defensive attempt, is a simple shorthand to highlight the best in the league. Here are the results through 13 weeks (i.e., not counting last night’s game):
[continue reading…]

Grading running backs can be tricky; rushing yards tell much of the story but remain a function of opportunity (itself an indicator of talent). Yards per carry sounds nice but often is more misleading than revealing. Last year at Smartfootball.com I analyzed team rushing games using rush success rate, and I will do the same today. Success rate has been around for awhile – The Hidden Game of Football wrote about it in the late ’80s and Football Outsiders has been tracking it for close to a decade. Everyone has their own unique definition, it seems; here is mine.

• I started with every play from scrimmage where a running back was credited with a carry. I then removed all instances of 3rd or 4th down carries where the back needed to gain more than 5 yards for a first down, since the primary goal in these situations usually isn’t to get the first down. However, on the rare occasions where a running back did convert for the first down, those plays were kept in the data set. This has only happened 20 times this season.
• On 3rd and 4th down, a success is a rush that gains a first down (or touchdown). A failure is every carry that does not result in a first down.
• On 2nd down, a success is achieved when the player gains at least 50% of the yards needed for the first down. This means that 2nd-and-8 runs are failures unless they pick up 4 yards; on 2nd-and-7, the running back must also gain at least 4 yards. A rush for one yard on 2nd-and-3 is a failure, and so on.
• On 1st down, a running back is credited with a successful carry if he gains at least 40% of the yards needed; therefore, four yards are required on 1st-and-10 before the running back is given credit. On 1st and goal from the 5, a two-yard gain would be considered a success.

The league average success rate by these rules is 49.8%. The table below lists all running backs with at least 50 carries, along with their number of rushes (which excludes the excluded carries), number of successful runs, and their success rate. The table is sorted by the far right column, which shows how many successes over 50% of their runs the player had. In the event of a tie, the player with more carries was ranked higher.
[continue reading…]

We’re 75% of the way through the regular season. We know the Patriots, Broncos, and Texans are elite teams in the AFC, the Ravens and Colts aren’t as good as their gaudy records, and the Bengals and Steelers will consistently be inconsistent. In the NFC, the Giants remain the benchmark for consistent inconsistency. But if December plays out as another Groundhog’s Day for Daniel Snyder and Jerry Jones, the NFC East will again go to New York. The Falcons are going to grab the #1 seed and the NFC North will likely come down to the winner of the Green Bay-Chicago matchup in week 15. The last wildcard is up for grabs — the first is reserved for the NFC North runner-up — but unfortunately the likely prize is just a road game against one of the last two Super Bowl champions.

So let’s take a moment and look at how the 49ers tie against the Rams could impact playoff seeding. In retrospect, that tie was no better than a loss for San Francisco. As an initial matter, the team is battling Seattle for the NFC West crown. San Francisco plays in Seattle in week 16; if the Seahawks win, they have a legitimate shot at the division. Right now they’re 1.5 games behind the 49ers, and the rest of the Seahawks schedule (ARI, @BUF, STL) is manageable; meanwhile, San Francisco also has to go to New England. If the Seahawks run the table and the Patriots beat the 49ers, the Seahawks win the NFC West.

Had the 49ers defeated the Rams, even losing to Seattle and New England in the last two weeks wouldn’t cost them the division. That’s because Seattle already lost in Arizona, St. Louis, and San Francisco, so the 49ers would have won the tiebreaker. A win would have been helpful, while that tie against the Rams comes out as no more helpful than a loss — in either case, San Francisco would have 10 wins to Seattle’s 11. Since they would have had the tiebreaker, the difference between a win and a tie was much larger than the difference between a tie and a loss (which was essentially nothing).

But perhaps the more important race is against the Packers for the #2 seed. San Francisco is unlikely to lose to both Seattle and New England while the Seahawks run the table, so I think 49ers fans are more concerned about securing that bye. Right now, the 49ers are just a half-game ahead of Green Bay. Since the 49ers defeated the Packers, they would have held the tiebreaker if the two teams finished with the same record. Therefore, just like in the case of the Seahawks, “salvaging” a tie against the Rams will end up having been meaningless.

With that, perhaps it is time to turn our attention to the bottom of the list. We can skip from the top to the bottom after this short break

The Jets, the Eagles, Rex Ryan, the Chargers, Tim Tebow, Andy Reid, Mark Sanchez, Norv Turner

Now that that’s covered, the race for the #1 draft pick is on. Jason Lisk did a nice job handicapping the race, placing the Chiefs in the pole position but giving both the Raiders and Jaguars a better than 20% chance of the top pick. Football Outsiders sees things slightly different, giving both Kansas City and Jacksonville a two-in-five chance of shouting “We’re #1″… in April.

Team	Rec	Wins	PrvWin	Diff	RemSOS	RemHG	Comment
Atlanta Falcons	11-1	14	13	1	0.422	2	14-2 but with a Matt Ryan-sized monkey on their backs.
Houston Texans	11-1	13	13	0	0.594	2	The game of the regular season takes place in New England on Monday Night.
Denver Broncos	9-3	13	13	0	0.359	2	From 2-3 to 13-3? The Broncos will be streaking towards the playoffs and Peyton Manning is the favorite to earn his 5th MVP award
New England Patriots	9-3	12	12	0	0.539	3	A win in Houston gives the Patriots a chance for the 1 seed; a loss means they may have to beat Pittsburgh and win in Denver and Houston to get to New Orleans.
San Francisco 49ers	8-3-1	11.5	12.5	-1	0.531	2	Hey, at least they didn't tie the Rams!
Green Bay Packers	8-4	11	11	0	0.438	2	At 2-3, who would have guessed that Green Bay could still end up with a first round bye? They're only a half-game behind San Francisco.
Baltimore Ravens	9-3	11	11	0	0.609	2	Stage 1 of regression to the mean happened last week.
Chicago Bears	8-4	11	11	0	0.422	1	That was a tough loss to Seattle, but the Bears still control their own destiny in the NFC North with one game left against each rival.
Indianapolis Colts	8-4	10	10	0	0.547	2	The difference between the 5 and 6 seed in the AFC is enormous, because it's a tall order asking Andrew Luck to win at Denver/NE/Houston.
Pittsburgh Steelers	7-5	10	9	1	0.438	3	Ben Roethlisberger may be back this weekend; the Steelers still have enormous upside but rarely flash it.
Seattle Seahawks	7-5	10	9	1	0.484	3	Russell Wilson is climbing up the Rookie of the Year charts. He doesn't have to do as much as Luck or Robert Griffin III but he's been excellent.
New York Giants	7-5	9	10	-1	0.563	2	After week 8, I had them at 11 wins. Early in the season I had them at 9. The lesson: don't get confused by what happens to the Giants in the middle of the year.
Cincinnati Bengals	7-5	9	8	1	0.516	2	Starting to come around on the Bengals, although that may just be because the bar known as the rest of the conference keeps falling.
Tampa Bay Buccaneers	6-6	8	9	-1	0.508	2	Close losses against the Falcons and Broncosshow how far the team has come but are likely season killers.
Dallas Cowboys	6-6	8	8	0	0.531	2	It's December - can Tony Romo rewrite history?
Washington Redskins	6-6	8	8	0	0.438	2	Own the tiebreaker over the Giants and a much easier schedule.
St. Louis Rams	5-6-1	7.5	6.5	1	0.484	1	Being able to go toe-to-toe with the 49ers should be a huge confidence booster for a young team.
New Orleans Saints	5-7	7	8	-1	0.469	2	Playing out the string in a disappointing season. Saints should consider giving some younger players playing time.
Miami Dolphins	5-7	7	7	0	0.523	2	Losing a close game to the Patriots doesn't drop your win total.
New York Jets	5-7	7	6	1	0.344	1	Anything between 5-9 and 9-7 is possible. But I doubt Mark Sanchez, Tim Tebow, or Greg McElroy quarterback the next Jets team that makes the playoffs.
Buffalo Bills	5-7	7	6	1	0.492	3	Another below-average but not terrible year for the Bills. At least they have a great running game.
Minnesota Vikings	6-6	6	7	-1	0.664	2	Percy Harvin out for the year is the final nail in the coffin for the Vikings' playoff hopes.
Tennessee Titans	4-8	6	6	0	0.484	2	Figuring out how to turn Jake Locker into the quarterback of the future should be the only goal for the rest of the year.
San Diego Chargers	4-8	6	6	0	0.406	2	This team started 2-0 but hasn't beaten anyone but the Chiefs since then.
Detroit Lions	4-8	5	6	-1	0.641	2	Calvin Johnson's pursuit of Jerry Rice is the only drama left in Lions land.
Carolina Panthers	3-9	5	6	-1	0.484	2	It's hard to reconcile this team with their record. Cam Newton still leads the league in yards per attempt.
Arizona Cardinals	4-8	5	6	-1	0.586	2	Kevin Kolb looks like Joe Montana compared to Ryan Lindley. The Cardinals were 0-15 on third down against the Jets.
Cleveland Browns	4-8	5	4	1	0.531	2	Cleveland is 3-2 in their last five games, which would inspire more confidence if this wasn't a lost season under a dead-end regime.
Oakland Raiders	3-9	4	5	-1	0.422	2	A good candidate to steal the #1 pick from KC and Jacksonville due to their weak SOS.
Philadelphia Eagles	3-9	4	4	0	0.531	2	Will the Eagles be able to win one last game under Andy Reid? At this point, I'm not counting on anything.
Jacksonville Jaguars	2-10	3	3	0	0.500	2	Best case scenario is Chad Henne plays well enough to convince the team to move on from Blaine Gabbert but not so well as to convince them in Henne himself.
Kansas City Chiefs	2-10	3	2	1	0.500	1	A tragic week in Kansas City. Thoughts and prayers go out to those impacted by the horrific events.

Last week, I introduced the concept of Game Scripts in Part I and Part II of this series. The short explanation is that a team’s Game Script score is simply the average score during each second of every game. Today, we’re going to look at some data from the 2012 season, although I have not yet included the data from this past weekend (week 13).

Let’s start with a look at the game scripts for each team this season.

There aren’t too many surprises on there. The Patriots are 8-3 (in this data set) with a record-setting offense; they have had a number of blowout victories and their three losses came by a combined four points. The Texans and 49ers also have impressive Game Script scores, and many would consider those three the three best teams in the league. Cincinnati might be a little surprising up at the top, but the Bengals were 10th in points differential through eleven games and third in points differential in the first half. Remember, the Game Script score is designed to be descriptive, not predictive; it’s not saying that Cincinnati is the 4th best team, it’s simply revealing the fact that the Bengals have, on average, led by 3.9 points in each second of every game they’ve played this year. That’s mostly because Cincinnati has been a great first half team.
[continue reading…]

This week at the New York Times, I blush when discussing Andrew Luck, praise the great Calvin Johnson as he tries to surpass Jerry Rice (but with a caveat), and take a look at some other random stats (including some absurd numbers from Adrian Peterson). Trivia: Brandon Marshall has gained over 1,000 yards on both the Bears and Broncos in seasons in which Jay Cutler was his primary quarterback both seasons. Can you name the only two other wide receivers to gain 1,000 yards with multiple teams but the same passer?

It’s not supposed to be this easy.

Sure, Steve Young and Aaron Rodgers followed Joe Montana and Brett Favre and excelled, but the fact that those examples are so memorable shows that they are the exception to the rule.

You’re not supposed to be able to replace a Hall of Fame quarterback with another star. In Indianapolis, the Colts got a taste of what life is often like for a team in the first year after a franchise quarterback’s exit: Curtis Painter, Dan Orlovsky and Kerry Collins earned every bit of their combined 2-14 record in 2011. But after the Colts bottomed out, Indianapolis’s fortunes changed dramatically. With the first pick in the 2012 draft, the team selected Stanford’s Andrew Luck, and the Colts appear set to be an annual contender for the next decade. Again.

Luck ranks fourth in passing yards this season, and he has shouldered the load for a Colts team that is below average in rushing, stopping the run and stopping the pass. Luck ranks “only” 19th in Adjusted Net Yards per Attempt and 14th in Net Yards per Attempt, unimpressive numbers only outside of the context of a rookie quarterback playing for what was the worst team in the N.F.L. a year ago. Luck passes the eye test and at least one advanced metric (before last night’s game, Luck ranked 6th in ESPN’s Total QBR), but part of what’s impressive about him is that even when he isn’t playing well, he remains capable of carrying his team to victory. Luck struggled for much of the game against Detroit on Sunday but still managed to pull out a most improbable victory.

In the first 56 minutes of the game, Luck was 17 for 39 for 279 yards with three interceptions. His team trailed the Lions, 33-21, with under three minutes remaining. At that point, Advanced NFL Stats calculated Indianapolis’s odds of winning at 2 percent.

But Luck led them on two scoring drives, and the Colts became just the seventh team to win a game despite trailing by 12 or more points with so little time remaining since 2000. Two of the other instances involved Peyton Manning with the Colts. In 2003, Manning led the Colts on a marvelous comeback against the Buccaneers on “Monday Night Football.” Six years later, Indianapolis trailed New England, 34-21, with 2:30 remaining. A Colts touchdown was followed by three Patriots plays that gained 8 yards, setting up Bill Belichick’s infamous 4th-and-2 decision.

It will be a long time before Luck could be considered anywhere near Manning’s class in terms of body of work, but his performance against the Lions is now alongside many of Manning’s memories in the annals of great Colts moments. Luck’s game-winning touchdown to Donnie Avery was just the 13th game-winning touchdown pass in the final seconds of a game since 2000.

Statistically, Andrew Luck may not be having the best year, but he has played an enormous part in the Colts’ magical run. At 8-4, the Colts are almost certainly going to make the playoffs; if they do, they will join the 2008 Miami Dolphins and 1982 Patriots on the list of N.F.L. teams to make the playoffs a year after going 2-14 or worse.

Luck will also set a couple of rookie records. With the game-winning drive he led against the Lions, he tied Ben Roethlisberger and Vince Young for the most fourth-quarter game-winning drives (five) by a rookie quarterback. By defeating Detroit and earning his eighth win, he broke a tie with Sam Bradford and now has the most wins among rookie quarterbacks selected first over all since 1950. Luck’s next victory will give him nine wins this season, tying him with Chris Chandler for the franchise record for wins by a rookie quarterback.

Calvin Johnson and the Lions’ Passing Game

Calvin Johnson led the league with 1,681 receiving yards last season and was named a first-team All-Pro by The Associated Press for the first time in his career. His encore performance may be even better.

He has gained a mind-boggling 1,428 receiving yards this season, joining Elroy Hirsch (1,495 yards in 1951) on the short list of N.F.L. players to top the 1,400-yard mark in a team’s first 12 games (in the A.F.L., Charley Hennigan and Lance Alworth each reached that mark once as well).

You can read the full post (and the answer to the trivia question) here.

If Friday (or sometimes Thursday) is rant day at Football Perspective, then perhaps the first Tuesday in December can be fantasy day. Since everyone else does it, allow me to describe to you my preferred college playoff system.

• A modified 8-team playoff that’s actually a 10-team playoff with a four-team “play-in” round. A playoff system should not undermine the regular season, and my system places significant emphasis on success in the regular season: the most-accomplished teams get to clear the lowest hurdles due to byes, home-field, and weaker opponents.
• Notre Dame and the conference champions from the SEC, B12, P12, B10, and ACC earn automatic berths to the playoffs but only if they finish in the top 14.
• A selection committee (or a BCS-style ranking system) is used to select the remaining teams. There is a limit of 4 teams per conference. The “play-in” round and the first round of the playoffs are held at the higher seed’s location the week after the conference championship games (i.e., next weekend).

Therefore, Alabama (#2 in the BCS), Kansas State (#5), Stanford (#6), and Florida State (#12) would be guaranteed spots by virtue of being conference champions. Notre Dame (#1) is also guaranteed a slot.

That leaves five at-large selections:

— Florida (#3)
— Oregon (#4)
— two of Georgia (#7), LSU (#8), Texas A&M (#9), and South Carolina (#10)
— Oklahoma (#11)

Basically the only teams that could complain about this system are the leftover SEC teams, but I’m okay with that since they would be considered the 5th and 6th best teams from their conference. I suppose 12-1 MAC Champion Northern Illinois might be bothered, but they lost to Iowa and had a cupcake schedule. Had Nebraska defeated Wisconsin, or had Ohio State been eligible, Oklahoma or a 4th SEC team would have been left out.

For purposes of this post, I will say Georgia and A&M would be the committee’s picks.

Here’s how the playoff system would work. The three highest-ranked conference champions (Alabama, K-State, Stanford) get byes along with the next three highest-ranked teams — Notre Dame, Florida, and Oregon. The other four teams play at the site of the higher ranked team ^[1]I would have the committee involved in this step of the process as well and instruct them to avoid rematches if possible. This year it is not an issue. this Saturday (December 8th). So we would have:

Play-in round

#13 Florida State @ #7 Georgia
#11 Oklahoma @ #9 Texas A&M

— Had UGA beaten Alabama, the Bulldogs would have earned a bye followed by a home playoff game. By losing, they have to play a play-in game and then win a road playoff game. So the SEC Championship was a critical game — and there’s a good chance the committee would have simply selected LSU instead because of the loss.
— Had Florida State beaten Florida, they would have had likely received a bye and possibly a home playoff game. Now they have to win two road games. Of course, the ACC Championship Game, which no one cared about on Saturday night, would have been significantly more relevant.
— Ditto the Big 10 Championship Game, well, at least for the first half. Meanwhile, Oklahoma would have known they would have needed to run the table to get in after losing to Notre Dame. Instead of the season essentially being meaningless, think how much more exciting the Sooners last-second wins over West Virginia and Oklahoma State would have been?
— And of course, think how much more exciting the rest of the season for A&M and Johnny Manziel would have been if they had a chance to make the playoffs?

First round of the playoffs:

The three conference winners and the top-seeded at large receive home playoff games, which would be played on Saturday, December 15th:

#1 Notre Dame hosts the worst remaining seed (either FSU or the A&M/Oklahoma winner)
#2 Alabama hosts the 2nd worst seed remaining (Georgia or the A&M/Oklahoma winner).
#5 Kansas State hosts the 3rd worst seed remaining (Florida)
#6 Stanford hosts the 4th worst seed remaining (Oregon)

[Note: If you want to have the committee switch the bottom two games so that Stanford does not “have to beat Oregon again” I am fine with that. KSU-Oregon and Stanford-Florida are just as acceptable to me, and I am willing to do the same to avoid a UGA or A&M rematch with Alabama if events unfolded that way.]

Notre Dame and Alabama had the best two regular seasons, and look at their rewards: they get a bye, they get a home game, and they play a team coming off a play-in game.

KSU and Stanford both won their conferences, so they are rewarded with byes and home playoff games. Florida State won their conference but their lackluster regular season did not merit the same reward. Wisconsin won the Big 10 and got nothing. So the regular season remains vitally important. Oregon and Florida had great regular seasons, and thanks to a second bite at the apple (which is instead only reserved for Alabama this year), their seasons weren’t meaningless after one loss. And the lowest two seeds played their win into the playoff.

This playoff format makes the regular season much more meaningful for many more teams, while only slightly taking away from the value of certain games (admittedly, the Kansas State and Oregon upsets on November 17th would have been less meaningful in this format; I’m okay with that — the perfect should not be the enemy of the good.)

The Final Four

We now break until the first weekend of January. At this point, we have four very deserving teams. They would play in a four-team playoff, rotated among the bowl sites, as currently envisioned. We might see Notre Dame and Oregon in the Rose Bowl and Alabama and Kansas State in the Sugar Bowl. Or perhaps A&M and Oregon in the Cotton Bowl and Florida and Notre Dame in the Orange Bowl. Who knows. The good news is that unless there are 11 deserving teams, everyone gets a shot (and even if all 5 autobids finish in the top 14, 4 non-conference champs are still eligible; no worthy undefeated team should get left out in this system).

Scott Kacsmar has been keeping track of 4th quarter comebacks and game-winning drives for some time. As a technical matter, Greg McElroy earned both a 4th quarter comeback and led a game-winning drive in his first game ever yesterday. How rare is that?

The table below shows all the quarterbacks to lead 4th quarter comebacks and game-winning drives. Some of these, like Brian St. Pierre’s “comeback win” — and to a large extent, McElroy’s 4QC/GWD — are far from laudable. Still, here is the list:

On Sunday, Calvin Johnson became just the second player in NFL history to gain at least 125 receiving yards in five consecutive games. He’s also the second Lion to hit those marks.

As you’ve probably figured it out by the title, the only player with 125+ receiving yards in five straight games prior to Johnson was Patrick Lewis Studstill Jr., who had an 11-year career with the Lions, Rams, and Patriots. Studstill was a first-team All-Pro wide receiver in 1966, when he led the NFL in receiving yards. Beginning in week 5 of that season, Studstill topped 115 receiving yards in six straight weeks. Those were six highest single-game yardage totals of his career.

Studstill was a receiver and punter at the University of Houston in the late ’50s, but his senior season was a disaster. Head coach Hal Lahar was your typical coach of the era when it came to rules, and Studstill violated a major one — by getting married. Lahar benched Studstill for his entire senior year, and as a result, Studstill went undrafted. One of the Cougars assistant coaches, Red Conkright, was a former NFL player who would later become the last head coach of the Oakland Raiders before Al Davis. Conkright vouched for Studstill, who received a tryout in Detroit. Because of his versatility and speed, he was able to make the Lions roster in 1961.

Studstill didn’t see the field much during his rookie season, but did manage a 100-yard kickoff return touchdown against the Bears. An injury to Terry Barr in 1962 opened the door for Studstill to begin making a contribution on offense. In the last 9 games of the season, Sutdstill caught 31 passes for 446 yards, second on the team in both categories to Pro Bowler Gail Cogdill.
[continue reading…]

In case you haven’t noticed, Detroit’s Matt Stafford is throwing the ball a lot this year. He’s thrown the second most passes of any quarterback through 11 games in league history.

In 2011, Stafford led the NFL with 663 pass attempts, the third most in NFL history. In my preview of the 2012 Lions, I threw some cold water on Stafford’s outlook, noting that while he threw for 5,000 yards, his 13th-place finish in Y/A was more telling. This season Stafford is throwing even more frequently — he’s up three pass attempts per game — and is on pace to break the record for pass attempts in a season. And while Stafford may again hit the 5,000-yard mark, he currently ranks just 21st in yards per attempt, which is less forgivable in connection with a 4-7 record than a 10-6 mark.

I suspect that most fans of Football Perspective are pretty good at trivia, so I’m not going to let you off easy. You probably know which quarterback holds the record for pass attempts in a season:

The more challenging question is this: which team holds the record for most team pass attempts in a season? Right now, Detroit is on pace for 729 pass attempts this season (Shaun Hill threw 13 passes), which would break the record.

Under Raheem Morris, the Tampa Bay rush defense was always… what is the polite way to put this… accommodating to opposing running backs. Over Morris’ three-year tenure, the Buccaneers joined the Bills as either 31st or 32nd in all three major rush defense categories: rushing yards allowed, rushing yards per carry allowed, and rushing touchdowns allowed.

This was the case despite the organization’s best efforts to find players that could stop the run. The Buccaneers’ second selection in the 2009 draft was used on defensive tackle Roy Miller.  That season, Tampa Bay finished last in both rushing yards and rushing yards per carry allowed.   The following April, the Bucs used the third pick in the draft on Gerald McCoy and the 35th selection on Brian Price, making them the rare team to take multiple interior defensive linemen with top-40 picks.  That season was the one successful year of Morris’ tenure, but Tampa Bay still finished 28th in rushing yards allowed and 31st in yards per rush allowed.

So Tampa continued to focus on the defensive line in the 2011 draft, this time taking Iowa’s Adrian Clayborn and Clemson’s Da’Quan Bowers with their first and second round picks and middle linebacker Mason Foster in the third round. In 2011, Tampa finished the year 32nd in rushing yards allowed, 32nd in rushing touchdowns allowed, and 31st in yards per carry allowed.

Enter Greg Schiano and defensive coordinator Bill Sheridan.  With a horrible run defense for three consecutive years, the Bucs couldn’t ignore the problem just because they had failed in prior attempts to plug the leak.  With the seventh pick, the team selected Alabama’s Mark Barron, an in-the-box safety who was considered one of the safest picks in the draft.

Schiano, Barron, McCoy, and second round pick Lavonte David (who was just named the NFC defensive rookie of the month for November) have completely reformed the Tampa rush defense. The team currently ranks first in both rushing yards and yards per rush allowed. That’s unbelievable. Nothing more could be said about the magnitude of a leap from 32nd to 1st, so let me close with a look at the biggest jumps in rushing yards allowed and rushing yards per carry allowed in NFL history.
[continue reading…]

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 hit the nail on the head, telling us that NIU is 6.2 points better than Kent State on a neutral field. The stars here are Northern Illinois’ quarterback Jordan Lynch and KSU’s running back Dri Archer. Lynch leads the MAC in Y/A, AY/A, TD/INT Ratio, and Passer Rating, and oh by the way leads the conference with 1,611 rushing yards and ranks third with 16 rushing touchdowns.

Archer, meanwhile, leads the MAC with 1,795 yards from scrimmage has scored 18 touchdowns. But here’s the killer stat: he averaging 9.7 yards per carry, the highest average of any player with at least 100 carries since at least 2000. In his spare time, Archer averages 38.2 yards per kick return, the highest average of any player with at least 12 returns since at least 2000.

Kent State lost to Kentucky, which didn’t seem odd at the time — because we’re talking about Kent State — but looks absurd in retrospect. The Golden Flashes received an SRS grade of 4.4 for that game. Northern Illinois’ one loss was on opening weekend against Iowa, an 18-17 loss in Chicago where NIU led most of the game.

My pick: NIU -6

Pac 12 Championship (Stanford, CA)

Friday, 8PM: UCLA @ Stanford (-8.5)

If we looked at the SRS standings from a week ago, we would set this line at Stanford -5.6. But the current projected SRS spread would be 8.6, mirroring the actual line. So how much do we take away from last week’s game, where Stanford had everything to play for and UCLA seemed content to walk away unscathed?

It’s tough to say. Jim Mora’s Bruins have been an exciting team to watch this year, but Stanford’s defense is well-equipped to stop any rushing attack. Runing backs Johnathan Franklin (UCLA) and Stepfan Taylor (Stanford) have been workhorse backs, each rushing for 11 touchdowns, ranking third and fourth in the conference in rushing, and chipping in in the passing game. And while freshman quarterback Brett Hundley has been outstanding for UCLA, I have a feeling he’s going to wind up very frustrated on Friday night.

My pick: Stanford -8.5

CUSA Championship (Tulsa, OK)

Saturday, 12PM: Central Florida @ Tulsa (-1.5)

These are the two best teams in Conference USA, but that isn’t saying too much. The SRS puts UCF as 3.1 points better than Tulsa, so this game should be a push in Oklahoma. The Golden Hurricane handed UCF their only conference loss two weeks ago in Tulsa, but UCF has the more impressive resume this year losing to just Ohio State and Missouri out of conference. Tulsa lost to Iowa State and Arkansas, and just lost on the road to SMU. So why am I going with the Golden Hurricane? Because Tulsa has gone 16-2 at home the last three years, with the only losses coming to teams ranked, at the time, 8th in the country (Oklahoma State and Houston, in 2011). The final score two weeks ago was misleading, as Tulsa outgained UCF by well over 100 yards rushing, average 1.9 more yards per pass, and won the first downs battle, 26-14.

My pick: Tulsa -1.5

SEC Championship (Atlanta, GA)
[continue reading…]

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 recognizing that Florida boasts a more impressive resume than either Alabama or Georgia, and that Oregon is an elite team that lost an overtime game to a division rival. Therefore, a four-team playoff featuring Notre Dame, the eventual SEC Champion, Florida, and Oregon would be great.

On one hand, of course it would be great. I’d love to watch Notre Dame face Oregon and perhaps see Alabama and Florida face off (no, you couldn’t make me watch Florida-Georgia II). But that’s only because college football is great. In fact, this year — like almost every year — stands as a good example of why the four-team playoff system is doomed to create controversy and do little to increase fairness. Let’s start with…

Winning your division = Bad

We saw this last year, when Alabama ended the year as BCS #2 and therefore had locked up its spot in the national championship game, while LSU still had to go play in the SEC Championship Game. In this particular case, I don’t feel too bad about the fact that Florida would be given a free pass to the four-team playoff while Georgia has to go play Alabama, but only because Florida has faced a much tougher schedule.

But what if instead of what actually happened — Florida beating South Carolina, South Carolina beating Georgia, and Georgia beating Florida — the order was reversed, and Georgia beat South Carolina, South Carolina beat Florida, and Florida beat Georgia? In that case, Florida would likely be #2 or #3 in the BCS, while Georgia would sit pretty at 4. And Florida would go play Alabama for the right to win the SEC… with the loser being left out of the playoffs. That’s patently unfair. Being the third best team in your conference could be preferable to being the second best team. This is a lock to happen at some point during a four-team playoff. This is also going to be a bigger problem generally as conferences get bigger, because conference schedules will become unbalanced. The Big 12 has a round robin where everyone plays everyone, but in a 14-team conference, you can easily see a better team end up with a worse record than an inferior team due purely to scheduling.

Oregon-Stanford

It is being conveniently forgotten that Stanford actually won the Pac-12 North. In fact, we have an exact reversal of what happened last year, which many screamed was unfair to Oregon. Lest you forget….

In 2011, both Oregon and Stanford went 8-1 in the Pac-12. Oregon beat Stanford head-to-head in Palo Alto (but lost to USC), so they won the division and then the conference. Stanford had a soft nonconference schedule while Oregon traveled to Dallas to play and lose to LSU in the season opener. So Oregon was 11-2 (but Pac-12 champs) while Stanford was 11-1. After the regular season, Stanford was 4th and Oregon was 5th in the AP, Harris, and Coaches Polls, and also in the BCS. This struck many as unfair, because the Ducks were essentially the better team but had a brutally hard non-conference game, a de facto road game against the #1 team in the country.

Fast forward to 2012. Oregon and Stanford both went 8-1 in the Pac-12. This time, Stanford beat Oregon head-to-head — in Eugene — so they won the division and perhaps the conference (we’ll find out on Saturday.) Oregon had a soft nonconference schedule while Stanford went to South Bend to play the #1 team in the country. Stanford will finish 11-2 if they beat UCLA, while Oregon finished 11-1.

Should Oregon go to the hypothetical four-team playoff instead of Stanford? If not, why not?
[continue reading…]

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 involved a San Francisco team with two different starting quarterbacks and a Broncos team built around a future Hall of Fame quarterback. Perhaps John Elway will get his revenge this year. Football Outsiders puts the likelihood of a Denver-San Francisco Super Bowl at 8.2%, just behind San Francisco-New England as the most likely matchup.

While things seem set in the AFC, there’s a very important race still going on. Whichever team ends up with the 1 seed always has an advantage, but this year, having the first seed takes on added value. There are three Tier 1 teams in the conference; the 2 and 3 seeds will very likely have to beat two of them to get there, while the 1 seed will likely get an easy matchup in the division round of the playoffs. New England hosts Houston in two weeks. If the Patriots win, they’ll own the tiebreaker over both the Texans and Broncos, and will trail Houston by only one game. It’s easy to envision the Pats having a first round bye followed by a second round game against Indianapolis or Baltimore before hosting Houston or Denver in the title game.

But if New England loses to the Texans, they’ll be behind the Broncos and in line for the 3 seed. That might mean having to deal with a healthy Ben Roethlisberger and the Pittsburgh Steelers, followed by trips to Denver and Houston. New England’s matchup against Houston next Monday night (Dec. 10) is one of the most important games of the year.

[As always, the number of wins I’m projecting each team to finish the season with is in column 3. The fourth column – PWIN – shows how many wins I projected last week, and the difference column represents how many wins I added or subtracted this week. The “RSOS” column stands for the remaining SOS for the team, based on the number of projected wins I’m giving to each of their opponents. The “RHG” column stands for remaining home games.]

Team	Rec	Wins	PrvWin	Diff	RemSOS	RemHG	Comment
Houston Texans	10-1	13	13	0	0.563	2	Monday night in Foxboro is the last remaining hurdle for this team to clear until January.
Atlanta Falcons	10-1	13	13	0	0.488	3	The Falcons have 10 wins and 7.5 Pythagorean wins. Apparently we're going to party like it's 2010.
Denver Broncos	8-3	13	13	0	0.388	3	I continue to project them to finish 13-3. Ugly win against Chiefs doesn't change anything for me.
San Francisco 49ers	8-2-1	12.5	11.5	1	0.506	2	The 49ers rank 1st in pass defense, as measured by NY/A. It doesn't matter whether Colin Kaepernick or Alex Smith is the quarterback.
New England Patriots	8-3	12	11	1	0.531	3	Patriots offense is operating at historically good levels. They have 10 days to prepare for Miami, which is roughly 9 more than necessary.
Green Bay Packers	7-4	11	11	0	0.463	3	The loss in New York looked worse than it was, because the Packers still control their own destiny for the division. The #2 seed was always a long shot.
Baltimore Ravens	9-2	11	11	0	0.600	3	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.
Chicago Bears	8-3	11	10	1	0.488	2	A big win for the Bears, increasing their margin of error for the wild card and giving them a leg up in the NFC North. They play Green Bay on Dec. 16th.
New York Giants	7-4	10	9	1	0.550	2	As usual, no one knows anything about the Giants. I do know that teams are in trouble when the good Eli Manning shows up.
Indianapolis Colts	7-4	10	9	1	0.500	2	Basically clinched a playoff berth with win over Buffalo and Steelers loss. Hard not to like this team. #Chuckstrong
Pittsburgh Steelers	6-5	9	9	0	0.463	3	Yes, losing to Cleveland was horrible, but their schedule is easy enough for them to get to 9 wins. I think.
Seattle Seahawks	6-5	9	9	0	0.525	3	With three home games remaining, I am keeping Seattle at 9 wins.
Tampa Bay Buccaneers	6-5	9	9	0	0.556	2	Bucs may be in luck, as Atlanta's week 17 game may be meaningless for the Falcons.
Dallas Cowboys	5-6	8	9	-1	0.463	3	The schedule isn't bad, but Dallas' playoff hopes are now on life support.
New Orleans Saints	5-6	8	9	-1	0.575	2	A tough loss against San Francisco, but still technically alive.
Cincinnati Bengals	6-5	8	8	0	0.475	2	Streaking Bengals look good, but none of their remaining games will be easy. Andy Dalton is quietly having a very good year.
Washington Redskins	5-6	8	7	1	0.463	3	Robert Griffin III on Monday Night Football vs. the Giants? Yes please. Washington very much alive in NFC East.
Minnesota Vikings	6-5	7	8	-1	0.656	2	It was a great half of a season.
Miami Dolphins	5-6	7	6	1	0.569	3	I dropped Miami from 8 to 6 wins last week, but feel comfortable settling on 7 with NE and SF the next two weeks.
St. Louis Rams	4-6-1	6.5	5.5	1	0.544	2	No longer the worst team in the NFC West!
Tennessee Titans	4-7	6	7	-1	0.538	3	Lose to Jacksonville, move down one win.
New York Jets	4-7	6	7	-1	0.338	2	Last week's comment presented without further comment: "Jets looked good against the Rams; do they blow all that goodwill tonight?"
Buffalo Bills	4-7	6	7	-1	0.394	4	This has to be Chan Gailey's last year, right?
San Diego Chargers	4-7	6	6	0	0.425	3	I don't even know what to say anymore.
Detroit Lions	4-7	6	6	0	0.638	3	I challenge you to find a more hard luck team than Detroit.
Carolina Panthers	3-8	6	6	0	0.425	2	With a new coach, this team should be a sleeper team entering 2013.
Arizona Cardinals	4-7	6	6	0	0.556	2	Arizona is the first team ever to start both 4-0 and 4-7 in the same season.
Oakland Raiders	3-8	5	6	-1	0.388	3	New report is that Terrelle Pryor may become the quarterback. Spoiler alert: He's not the answer in Oakland.
Philadelphia Eagles	3-8	4	5	-1	0.538	2	Another embarrassing performance; how low can this team go? Sadly, they invade our prime-time lineup again this week.
Cleveland Browns	3-8	4	4	0	0.463	2	Hard to call it a great win when their turnover differential was larger than their points differential, but in Cleveland, a win is a win.
Jacksonville Jaguars	2-9	3	3	0	0.463	2	Good win for the Jaguars, although it may hurt them in April.
Kansas City Chiefs	1-10	2	2	0	0.475	2	They have a one game lead on Jacksonville for the #1 pick and will likely "win" the tiebreaker (easier schedule)

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 Almanac and writes for ESPN.com and ESPN The Magazine. Below is my interview with Aaron.

Q: Aaron, can you go into specifics on the type of work you do for NFL teams? Do you envision ultimately working for a team?

As far as consulting with teams, I’ve done two different sorts of things. First, I’ve done some in-game decision analysis, some fourth down stuff as well as some analysis on when to accept or decline penalties. Second, I’ve done reports for teams in February that gave analysis of the season with our stats, looking at what issues were likely to statistically regress and what issues really needed to be addressed, along with suggestions for possible free agent signings. Actually, it’s more accurate to say “we’ve done” rather than “I’ve done.” Some consulting I’ve done alone, and sometimes two or three guys on the FO staff work together.

Consulting for teams is great, but as advanced analysis people gradually move into front offices I don’t think I will be one of them. I don’t know about the various other folks who have followed in FO’s footsteps, but my heart has always been with the media, going back to my days running my high school paper, through my time as a radio disc jockey, doing the Lycos 50, and now Football Outsiders. I set out to revolutionize the way people analyzed the NFL, not the way they managed teams. If I end up improving the way people manage teams a little bit too, that’s just extra coolness.

Q: You publish your DVOA rankings every week, one of the most popular football articles on the web. Have you ever gotten flak from a team for them (i.e., how come we’re hiring you, we have a winning record, and you have us 24th!)?

No flak, no. A couple times I’ve had teams that I’ve worked with or that I’m otherwise in contact with ask me why their rating is particularly low in one area. However, unlike a lot of fans, people who work for teams understand that our stats are objective based on a general formula and don’t get tweaked to favor one team over another depending on how we feel each week. I think when people ask me why their team is low in one area, they often ask so that they can improve that area. And when a team hits rock bottom, I mean, they know it. The Jacksonville people don’t need to ask me why the Jaguars are ranked 30th in DVOA, or whatever it is this week. They don’t care as much about their DVOA right now as they do about their DVOA (and record) next year or two years from now. Jim Schwartz has told me he would rather have his defense ranked highly in DVOA than in yards per game. Of course, he’d rather have more wins than either. (In case it’s not clear otherwise, I should point out there are more teams where I’ve got contacts among various coaches and front office people than there are teams that I have actually worked for and received a check from.) [continue reading…]

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. How a team fares in close games has a heavy impact on a team’s final record, but statisticians agree that such a metric holds little predictive value. The Falcons earned the No. 1 seed in the N.F.C. thanks to their success in close games, but ranked only seventh in the Football Outsiders advanced statistical rankings and 21st in the Advanced NFL Stats efficiency ratings. Atlanta lost badly in its playoff opener, not surprising to those who felt the Falcons’ record was more mirage than reality.

This season, Atlanta has raced to a 10-1 record on the strength of an improbable 7-1 record in games decided by 7 or fewer points. Football Outsiders ranks the Falcons 12th, and according to its founder, Aaron Schatz, the Falcons have by far the worst efficiency rating of any of the 18 teams that have started 10-1 since 1991. Advanced NFL Stats is slightly more generous, placing the Falcons fifth, although the gap between the fifth and 12th teams in its rating is miniscule. The takeaway: Don’t get caught up in the Falcons’ record. It will give Atlanta a bye, but no other guarantees come with it.

San Francisco – Top Pass Defense in the N.F.L.

Last season, the 49ers’ reputation for having an elite defense was built on their superb run defense, which ranked first in rushing yards allowed, rushing yards per carry allowed and rushing touchdowns allowed. But the 49ers were not dominant against the pass, ranking ninth in net yards per pass attempt allowed. This season, the San Francisco defense is without weakness.

The 49ers (8-2-1) actually lead the N.F.L. in net yards per pass attempt allowed. In the process, the 49ers lead the N.F.L. in points allowed, and their defense ranks in the top three in both first downs allowed and Pro-Football-Reference’s Expected Points Added statistic. The run defense remains stout, ranking in the top four in yards, yards per carry and touchdowns allowed, but the improvement in the pass defense makes this an even better defense than the 2011 version. As long as San Francisco continues to shut down opposing passers, it won’t matter very much whether Coach Jim Harbaugh picks Alex Smith or Colin Kaepernick at quarterback.

Chicago – 11th in Points Scored Without an Offense

As a technical matter, the Bears (8-3) rank 11th in points scored. Just don’t let anyone tell you that in the context of a story about how Chicago’s offense is underrated. The Bears have scored eight non-offensive touchdowns this season — seven on interception returns, one on a blocked punt — and their great defense and special teams consistently set up the offense for success even when those units aren’t scoring touchdowns. Chicago is in the bottom five in Net Yards per Attempt, Adjusted Net Yards per Attempt, total yards and sacks allowed. The Bears’ running game benefits from a high number of carries, but ranks below average in both yards per carry and PFR’s Expected Points Added statistic.

The defense is excellent, but a poor offensive line and mediocre wide receiver talent behind Brandon Marshall leave the Bears with one of the worst offenses in the N.F.L. — regardless of how many points they’ve scored. Advanced NFL Stats ranks the Bears’ offense as the second worst in the league.

You can read the full article here.

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 a team was, and that’s largely true: the teams with the highest game script scores tend to have been the most dominant teams. However, there are some reasons to be cautious with this approach: game scripts are not adjusted for strength of schedule and in any given game, the losing team can end up with a better score than the winning team. That said, here are the teams with the highest Game Scripts since 1940:

The teams with the highest game scripts last year? Green Bay (7.4), New Orleans (5.6) and Houston (5.4), while the Rams (-6.4), Colts (-7.2), and Bucs (-8.7) were at the bottom of the league. But let’s get to the real point of using Game Scripts — to help put passing and rushing ratios in context.

Last year, the Buccaneers had the second highest effective pass/run ratio in the league (defined as total pass attempts divided by rushes plus total pass attempts, but with all kneels and spikes excluded). But that’s misleading, because Tampa Bay had the worst Game Script in the league. Conversely, were Houston and San Francisco really the second and third most run-heavy teams in the NFL last year? The table below lists each team from highest to lowest pass/run ratio:
[continue reading…]

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. And given the various ways he mismanaged the clock against Notre Dame, nobody can defend his performance in that game.

But let’s puts everything aside — Kiffin for being Kiffin, the fact that USC had 1st and goal from the Notre Dame 2 with over 5 minutes remaining and then proceeded to waste over 150 seconds of clock — and look at one particular decision. Facing 4th and goal from the Notre Dame 1-yard line, trailing by 9 points with 2:33 left, Kiffin decided to go for it.

This clearly defies conventional wisdom, and when the move failed, it opened him up to even more criticism. But was it the right call? According to Brian Burke, if this had been an NFL game, the correct call would have been to kick the field goal.

That may not surprise traditionalists, but readers of this blog and Advanced NFL Stats may be surprised to find that, according to the 4th Down Calculator, when trailing by 9 with 2:33 remaining, you need an 87% chance of converting to make going for it the correct call. (I will note that if you are trailing by 10, things change dramatically and going for it is the correct play.)

But this was not an NFL game. Burke’s model is based on two assumptions that are relevant here: one, the team has an average number of timeouts remaining, and two, that the clock will stop with 2:00 to go. USC had one timeout left (which is probably below average for this situation) and there is no two-minute warning in college football. So it’s likely that using 2:33 is not the correct number to use the 4th down calculator for college.

If you use 2:33 remaining, you need an 87% chance of converting to make going for it the correct call.

But, according to the same model, if you use 2:03, it drops to 64%.

If you use 1:33, it drops to 13%.

Obviously figuring out which input to use is very important. However, let’s think about it in a different context.

If USC scores a touchdown and does not onside kick (which I don’t think they do), ND gets the ball at roughly the 25-yard line with 2:25 left. On 1st and 10, they run, USC calls timeout, and there is 2:20 left. On second down, Notre Dame runs, 40 seconds tick off, and there is 1:35 left. Rinse, repeat, and Notre Dame punts with 50 seconds left. This means USC gets the ball with roughly 40 seconds left at say, their own 45.

Here college football’s rules benefit the Trojans because the clock stops momentarily on first downs. At this point, it comes down to this:
[continue reading…]

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 8-1 in playoff games.

Despite the implication, we know that the causation arrow looks less like this…

And more like this…

How a game unfolds is what my friend Sigmund Bloom likes to call the game script. Sometimes, the game script goes away from one player and to another, and the final boxscore doesn’t truly reflect coaching preference. Rather, the boxscore simply reflects the way the game unfolds. And one of the weirdest boxscores you’ll ever see is a game between the Bills and the Dolphins in December 2005, which Miami won.

Knowing that the Dolphins won, you’d probably be surprised to know that they called 68 passing plays (65 attempts, 3 sacks) against just 22 rushing plays, while the Bills ran more than they passed. But the game script was very unique. In the first quarter, Lee Evans caught three touchdown passes from J.P. Losman. In the second, Miami settled for a 23-yard field goal to cut the lead to 18. The Bills got a safety in the third quarter, to go up 23-3. But Ricky Williams, Ronnie Brown, Chris Chambers and Sage Rosenfels led a spirited comeback, and scored three fourth-quarter touchdowns to win the game. The way the game unfolded was for the Bills to play conservative and the Dolphins to go to the air.

Since 1940, there have been nearly 13,000 professional football games played between the NFL, AFL and AAFC. And each game has had its own game script, unfolding in its own, unique way. My goal was to come up with a single number to explain how the game went down. In this post, I’ll do my best to explain it.
[continue reading…]

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 Georgia meet in Atlanta. Let’s take a closer look at the SEC in 2012, which is looking for its seventh consecutive national championship.

For a long time, the refrain among SEC folks was “there are no off weeks in the SEC.” If no team emerged with a perfect record, that was simply a testament to the depth of the conference. But this year has to go down as one of the most predictable seasons in the history of the SEC — or any other conference. There are six excellent teams representing the First Class of the conference: Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Texas A&M, LSU, and South Carolina.

There are four genuinely terrible teams: Auburn, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Arkansas are the cellar dwellers, or Lower Class members. That leaves a lean, two-tiered middle class. Vanderbilt stands alone as an upper-middle class member, with the three M schools of the conference (Mississippi, Missouri, and Mississippi State) are lower-middle class schools. As it turned out, there are caste systems with more mobility than the SEC had in 2012. With 14 teams playing 8 conference games each, that leaves 56 conference games for the SEC. Here is what happened:

• The First Class (Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Texas A&M, LSU, and South Carolina) went 30-0 in games against the rest of the conference, with 21 of those wins coming by at least 14 points.
• The Upper Middle Class (Vanderbilt) was equally predictable, going 0-3 against the First Class and 5-0 against everyone else.
• The Lower Middle Class (MSU, Mississippi and Missouri) went 0-12 against the First Class, with 9 losses coming by at least 19 points. They also went 0-2 against the Upper Middle Class, but finished 8-0 against the Lower Class, with 6 of those wins coming by double digits.
• The Bottom Class (Auburn, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Arkansas) finished 0-26 against the rest of the conference, with 18 of those losses coming by double digits

As a result of how stratified the conference was, it’s hard not to recognize how much the schedule impacts the results. Only two teams in the conference played just two games against First Class teams. It is not a coincidence, in my opinion, that those two teams happen to be the ones that landed in Atlanta.

In the West, Alabama went 1-1 against the First Class, 3-0 against the Lower Middle Class, and 3-0 against the Bottom Class. That’s a really easy schedule for the Crimson Tide — their second-best win this year came against Michigan (or Mississippi or MSU, if you prefer). That’s somewhat laughable for the team that is considered the #2 team in the country. Meanwhile, LSU had four games against the First Class of the SEC, going 2-2 in those games in addition to a 2-0 record against the LMC and a 3-0 mark against the Bottom Class. Texas A&M went 1-2 against the First Class, 3-0 against the LMC, and 2-0 against the BC. Is Alabama the best team in the division, or just lucky that they didn’t face Florida the way LSU and AM did? To put it another way, if Florida wasn’t so good this year, A&M probably finishes 11-1 and wins the division on the tiebreaker.

In the East, Georgia went 1-1 against the First Class, 3-0 against the middle classes and 3-0 against the Bottom Class. Are the Bulldogs in line for a national title game appearance because they’re great, or are they great because they’re in line to play for the title? Georgia’s second-best win this season came against Vanderbilt. Meanwhile, Florida went 3-1 against the First Class, 2-0 against the middle classes and 2-0 against the Bottom Class. Which performance is more impressive?

Since the winner of the SEC Championship Game will end the season going 2-1 against the First Class of the conference, that does improve their resume. They’ll be a worthy participant in the title game, but it’s easy to argue that if the schedule had been arranged differently, so would have Texas A&M, Florida, LSU, or USC.

Here are the week 13 college football SRS Ratings:
[continue reading…]