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2023.02.18 04:12 hmbeast Analyzing Brian Gutekunst's performance compared to other Packers GMs and his NFL peers
 | Hey folks. I was listening to a Packers podcast today and the host was talking about, now that Gutey has 5 years of draft history under his belt, whether or not he's been successful or not. It got me thinking about an interesting little data project -- is there a way we can semi-objectively compare his success vs. other GMs? submitted by hmbeast to GreenBayPackers [link] [comments] Luckily, ProFootballReference has an easily exportable table of the Packers' entire draft history. Even more conveniently, they include a metric for "weighted approximate value" of each pick, which provides a simple single integer to measure the value each player brought. I didn't look too deeply into how this is calculated, so who knows if it's all that reliable, but better than nothing. (Edit: here is an article explaining how PFR calculates wAV) I took this table and made a spreadsheet that also included who the GM was each year. I used this page from PFR to map who the GM was for a given year. There were some weird years after Lombardi where the team had multiple executives in GM type roles, so I went with whosever title seemed most similar to a modern GM. Let me know if I got anyone wrong on this list. OK, so now I had a spreadsheet of every GM's picks and their approximate value. But since my goal was to compare Gutey, I ran into some challenges. Every other GM's picks had a larger wAV simply because those players had all finished their careers (and thus played more more years on average than Gutey's picks so far). So I decided to calculate wAV per game and evaluate that instead -- measuring the rough value each player added per game they played in their career, regardless of how long that career was. Then I filtered out players with under 16 career games so that we're working from at least a sample of a full NFL season. Note -- this methodology still has a flaw, since the cohort of players that Gutey has picked are all still in the early stages of their career -- it's plausible that your value per game will be higher as you peak in skill mid-career. Ideally, I would've been able to filter for *just the wAV of each GM's draft pick in their first 5 years in the NFL* to get the best apples-to-apples comparison. One last minor note -- for whatever reason (possibly lack of recorded stats) all of Curly Lambeau's draft picks had no values for wAV, so I excluded Lambeau completely from this analysis. Findings here Brian Gutekunst ranks 10th of 13 Packers GMs in wAV per game among draft picks. He surpasses only Dick Corrick and Gene Ronzani. His drafts have generated moderately lower value than Ted Thompson and Mike Sherman, and substantially less value than GMs like Ron Wolf and Vince Lombardi. https://preview.redd.it/et0hb0fi6via1.png?width=410&format=png&auto=webp&s=b6476390aec2ea55d4c25ae8ebe1e67699807a7d OK, that's where he places historically compared to Packers GMs. But what about his modern NFL peers? This analysis similarly suffers from the fact that longer tenured GMs will have more draft picks that have gone through their career peaks. So, let's focus on just the GMs that were hired within a year of Gutey (who was hired in 2018) and still have those jobs. That list is:
TLDR Who knows if this means anything. It's all pretty contingent on how much stock you have in this wAV metric from PFR. But at least based on this data and methodology, Gutey has performed worst than most other Packers GMs and is tied for worst among GMs in the NFL with a similar tenure. Let me know if you have any feedback or if anything about this seems wrong or confusing! I mostly put this together out of boredom on a Friday night. |
2023.01.17 06:00 Journeyman12 Packers Special Teams Year in Review
I was poking around on ProFootballReference the other day and found some interesting statistics about our special teams play this year, so I decided to write them up. All statistics are from PFR unless otherwise noted.
Kick Returns
No point in starting out with anything other than our star performer. Keisean Nixon was a revelation. The first-team All-Pro kick returner led the league with 35 kick returns and 1,009 yards (including the 105-yard TD vs. Minnesota and the 93-yard return at Miami), and was second only to Indianapolis’s Dallis Flowers in yards per return, at 28.8. These numbers are especially insane when you consider that he didn't start returning kickoffs until Week 8; Amari Rodgers had six returns for 122 yards (20.3 average) before getting benched in Week 6. Between kick and punt returns, Rodgers also had an insane four fumbles (losing two) on just 26 special-teams touches.
Punt Returns
Rodgers somehow kept this job until Week 10, so Nixon only had eleven punt returns in the final eight weeks of the year. Nonetheless, he amassed more yards on his 11 returns than Rodgers gained in 20 attempts. Seriously. Nixon had 140, Rodgers 139. So while Rodgers averaged seven yards per punt return and fumbled four times, Nixon had an average of 12.7 yards per return that would’ve also led the league if he’d had enough attempts to qualify properly. How did the coaches not recognize his talent sooner?? Randall Cobb also chipped in four returns for 37 yards.
Kick and Punt Coverage
The Packers allowed a 23.2 yard average on 61 kickoff returns, by far the most returns against any team (hold that thought), and a 9.5 yard average on 20 punt returns. Both averages ranked 21st in the league. The league as a whole averaged 22.9 yards per kickoff and 8.9 yards per return, respectively.
Turnovers and Other Nonsense
The Packers fumbled or muffed a punt five times, losing two of them (Week 7 and Week 10). As mentioned, Amari Rodgers accounted for four of those fumbles, while Corey Ballentine contributed the other; he mishandled a short kickoff in Week 15 but recovered it. Green Bay failed to force a turnover on special teams, although Ballentine did cause a Dallas fumble in Week 10, and Minnesota’s Jalen Reagor muffed a punt in Week 17. In both cases, the opposing team recovered.
In addition to the two lost fumbles and no turnovers forced, the Packers also failed to execute a fake punt and saw four kicks blocked: two punts, one field goal, and one extra point. One of the blocked punts was returned for a touchdown by the New York Jets, the only touchdown Green Bay’s special teams allowed. On the plus side, Dean Lowry blocked a Chicago field goal in Week 13, and of course Keisean Nixon happened to the Vikings in Week 17. Did I mention that Nixon also forced a fumble from scrimmage (GB recovered) and picked off a pass?
Punting
Pat O’Donnell’s statistics are actually what inspired me to make this post, because they’re better than they look at first glance. His 52 punts averaged 44.5 gross yards, which tied for 28th in the league, and his net of 40.0 yards per punt also ranked 28th. That’s certainly not ideal. However, and this is a big however: in some respects, O’Donnell was one of the more precise punters in the league. He placed 24 of his 52 punts inside the 20-yard line, a 46.2% inside-the-20 percentage that ranked fourth in the NFL. The three players above him included two warm-weather punters and a guy who only played seven games. And he did that with only one touchback, a number matched by just three other punters (no full-time punter had zero); unsurprisingly, his touchback percentage ranked third in the league. When putting O’Donnell’s first season here in the context of some of the other punters that have come and gone over the last fourteen years or so, I’m more than okay with that level of performance.
Kicking
I wish I could say the same for Mason Crosby, but it’s kind of the opposite with him – his statistics are actually worse than they appear at first glance, and speak to his declining leg strength at the age of 38. Although Crosby made 25 of 29 field goals, including all of his attempts under 50 yards except for the blocked kick against the Jets (seriously, the Jets took us to the cleaners on special teams), he was just 1 of 4 from beyond 50 yards. He also missed two extra points (37 of 39).
More to the point, remember the league-high 61 kickoff returns against the Packers? That happened because Crosby could no longer hit touchbacks on a consistent basis. He ranked 34th in the league with just 15 on 74 attempts, an awful 20.3% rate that lagged behind every other full-time kicker and punter except Nick Folk, who is also 38. With Crosby doing almost all the kickoffs, Green Bay ranked 31st in average kickoff distance, at just 60.8 yards. (Below us was… New Orleans? They play in a dome! What happened down there??) Crosby is a free agent this year; if the Packers bring him back, they’ll almost be forced to have the punter handle kickoffs, or else elevate Ramiz Ahmed or another kicker every week to handle kickoff duty.
submitted by Journeyman12 to GreenBayPackers [link] [comments]
Kick Returns
No point in starting out with anything other than our star performer. Keisean Nixon was a revelation. The first-team All-Pro kick returner led the league with 35 kick returns and 1,009 yards (including the 105-yard TD vs. Minnesota and the 93-yard return at Miami), and was second only to Indianapolis’s Dallis Flowers in yards per return, at 28.8. These numbers are especially insane when you consider that he didn't start returning kickoffs until Week 8; Amari Rodgers had six returns for 122 yards (20.3 average) before getting benched in Week 6. Between kick and punt returns, Rodgers also had an insane four fumbles (losing two) on just 26 special-teams touches.
Punt Returns
Rodgers somehow kept this job until Week 10, so Nixon only had eleven punt returns in the final eight weeks of the year. Nonetheless, he amassed more yards on his 11 returns than Rodgers gained in 20 attempts. Seriously. Nixon had 140, Rodgers 139. So while Rodgers averaged seven yards per punt return and fumbled four times, Nixon had an average of 12.7 yards per return that would’ve also led the league if he’d had enough attempts to qualify properly. How did the coaches not recognize his talent sooner?? Randall Cobb also chipped in four returns for 37 yards.
Kick and Punt Coverage
The Packers allowed a 23.2 yard average on 61 kickoff returns, by far the most returns against any team (hold that thought), and a 9.5 yard average on 20 punt returns. Both averages ranked 21st in the league. The league as a whole averaged 22.9 yards per kickoff and 8.9 yards per return, respectively.
Turnovers and Other Nonsense
The Packers fumbled or muffed a punt five times, losing two of them (Week 7 and Week 10). As mentioned, Amari Rodgers accounted for four of those fumbles, while Corey Ballentine contributed the other; he mishandled a short kickoff in Week 15 but recovered it. Green Bay failed to force a turnover on special teams, although Ballentine did cause a Dallas fumble in Week 10, and Minnesota’s Jalen Reagor muffed a punt in Week 17. In both cases, the opposing team recovered.
In addition to the two lost fumbles and no turnovers forced, the Packers also failed to execute a fake punt and saw four kicks blocked: two punts, one field goal, and one extra point. One of the blocked punts was returned for a touchdown by the New York Jets, the only touchdown Green Bay’s special teams allowed. On the plus side, Dean Lowry blocked a Chicago field goal in Week 13, and of course Keisean Nixon happened to the Vikings in Week 17. Did I mention that Nixon also forced a fumble from scrimmage (GB recovered) and picked off a pass?
Punting
Pat O’Donnell’s statistics are actually what inspired me to make this post, because they’re better than they look at first glance. His 52 punts averaged 44.5 gross yards, which tied for 28th in the league, and his net of 40.0 yards per punt also ranked 28th. That’s certainly not ideal. However, and this is a big however: in some respects, O’Donnell was one of the more precise punters in the league. He placed 24 of his 52 punts inside the 20-yard line, a 46.2% inside-the-20 percentage that ranked fourth in the NFL. The three players above him included two warm-weather punters and a guy who only played seven games. And he did that with only one touchback, a number matched by just three other punters (no full-time punter had zero); unsurprisingly, his touchback percentage ranked third in the league. When putting O’Donnell’s first season here in the context of some of the other punters that have come and gone over the last fourteen years or so, I’m more than okay with that level of performance.
Kicking
I wish I could say the same for Mason Crosby, but it’s kind of the opposite with him – his statistics are actually worse than they appear at first glance, and speak to his declining leg strength at the age of 38. Although Crosby made 25 of 29 field goals, including all of his attempts under 50 yards except for the blocked kick against the Jets (seriously, the Jets took us to the cleaners on special teams), he was just 1 of 4 from beyond 50 yards. He also missed two extra points (37 of 39).
More to the point, remember the league-high 61 kickoff returns against the Packers? That happened because Crosby could no longer hit touchbacks on a consistent basis. He ranked 34th in the league with just 15 on 74 attempts, an awful 20.3% rate that lagged behind every other full-time kicker and punter except Nick Folk, who is also 38. With Crosby doing almost all the kickoffs, Green Bay ranked 31st in average kickoff distance, at just 60.8 yards. (Below us was… New Orleans? They play in a dome! What happened down there??) Crosby is a free agent this year; if the Packers bring him back, they’ll almost be forced to have the punter handle kickoffs, or else elevate Ramiz Ahmed or another kicker every week to handle kickoff duty.
2023.01.13 08:43 akaD15R Suggestion
Idk how hard it would be to add but I think it would be really cool if there was a way to see who won an award each year, like an asterisk next to the year an award was won like on profootballreference.
submitted by akaD15R to pocketGM [link] [comments]
2023.01.11 22:59 cartierboy25 Looking At Statistical Trends Across The NFL For The 2022 Season
I've always been a big stats guy, so every year at the end of the season I like to take a look at some of the league-wide statistics and compare them to previous years to see if I can spot any trends. I thought it would be fun to share some of the things I found this year and offer my own half-baked ideas on what they might mean. We're not looking at any specific teams here, just what the league is doing as a whole. All of the stats I'm referencing can be found on pro-football-reference.com. Also, when I discuss most of these numbers, I'm multiplying them by two because I thought it would be easier to talk about them in a "per game" sense, rather than in these pictures where it's "per team, per game."
https://preview.redd.it/anqskuy9hhba1.png?width=1581&format=png&auto=webp&s=fe757bdb716aada4a8f9516a918c59380a265072
https://preview.redd.it/1gvrywy9hhba1.png?width=1222&format=png&auto=webp&s=fd5e35a89c0092269cdc52637c34af5873ea6933
First things first, Scoring: It was a major talking point this season, especially for the first two months. There were undoubtedly a lot of low scoring games, especially in primetime, and many fans who like offense were disappointed with this. But ultimately, it wasn't a huge change: the average game had 43.8 points scored this season compared to 46.0 in 2021. Thirty years ago, 43.8 ppg would've been considered a lot, but it's actually the lowest average since 2017 and the second lowest since 2009. Some people may not like this, but personally, in a league where it feels like every rule change favors the offense, I think it's cool to see defenses make a comeback like this.
Touchdowns: Similar to scoring, touchdowns were also down. Games averaged 4.86 touchdowns per game as opposed to 5.22 the year prior. What I think is more interesting, though, is the passing/rushing TD splits. There was an average of 1.8 rushing TDs per game in 2022, down slightly from last year but still fairly high in this day and age. Passing TDs on the other hand were way down at just 2.76 per game, the lowest number since 2009 by a pretty solid margin.
Rushing vs. Passing Plays: The average game this year had 126 offensive plays called, a fairly standard number. But again, the intriguing part comes when you look at the rushing plays vs passing plays. There was an average of 54.6 rushing attempts per game in 2022, the highest since 2011. For passing it's the exact opposite, 66.6 passes per game is the lowest since 2009. Why might this be the case? Well, let's now take a look at...
Rushing Yards per attempt: This was the most surprising trend I noticed when looking at these stats. The average rushing attempt in 2022 yielded 4.5 yards, the highest in NFL history. This is part of a trend that's been going on for years now. It used to be that rushing attempts were always good for an average of about 4.0 yards, but recently it's taken off to the point where we're now all the way up to 4.5 (I know it doesn't sound like a big difference, but proportionally speaking it is). Now, I'm by no means an expert when it comes to X's and O's, but I'll still offer my two cents on why this is happening. I think the main reason is that the NFL has become so passing oriented in recent years that defenses had to adjust, placing a huge priority on shutting down the air attack. This has become such a major focus of defenses that it's made running the ball more efficient, because teams aren't built to stop the run like they used to be. The biggest piece of evidence for this is how much smaller linebackers have gotten. Teams nowadays like to have lighter, faster LBs that can cover the pass, but at the cost of no longer being a force in the run defense. Offensive coordinators know this, and they're using it to their advantage by just running it up the gut and hoping to get some extra yards by neutralizing the smaller linebackers.
One last thing, Margin of Victory: This was also very surprising to the point where I almost feel like I'm somehow misunderstanding the stat, but apparently the average margin of victory in the NFL this year was 9.8 points, which is the lowest in league history. I never would have expected this because I didn't feel like there was an abnormal amount of really close games this year, but I guess it's true. I have literally no explanation for why this would be the case other than that the NFL is rigging games to make them closer, but unfortunately I don't have my tinfoil hat on me right now.
TL;DR: Scoring is down and teams are running more and passing less, pro football is evolving backwards /s.
submitted by cartierboy25 to nfl [link] [comments]
https://preview.redd.it/anqskuy9hhba1.png?width=1581&format=png&auto=webp&s=fe757bdb716aada4a8f9516a918c59380a265072
https://preview.redd.it/1gvrywy9hhba1.png?width=1222&format=png&auto=webp&s=fd5e35a89c0092269cdc52637c34af5873ea6933
First things first, Scoring: It was a major talking point this season, especially for the first two months. There were undoubtedly a lot of low scoring games, especially in primetime, and many fans who like offense were disappointed with this. But ultimately, it wasn't a huge change: the average game had 43.8 points scored this season compared to 46.0 in 2021. Thirty years ago, 43.8 ppg would've been considered a lot, but it's actually the lowest average since 2017 and the second lowest since 2009. Some people may not like this, but personally, in a league where it feels like every rule change favors the offense, I think it's cool to see defenses make a comeback like this.
Touchdowns: Similar to scoring, touchdowns were also down. Games averaged 4.86 touchdowns per game as opposed to 5.22 the year prior. What I think is more interesting, though, is the passing/rushing TD splits. There was an average of 1.8 rushing TDs per game in 2022, down slightly from last year but still fairly high in this day and age. Passing TDs on the other hand were way down at just 2.76 per game, the lowest number since 2009 by a pretty solid margin.
Rushing vs. Passing Plays: The average game this year had 126 offensive plays called, a fairly standard number. But again, the intriguing part comes when you look at the rushing plays vs passing plays. There was an average of 54.6 rushing attempts per game in 2022, the highest since 2011. For passing it's the exact opposite, 66.6 passes per game is the lowest since 2009. Why might this be the case? Well, let's now take a look at...
Rushing Yards per attempt: This was the most surprising trend I noticed when looking at these stats. The average rushing attempt in 2022 yielded 4.5 yards, the highest in NFL history. This is part of a trend that's been going on for years now. It used to be that rushing attempts were always good for an average of about 4.0 yards, but recently it's taken off to the point where we're now all the way up to 4.5 (I know it doesn't sound like a big difference, but proportionally speaking it is). Now, I'm by no means an expert when it comes to X's and O's, but I'll still offer my two cents on why this is happening. I think the main reason is that the NFL has become so passing oriented in recent years that defenses had to adjust, placing a huge priority on shutting down the air attack. This has become such a major focus of defenses that it's made running the ball more efficient, because teams aren't built to stop the run like they used to be. The biggest piece of evidence for this is how much smaller linebackers have gotten. Teams nowadays like to have lighter, faster LBs that can cover the pass, but at the cost of no longer being a force in the run defense. Offensive coordinators know this, and they're using it to their advantage by just running it up the gut and hoping to get some extra yards by neutralizing the smaller linebackers.
One last thing, Margin of Victory: This was also very surprising to the point where I almost feel like I'm somehow misunderstanding the stat, but apparently the average margin of victory in the NFL this year was 9.8 points, which is the lowest in league history. I never would have expected this because I didn't feel like there was an abnormal amount of really close games this year, but I guess it's true. I have literally no explanation for why this would be the case other than that the NFL is rigging games to make them closer, but unfortunately I don't have my tinfoil hat on me right now.
TL;DR: Scoring is down and teams are running more and passing less, pro football is evolving backwards /s.
2023.01.11 14:57 sabakasabaka Approximate Value added to profootballreference.com for the 2022 season!
Well, there goes my workday.
Josh Allen and Jalen Hurts are tied with 20 AV each, followed by Mahomes as 19 and Burrow at 17. AJ Brown has the highest non QB AV with 16.
The numbers are still preliminary since All Pro teams have yet to be announced, and those selections have a pretty big impact on AV.
Can see the top 12 here without a Stathead subscription: https://www.pro-football-reference.com/years/2022/leaders.htm
submitted by sabakasabaka to nfl [link] [comments]
Josh Allen and Jalen Hurts are tied with 20 AV each, followed by Mahomes as 19 and Burrow at 17. AJ Brown has the highest non QB AV with 16.
The numbers are still preliminary since All Pro teams have yet to be announced, and those selections have a pretty big impact on AV.
Can see the top 12 here without a Stathead subscription: https://www.pro-football-reference.com/years/2022/leaders.htm
2022.11.10 18:36 pfref Hey r/nfl, this is Pro Football Reference! Ask us anything (AMA)
This 2022 NFL season has already been very eventful and we're only halfway through! This seems like a nice time to hold an Ask Me Anything session if you're curious at all about Pro Football Reference. In case you’re not familiar with us, Pro Football Reference is a website that tracks statistics from the current season as well as all of the NFL’s history.
We also have Stathead, a premium service that has a wide variety of tools that you can use to do very specific statistical searches across league history. We recently added the ability to search more advanced stats such as average depth of target, yards before contact, defensive pressures and so much more! We offer a one-month free trial for new monthly subscribers. You can get started at Stathead.com.
If you want to get regular updates from us, there’s a couple of ways to do that. We have a newsletter you can sign up for free that will provide Monday, Wednesday and Friday issues recapping and previewing NFL action. We are on Twitter @pfref and Instagram @profootballreference providing fun stats on Sunday and throughout the week.
We’re happy to answer any questions you have for us about the site or football or whatever else you want to know! We’ll begin answering questions around 1:30 PM ET (an hour after this was posted).
EDIT, 4 PM ET: Signing off for now but plan to come back to answer some q's we haven't gotten to yet later tonight so if you didn't get one in you still can! Thanks to everyone for the compliments and fun questions so far!
submitted by pfref to nfl [link] [comments]
We also have Stathead, a premium service that has a wide variety of tools that you can use to do very specific statistical searches across league history. We recently added the ability to search more advanced stats such as average depth of target, yards before contact, defensive pressures and so much more! We offer a one-month free trial for new monthly subscribers. You can get started at Stathead.com.
If you want to get regular updates from us, there’s a couple of ways to do that. We have a newsletter you can sign up for free that will provide Monday, Wednesday and Friday issues recapping and previewing NFL action. We are on Twitter @pfref and Instagram @profootballreference providing fun stats on Sunday and throughout the week.
We’re happy to answer any questions you have for us about the site or football or whatever else you want to know! We’ll begin answering questions around 1:30 PM ET (an hour after this was posted).
EDIT, 4 PM ET: Signing off for now but plan to come back to answer some q's we haven't gotten to yet later tonight so if you didn't get one in you still can! Thanks to everyone for the compliments and fun questions so far!
2022.10.14 22:39 Flodomojo Can you trust Playerprofiler . Com?
Recently found this website and while I would love to be able to use it, as it shows quite a bit of useful info, does anyone have any experience with their data being off? For example, I was looking at Justin Jefferson and Garrett Wilson, which this shows as both having 5 drops this season, but then when I look at profootballreference or fantasypros they both show those players as having only having 3 drops. I know the latter 2 websites are pretty trusted reference points, but they don't show info such as defenders they are going against, defenders they've played already, target accuracy, target separation etc.
I'd love to use playerprofiler if I can trust it, but if the drop numbers are so far off from other websites I'm not sure I can trust the rest of their stats. Any insight would be appreciated.
submitted by Flodomojo to fantasyfootball [link] [comments]
I'd love to use playerprofiler if I can trust it, but if the drop numbers are so far off from other websites I'm not sure I can trust the rest of their stats. Any insight would be appreciated.
2022.10.11 10:27 ramonalvarador Linear regression method NFL 2022/2023
Hello!, i made a simple linear regression model predicting the spread, for data ( Independent variables ) i used a Simple Rating System (SrS) provided by ProFootballReference. For games played i have all the games (81) that have been played in the 2022/2023 season.
( Regression with only SrS = R Squared = .43)
https://imgur.com/0f8vHbY
Using ProFootballReference i tried to get more independent variables in the mix. i made 6 more regressions using 16 independent variables for each one and selected the values under 0.05, but when i added the best variables the p values changed when together. It is very frustrating since i only know a little about statistics. so here are my questions
Have anyone made a linear regression model that can share some wisdom :)?
Why did the p values changed when i put the "best ones" together if they were below .05?
What are some good variables that i can throw in the model besided SrS?
Thanks in advance !
submitted by ramonalvarador to algobetting [link] [comments]
( Regression with only SrS = R Squared = .43)
https://imgur.com/0f8vHbY
Using ProFootballReference i tried to get more independent variables in the mix. i made 6 more regressions using 16 independent variables for each one and selected the values under 0.05, but when i added the best variables the p values changed when together. It is very frustrating since i only know a little about statistics. so here are my questions
Have anyone made a linear regression model that can share some wisdom :)?
Why did the p values changed when i put the "best ones" together if they were below .05?
What are some good variables that i can throw in the model besided SrS?
Thanks in advance !
2022.10.11 10:03 ramonalvarador [Q] Simple linear regression model NFL 2022/2023
Hello!, i made a simple linear regression model predicting the spread, for data ( Independent variables ) i used a Simple Rating System (SrS) provided by ProFootballReference. For games played i have all the games (81) that have been played in the 2022/2023 season.
( Regression with only SrS = R Squared = .43)
Using ProFootballReference i tried to get more independent variables in the mix. i made 6 more regressions using 16 independent variables for each one and selected the values under 0.05, but when i added the best variables the p values changed when together. It is very frustrating since i only know a little about statistics. so here are my questions
Have anyone made a linear regression model that can share some wisdom :)?
Why did the p values changed when i put the "best ones" together if they were below .05?
What are some good variables that i can throw in the model besided SrS?
submitted by ramonalvarador to statistics [link] [comments]
( Regression with only SrS = R Squared = .43)
Using ProFootballReference i tried to get more independent variables in the mix. i made 6 more regressions using 16 independent variables for each one and selected the values under 0.05, but when i added the best variables the p values changed when together. It is very frustrating since i only know a little about statistics. so here are my questions
Have anyone made a linear regression model that can share some wisdom :)?
Why did the p values changed when i put the "best ones" together if they were below .05?
What are some good variables that i can throw in the model besided SrS?
2022.08.18 23:16 virm0rtis How to Predict RB Future Fantasy Production
I set out to find the best stats for predicting future fantasy production, and this is what I found. Some stats (Receptions, RzTgts, Fumbles, Longest Run, Runs of +30Yds, Yds/Att...) are next to abysmal for attempting to describe future performance. On the other hand, some stats (Yds/G, Att+Tgt, All YAC, Broken Tackles/G...) are quite strong for describing a Running Back's future.
I used data from ProFootballReference + FantasyPros to compile different stats and measurements; 80 RBs from each of the last six seasons (2016-2021) conclude my sample size.
I used Correlations, Effect Size, Conditional Probability, and Average If tests to determine which RB stats are the best for predicting future fantasy production. The data does not account for injuries, changing teams, coaching changes, rookies, or anything other than some novice/specific stats that attempt (but sometimes fail) to describe NFL games.
Here are some Measurements that tested quite well:
Yards per Game
(Receptions + Yards)/G
(Targets + Attempts)/G
(Broken Tackles + Rec YAC)/G
Yards Before Contact + Broken Tackles
Rec YAC + Rushing YAC
(Yards - 30Yard Rushes)/G
(Rec YAC + Rushing YAC) controlled by AGE
Using these stats and others, I calculated conditional probabilities for some top Running Backs heading into the 2022 season. The probabilities are based on each RB's respective statlines from their 2021 season, therefore I am excluding some RBs that did not have enough 2021 play time (Etienne, Akers, Hall, Dobbins).
This table uses Underdog's ADP (excluding the previously mentioned RBs). The table describes how likely each RB is to reach a certain amount of Pts/G in the 2022 season based on their 2021 stats. For example, D'Andre Swift has an 18% chance of getting 18 or more fantasy points per game in 2022 solely based on his 2021 stats.
https://preview.redd.it/wyku2g3ofji91.png?width=442&format=png&auto=webp&s=74cdb3c4c8945c14bfc29407d9ea85233b5cea8f
Please ask questions and or provide me with some criticism. This is my Twitter if you're interested in some other fantasy football stuff.
submitted by virm0rtis to fantasyfootball [link] [comments]
I used data from ProFootballReference + FantasyPros to compile different stats and measurements; 80 RBs from each of the last six seasons (2016-2021) conclude my sample size.
I used Correlations, Effect Size, Conditional Probability, and Average If tests to determine which RB stats are the best for predicting future fantasy production. The data does not account for injuries, changing teams, coaching changes, rookies, or anything other than some novice/specific stats that attempt (but sometimes fail) to describe NFL games.
Here are some Measurements that tested quite well:
Yards per Game
(Receptions + Yards)/G
(Targets + Attempts)/G
(Broken Tackles + Rec YAC)/G
Yards Before Contact + Broken Tackles
Rec YAC + Rushing YAC
(Yards - 30Yard Rushes)/G
(Rec YAC + Rushing YAC) controlled by AGE
Using these stats and others, I calculated conditional probabilities for some top Running Backs heading into the 2022 season. The probabilities are based on each RB's respective statlines from their 2021 season, therefore I am excluding some RBs that did not have enough 2021 play time (Etienne, Akers, Hall, Dobbins).
This table uses Underdog's ADP (excluding the previously mentioned RBs). The table describes how likely each RB is to reach a certain amount of Pts/G in the 2022 season based on their 2021 stats. For example, D'Andre Swift has an 18% chance of getting 18 or more fantasy points per game in 2022 solely based on his 2021 stats.
https://preview.redd.it/wyku2g3ofji91.png?width=442&format=png&auto=webp&s=74cdb3c4c8945c14bfc29407d9ea85233b5cea8f
Please ask questions and or provide me with some criticism. This is my Twitter if you're interested in some other fantasy football stuff.
2022.07.05 18:05 packmanwiscy r/NFL Top 100 Players of the 2021 Season - #70-61
Welcome to the reveal for players ranked 70-61 for the NFL Top 100 Players of the 2021 Season!
Players whose average rank landed them in places 70-61 are on this portion of the list revealed today. Players are associated with the team they finished playing for in 2021Below you will see some write-ups from the rankers summarizing the players’ 2021 season and why they were among the best in 2021. Stats for each player are included below. Additionally, their ranks from previous years are available for y’all to see
METHODOLOGY
Link to more detailed writeup on our methodology- Step 1: A Call to Rankers right after the Super Bowl
- Step 2: Rankers from each team nominated players to rank, with a 10 game minimum threshold. Players are associated with the team they played for in 2021
- Step 3: The Grind. We instructed users to tier positions groups into T25, T50, etc based on 2021 regular season play only. This took several weeks as the rankers tiered each position group and discussed them. There were no individual player threads and no arbitrary position caps. Just questions and rankings.
- Step 4: Users submitted their own personal Top 125 lists.
- Step 5: User lists were reviewed by myself, u/mattkud , and u/MikeTysonChicken . The rankers were expected to answer questions about their lists. They were allowed to make any changes to their list, and were not forced to make any changes
- Step 6: The Reveal… where we are now!
#70 - Deforest Buckner - Indianapolis Colts - Interior Defensive Line (IDL)
Previous Ranks| 2020 | 2019 | 2018 | 2017 | 2016 | 2015 | 2014 | 2013 | 2012 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 27 | 60 | 52 | 66 | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A |
First Colts DT to make the Pro Bowl sine Mike Barnes in 1977
Hey y’all, it’s time to talk about the Colts 2020 (kinda)1st round pick, Pro Bowl IDL DeForest Buckner. #99 has been the anchor on the defensive line that they’ve needed and more, with his insane athletic ability for a player of his size. (6’7” 295 lbs, allegedly). We could talk more about his long arms and freakishly huge hands, but instead, let’s cut to the stats.
In terms of run defense, Buckner was solid. Sitting in the middle of the defense, teams tended to run around him but he still had his fair share of tackles and stops, but naturally pass rush is where he shines best. One thing some fans may know about the Colts is their pass rush leaves a lot to be desired. As you’ll soon find out, that is far from Buckner’s fault. Under Matt Eberflus, the Colts were in the bottom quarter of the league in Blitz percentage, relying on the 4 linemen to get to the QB for the most part. Per PFF, Buckner produced 9 out of the Colts 33 sacks, and 49 pressures. He did this while being double teamed the most in the NFL, as the line’s only true threat. Only threat you say? Here’s the rest of the Colts murderer’s row: Rookie Kwity Paye, Run-stopper Grover Stewart, and the decent Al-Quadin Muhammed. Ouch.
But who cares about stats? You’re more of a meat and potatoes and film kinda folk. Did you know Buckner was a good swimmer? I wish I had more video, but as I'm not too good at rippin clips, so these will have to do.
We can see here that he lived up to his billing, and with a little bit of help on the line, DeFo can truly wreck an offense.
#69 (nice) - Vita Vea - Tampa Bay Buccaneers - Interior Defensive Line (IDL)
Previous Ranks| 2020 | 2019 | 2018 | 2017 | 2016 | 2015 | 2014 | 2013 | 2012 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A |
FootballOutsiders ranked the Bucs 2nd in run defense up the middle
Tevita Tuliʻakiʻono Tuipulotu Mosese Vaʻhae Fehoko Faletau "Vita" Vea is 350 pounds of angry defensive tackle. After some past health struggles, Vita Vea made his first pro bowl this year as the threatening force in the middle of the D line everyone expected him to be.
A part of a thunder and lightning duo with Ndamnukong Suh, Vea was the thunder, swallowing up runs at a greater rate, letting Suh take on a more aggressive, anti passing role in the Todd Bowles defense that allowed the 3rd fewest passing yards in the league. If Vea didn't tackle the runner himself, he certainly ate up blockers that allowed his teammates, such as #95 on this list: Lavonte David, to clean up the ball carrier. However, even though Suh was more inclined to rushing the passer, Vita Vea still held his own in the pass rush, sacking the opposing quarterback 4 times, including a two sack effort in a 30-17 week 13 win against Matt Ryan and the Falcons. He also had another tackle for loss in the effort, having an all around stellar game. Another highlight of the season is when on a stunt by Joe Tyron-Shoyinka, Vita Vea completely demolishes the entire left side of a very good Pats O-Line.
The only complaint you can have with Vita Vea's game? He wasn't Aaron Donald. He was a dominant force who not only made plays, but put his teammates in the position to make plays. The Bucs have signed him to a lengthy extension, and he will be worth every penny as he demands double teams and respect from opposing offenses.
#68 - Casey Hayward - Las Vegas Raiders - Cornerback
Previous Ranks| 2020 | 2019 | 2018 | 2017 | 2016 | 2015 | 2014 | 2013 | 2012 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| N/A | 68 | N/A | 12 | 42 | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A |
1st in Snaps per Target (11.5) and Snaps per reception (21)
75 percent of the Earth is covered by water, the rest is covered by Casey Hayward…ok maybe he was not that dominant, but to Raiders fans who haven’t seen a good Cornerback since our sweet prince Nnamdi Asomugha. Hayward was a godsend to a Raiders team in need of any kind of defensive help given the two previous seasons the Raiders fell apart at the end because they couldn’t stop a cat from getting into water.
Hayward didn’t have a ton of interceptions; in fact he only had 1. However it was against the Chargers in the last game of the season sealing a Raiders playoff berth for the first time since 2016. Hayward was a perfect fit in the Bradley system, giving up only 1 touchdown all season.
With the changes in coaching staff and front office for the Raiders this season it has led to scheme changes for the defense. So this great season Hayward had for the Raiders will be just that…one season. While the Raiders fans only got one season of Hayward his presence and play on the team, in what might be one of the craziest seasons for a team, will always be remembered and appreciated by Raiders fans. Good luck in Atlanta!
#67 - Cameron Jordan - New Orleans Saints - EDGE Rusher (EDGE)
Previous Ranks| 2020 | 2019 | 2018 | 2017 | 2016 | 2015 | 2014 | 2013 | 2012 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| N/A | 37 | 38 | 13 | 39 | 67 | N/A | 70 | N/A |
2nd (out of 79 EDGE) in Run Stop % 9.7%.
Throughout the 11th season of his career, Cam Jordan continued to be a defensive shitwrecker and lynchpin of a unit that consistently ranked in the top 10 in the league, coming in 4th place for points per game allowed, seventh for yards per game, second in first downs allowed, and topped the league in red-zone efficiency. A huge part of this was number 94 holding down the left edge in Dennis Allen’s 4-3 defensive scheme. Playing opposite Marcus Davenport, Jordan co-led the team in tackles for loss at 13, led the team in sacks at 12.5 and QB hits at 22, and tallied 59 total tackles, the third-best mark of his career.
Jordan showed off the full power afforded by his 6’4”, 287lb frame by repeatedly overpowering guards, tackles, and tight ends with straight bull rushes that got him into the QBs face before he had much time to think. He also proved tremendous quickness in getting around the edge and swimming blockers to stuff running backs behind the lines. Beyond quickness, Jordan showed he still had the 4.78 speed he clocked at the combine over a decade ago, regularly chasing down quarterbacks who had bailed on the pocket to force throwaways or even bat down passes.
What was probably Jordan’s best effort of 2021 came in week 15 when the Saints travelled to Tampa Bay. Jordan played an integral part of causing Tom Brady to be shut out at home for the first time in his career. In 57 snaps, he notched two sacks, five solo tackles, two tackles for loss, three QB hits, and a forced fumble. Beyond just the numbers, he consistently mangled and harassed one of the league’s better offensive lines, including straight-up wins on elite second-year tackle Tristan Wirfs. In this, and more, Cam Jordan spent 2021 showing why he deserves to be considered one of the league’s elite edge rushers.
#66 - Shaq Barrett - Tampa Bay Buccaneers - EDGE Rusher (EDGE)
Previous Ranks| 2020 | 2019 | 2018 | 2017 | 2016 | 2015 | 2014 | 2013 | 2012 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 36 | 21 | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A |
4th in Sacks since 2019 (37.5)
When Shaq Barrett entered his second year in the league, he sold #56 to his new teammate Shane Ray for $2,000. Two grand. Now, all these years later, Shaq Barrett sits with two Super Bowl rings and a big money contract. $36 million guaranteed. Far cry from those humble days.
A man who has gone from fringe practice-squad player, to reserve pass rusher, to starter — and now as one of the NFL’s high level EDGE talents. Shaq Barrett notched together another Pro Bowl campaign in 2021, showing just as he’s always shown that draft status and prestigious schools are no guarantee. University of Nebraska-Omaha, Colorado State. Boys Town in Nebraska. Not heavily recruited coming out of high school? No draft buzz coming out of college? No problem! 10 sacks in 15 games, and a major contributor to a 2021 Tampa Bay Buccaneers defense that finished as one of the best in the league against the run game.
The beauty of the NFL, if there is any left, is found in story’s like Barrett’s — guys who come up from nowhere to mark their names in NFL history. 256 players were taken in the 2014 NFL Draft, Shaq Barrett was not one of them. Yet his career AV (a ProFootballReference stat to try and benchmark a player’s contributions) would tie him for the 14th best in the class. It doesn’t matter who you are — it matters what you can do. You can come from nothing, and still become something.
#65 -Trevon Diggs - Dallas Cowboys - Cornerback
Previous Ranks| 2020 | 2019 | 2018 | 2017 | 2016 | 2015 | 2014 | 2013 | 2012 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A |
First player since Marcus Peters in 2015 to lead the league in interceptions and interception return yards
The most exciting defensive player on the Cowboys since Demarcus Ware, Trevon Diggs is as electric and fast as he is controversial for many fans due to his playstyle. While many may argue with his placement, I find that a player that is asked to shadow WR1s as much as he does and when he isn’t is being asked to play flat zone coverage to get a turnover for our offense deserves all the credit he receives!
Let’s start with the obvious league leading 11 interceptions which hasn’t been done since 1981. Yes, some were luck based, but you also will find him: keeping up with a really good route runner in Keenan Allen every step of the way and picking off a hot Justin Herbet that was driving down the field and was pretty much in scoring position in a close game, being on the pace with a speedster like Terry McLaurin and easily taking advantage of an underthrown ball that many corner would just be in position to pass break, and showing off his hands on a ball so poorly thrown by Matt Ryan that I’m still not sure how he caught it (like seriously who was Matt Ryan throwing to). He had a few interceptions as well where he just undercuts a route like nothing (Eagles, Panthers, and Giants), and has a great awareness and presence to take advantage of tipped balls which may seem lucky at first, but remember that tipped passes happen in every game and it just seems like Trevon Diggs takes advantage of them more than most. Finally, he was also able to show off his ball handling skills having the most int return yards and tying Rasul Douglas with taking two of them to the house.
Now, I know many will argue against him with the receptions and yards he gave through the year. First, I will say that many sites use the closest defender to the play taking the penalty of the yards and receptions given up as opposed to the player actually assigned to the receiver who makes the catch. This happens to Diggs quite a bit because he always is near the play yet this is mostly caused by him having a great sense of where the ball is headed as opposed to him getting beat. For instance, in both the Falcons and Saints games you will find that Diggs is supposed to be in a flat zone in the typical Cover 2 Defense, yet you will find him much deeper into almost a corner zone because the safety over the top is not in position to stop his guy (if you’ve ever played madden and you run Cover 2 Zone where the AI just runs corner routes on you this exactly illustrates the point). Other times Diggs is asked by the Cowboys defense to be underneath the receiver with a safety over the top in order to make a play on the ball so we can get our offense back on the field. Second, despite playing as aggressively as he does, he still manages a catch % allowed similar to Xavein Howard, Marshon Lattimore, Patrick Surtain II, and Chidobe Awuzie and has less TD’s given up than Marshon Lattimore and Xavien Howard. And yet even with this there are still many times when he asked to follow a WR1 by himself and manages to have great man-to-man coverage (see Giants and Washington games). In man coverage, he is top 5 in the league in both forced incompletions and forced incompletion rate which further cements him as a top man-to-man corner.
Diggs was a top tier aggressive corner that many players in the league respect (including Jalen Ramsey). While play may be off-putting to some, to me he is well-deserving in his place on the top 100, and I hope to see him here for years to come.
#64 - Matthew Judon - New England Patriots - EDGE Rusher (EDGE)
Previous Ranks| 2020 | 2019 | 2018 | 2017 | 2016 | 2015 | 2014 | 2013 | 2012 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A |
Most sacks by a Patriot since Chandler Jones in 2015
The Patriots went all in with a buyer's approach to the 2021 free agency market. Some acquisitions were relatively disappointing. Some showed ups and downs. Some, like Hunter Henry, fit in well and showed serious potential moving into year two.
And then there was Matthew Judon.
To say that Judon supercharged the Patriots' defense would be an understatement. Twelve and a half sacks. Sixty tackles, with twelve for loss. 39 total QB pressures. Judon's strength and speed was on display all season long.
And that speed really can't be overstated. Judon was the star for a front seven that otherwise was quickly showing its age and its lack of speed. This sack on Tom Brady in Week 4 comes after Judon beats both the pulling guard and gets into the backfield too quickly for the RB coming off play action to pick him up. Judon was one of the few members of the Patriots' defense that required opponents to respect his speed.
His numbers fell off slightly towards the end of the season as injuries piled up and as other teams realized the necessity of focusing on him; but Judon was a game changer for the Patriots' defense for a significant portion of the season.
#63 - Dak Prescott - Dallas Cowboys - Quarterback
Previous Ranks| 2020 | 2019 | 2018 | 2017 | 2016 | 2015 | 2014 | 2013 | 2012 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| N/A | 57 | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A |
Prescott is the first postseason NVP to be ranked in the NFL Top 100
Dak Prescott entered the 2021 season with sky-high expectations. An explosive start to his 2020 season was unfortunately cut short due to a gruesome ankle injury, and many were wondering if he'd be able to pick back up where he left off.
While he wasn't able to match 2020's 400 ypg start, Dak did turn in an elite QB season this past year, finishing a close second to Joe Burrow in AP Comeback Player of the Year voting, with a final statline of 4449 yards on 68.8% completion with 37 TDs and only 10 INTs in 16 games played. Going a little deeper than traditional stats, Football Outsiders' advanced stats loved Dak this year. He finished 3rd in both DYAR and DVOA, behind only Rodgers and Brady.
The season started off with an exciting matchup against Tampa Bay that saw Dak put on a fantastic individual performance, culminating in a clutch drive to take the lead with only 1:24 left in the game, only to watch from the bench as the Bucs marched down the field and won the game. Not to be deterred, Dak led another clutch drive the very next week. Starting on his own 13 and down 3, Dak put Greg Zuerlein in position for a game winning FG as time expired. Let's jump to a Week 6 matchup against New England, aka the Trevon Diggs experience. The star CB's high/lowlights from that game are well known, but it's worth noting that Dak engineered a drive for the game-tying FG with 24 seconds remaining in regulation, and then proceeded to throw a game winning TD to Ceedee Lamb on their first OT drive.
The middle of the season represented a bit of a slump for both Dak and the Cowboys. A calf strain caused him to miss the Week 8 game against the Vikings, and the team went 1-3 after he returned. Of note was the Week 12 loss against the Raiders, where Dak threw a 32-yard TD to Dalton Schultz with 2:54 left, followed by a tying 2 point conversion, and then followed it up with another game-tying drive, this one a FG near the end of regulation.
After the slump, Dak rounded out his excellent season with some strong performances, throwing 12 TDs to 0 interceptions in the last three games of the season to lead the Cowboys to 1st place in the division.
#62 - Micah Hyde - Buffalo Bills - Safety
Previous Ranks| 2020 | 2019 | 2018 | 2017 | 2016 | 2015 | 2014 | 2013 | 2012 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 76 | N/A | N/A | 85 | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A |
Highest coverage grade when lined up at Free Safety (89.2)
Though much of the national attention last year was on the Buffalo Bills’ explosive offense, the other side of the ball ended the year as the top defense in the league. Crucial to that was the secondary finishing as the top pass defense in the league, anchored by the league’s best safety duo, one half of which was Micah Hyde, who comes in at #62 on the /NFL Top100 List. Most of Hyde’s stats don’t necessarily pop off the page, only accruing 56 tackles and 3 PBUs while allowing around a 70% catch percentage. However, this is more of a testament to the Bills’ scheme, who had Hyde play a large majority of his coverage snaps at Free Safety, only being targeted 26 times total on the season. The Bills ran primarily Cover 1 and Cover 3 last season, and Hyde usually slotted in as the deep safety, acting as the last line of defense for a unit that relied on their secondary to make important stops. Hyde was essentially the anchor for the best passing defense in the league and his stats show it, only allowing 32 yards after the catch total and grabbing a position-leading 5 picks. It’s no wonder opposing QBs were so scared to throw his way. An incredibly strong tackler, Hyde also shined in fighting through screens and making tackles on receivers or runningbacks that broke through the first level. In 2021, Hyde usually wasn’t flashy but still did it all; he prevented deep plays, provided incredible coverage support for his corners, and did his best to make sure nothing got past him, which is best exemplified by Hyde staring down King Henry himself and making the tackle in open field.
PFF gave Micah Hyde an 88.3 coverage grade on the season, the third best at his position, and it’s easy to see why by watching his tape. He is an all-around talent who can be moved around the secondary wherever needed, possessing incredible vision, top-tier ball skills, and impressive strength/tackling. In this play, both Bills corners mark the same receiver in the flat, leaving Diontae open. Hyde reads Ben’s eyes perfectly and quickly closes in on the receiver, breaking up the pass and preventing the first down. However, many of Hyde's best plays won’t appear on the stat sheet, for example this perfect coverage against the Commanders. The Bills are lined up in Cover 2 and Hyde perfectly positions himself to protect from the middle of the field, seam, and sideline, forcing Heineke to scramble instead of throwing where Hyde can make a play on the ball. Similarly, here the Bills disguise a Cover 1, leaving Hyde as the lone deep safety where he covers Demarcus Robinson throughout his whole route, exhibiting fluid hips and good trailing speed as he forces Mahomes to look elsewhere. Hyde also showed off an ability to play man off the line of scrimmage, excellently covering Devante Parker on this go route after fighting through a switch at the line. Hyde’s great ball skills complement his coverage ability, and he produced this year, picking off Mahomes for a TD, as well as Heinicke once and Mac Jones thrice, including an interception of the year candidate during the Divisional Round. What all this shows is that, if you throw toward Micah Hyde, not much good is going to come of it. He excelled in every area that a safety needs to, working in tandem with Jordan Poyer to produce some of the most impressive defensive performances of the year. With another year of partnership under their belt, I can see this duo producing at an even higher level in the coming years.
#61 - Joe Mixon - Cincinnati Bengals - Running Back
Previous Ranks| 2020 | 2019 | 2018 | 2017 | 2016 | 2015 | 2014 | 2013 | 2012 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A |
League-leading 785 rushing yards on plays negatively-graded blocks in front of him per pff
The offensive line was the crux of discussions of the 2021 Bengals offseason. The unit was universally scorned as one of the main reasons Cincinnati won just six games over the previous two seasons, left Joe Mixon battered and bruised to the tune of missing 10 games, and allowed a pair of Washington pass rushers to rip poor rookie Joe Burrow’s ACL into shreds. Ultimately the Bengals declined on using their 5th overall pick on a lineman, and even though their selection helped propel them to an AFC crown the offensive line remained a detriment rather than a strength. Usually a poor OL dooms running backs to inconsistent, frustratingly unproductive seasons. Joe Mixon didn’t care about that and instead rattled off the best season of his career
Mixon’s first cut is second to none. An OL that wasn’t adept at run blocking means defenders arrive quicker in the backfield, necessitating quick bursts to avoid the tackle for loss and get the play back on track. Wach this play against the Jets, Trey Hopkins completely whiffs on the block but Mixon is able to skirt around him and burst into the endzone before the other Jets can rally to him. Or here against my Packers, the line is unable to produce a hole so instead he bounces outside, makes a man miss and zip in for a crucial score. If you wanna see him make a division rival look silly, take this nasty run against the Yinzers, the defense fits the run but Mixon decides he can just stop, juke out James Pierre on the backside, and run free for a big gain. He makes it look effortless, but very few backs can navigate the line like he can. When the holes DO open up, Mixon can hit them hard and bully some defenders. Like this run against the Raiders where Tyler Boyd gives him a great block and Mixon muscles out an extra five yards at the end. You can’t use a corner to fill the gaps against Mixon because he’ll just do this instead.
Mixon has been used primarily as a 2 down back in 2021, with Samaje Perine taking up a majority of the snaps on third down for Cinci. But don’t let that fool you into thinking Mixon is just a pure runner. Mixon is a very competent pass catcher. Those cuts that allows him to be such a great runner also means he can turn upfield that much quicker on screens and flares. Watch how quickly he can go from the shoot route into a direct cut towards the end zone and dive in for six. He can also go deep too, if you like. His status as a pass blocker has never been high but we saw plenty of improvement in 2021, he definitely has the ability to pick up blitzes, he just needs to be a bit more consistent at doing so. Mixon lead the AFC in rushing yards in 2018, but this year he truly became the all-around back he was drafted to be
Link to Positional Tracker Sheet
Link to Ranker Reveal Sheet
Link to Hub
2022.05.31 05:08 Purplemaster1 Greatest Viking At each Jersey Number
This used the metric on profootballreference.com named Appoximate Value. This metric isn’t perfect, but it helps us see how good a player performs. I did not make the ratings, just compiled this into a list.
submitted by Purplemaster1 to minnesotavikings [link] [comments]
1- Warren Moon, QB
2- Kai Forbath, K
3- Blair Walsh, K
4- Brett Favre, QB
5- Teddy Bridgewater, QB
6- Matt Wile, P
7- Randall Cunningham, QB
8- Kirk Cousins, QB
9- Tommy Kramer, QB
10- Fran Tarkenton, QB
11- Daunte Culpepper, QB
12- Percy Harvin, WR
13- Bucky Scribner, P
14- Fred Cox, K
15- Gary Cuozzo, QB
16- Rich Gannon, QB
17- Jarius Wright, WR
18- Justin Jefferson, WR
19- Adam Thielen, WR
20- Bobby Bryant, CB
21- Terry Allen, RB
22- Paul Krause, S
23- Ted Brown, RB
24- Robert Griffith, S
25- Kurt Knoff, S
26- Robert Smith, RB
27- John Turner, CB
28- Adrian Peterson, RB
29- Karl Kassulke, S
30- Bill Brown, FB
31- Rick Fenney, RB
32- Oscar Reed, RB
33- Dalvin Cook, RB
34- Rickey Young, RB
35- Robert Miller, RB
36- John Kirby, LB
37- Willie Teal, CB
38- Todd Scott, S
39- Carl Lee, CB
40- Charlie West, CB
41- Dave Osborn, RB
42- John Gilliam, WR
43- Nate Wright, CB
44- Chuck Foreman, RB
45- Ed Sharockman, CB
46- Earsell Mackbee, CB
47- Joey Browner, S
48- Najee Mustafaa, CB
49- Dale Hackbart, S
50- Jeff Siemon, LB
51- Jim Hough, G
52- Chad Greenway, LB
53- Mick Tinglehoff, C
54- Fred McNeill, LB
55- Scott Studwell, LB
56- Chris Doleman, LB/DE
57- Mike Merriweather, LB
58- Wally Hilgenburg, LB
59- Matt Blair, LB
60- Roy Winston, LB
61– Wes Hamilton, G
62- Ed White, G
63- Kirk Lowdermilk, C
64- Randall McDaniel, G
65- Gary Zimmerman, T
66- Terry Tausch- T
67- Grady Alderman, T
68- Charles Goodrum, G/T
69- Jared Allen, DE
70- Jim Marshall, DE (only player to wear 70)
71- David Dixon, G
72- James White, DT
73- Ron Yary, T
74- Bryant McKinnie, T
75- Keith Millard, DT
76- Tim Irwin, T
77- Gary Larsen, DT
78- Matt Birk, C
79- Doug Martin, DE
80- Cris Carter, WR
81- Carl Eller, DE
82- Kyle Rudolph, TE
83- Steve Jordan, TE
84- Randy Moss, WR
85- Sammy White, WR
86- Jake Reed, WR
87- Leo Lewis, WR
88- Alan Page, DT
89- Jerry Reichow, WR
90- Derrick Alexander, DE
91- Ray Edwards, DE
92- Roy Barker, DE
93- Kevin Williams, DT (I’m not kidding, John Randle is one point behind him)
94- Pat Williams, DT
95- Kenechi Udeze, DE
96- Brian Robison, DE
97- Everson Griffen, DE
98- Linval Joseph, DT
99- Danielle Hunter, DE
Some notes: I could see some numbers, including 2, 3, 4, and six broken possibly this year. Dalvin Cook could become the first player to be the best at two different numbers2022.05.21 16:20 gyman122 [OC] I Used Math to Rank All 2,100 Offensive Lines in NFL History... Kind Of
Offensive line play is the darling of every true football fan. In many ways, it is the one realm of the sport that is free from the clutches of analytics and numbers and the nerdy bullshit that has come to plague this league in the aftermath of the millennials ruining football. It's beautiful and raw, because there are very few traditional offensive line statistics and the impact of offensive lines are so contextual and up to interpretation so it's not something that can be quantified by statistics and spreadsheets.
Anyways, what we're going to be exploring in this post is how to quantify offensive lines using statistics and spreadsheets.
Here's the spreadsheet that I'll be referencing in this post.
Last week, I made a pretty popular piece of original content in which I used a massive database of stats from ProFootballReference that I've compiled and Z-Scores I've calculated from those stats to try to answer the question of "Who Was The Most Badass NFL Team Of All Time?". This is a small part of the same broader database that I'm using for this post, and many others that I'll be doing over the course of the dead period. A deeper explanation of just what Z-Score is and how it was calculated for this exists within the Methodology section of that post, but as a quick refresher...
Z-Score is a way to compare across eras. A sack percentage of 8% from 1986 is going to rate much better than a sack percentage of 8% in 2019 because the overall, league average sack percentage was much higher from 1984-1988 than it was from 2017-2021. A Z-Score of "0" is totally average, a Z-Score of "1" is pretty good, a Z-Score of "2" is one of the best in a given year if not the decade, and a Z-Score of "3" is a historically significant outlier. Anything higher than that is ridiculous.
Before we get into anything, I'd like to explicitly state that this should not be seen as any sort of definitive, comprehensive ranking. At best, this should be used in the context of a much broader offensive line ranking conversation. So I don't need to make your comments telling me about how I'm trying to definitively boil qualitative truth down into some sort of quantitative number. Much like last week, this is just a fun thing that I realized that I could theoretically attempt to quantify using this database that I've built. There are, of course, far too many factors relating to overall offensive scheme and supporting cast to render this little more than a minor consideration. Perhaps try to think of it as more of a measure of how well an offensive line performed in the totality of an offense as opposed to how comprehensively talented it was, or even how well an offense as a whole was able to maximize the talent of these offensive lines, or whatever minor thing you might deign to extrapolate from this.
If you care about how exactly this was all measured, how I came to the conclusion to judge this based on "Prime Totals" (and what that means), and why exactly I studied 39 specific units, head on down to the Methodology section. Otherwise...
I'm anticipating some accusations of bias as a result of a Chiefs unit topping the list and perhaps even because the extremely highly decorated 1966-1977 Raiders (who for a period in the early 70's boasted four different future Hall of Famers) were ranked relatively low. To these accusers, I would like to say that I, obviously, did not manipulate this index in order to come to any specific conclusion (it would in fact be extremely difficult to do so, and I'm not that smart) and also I'd reiterate that there is no need to take offense to this ranking for reasons that I've already explained.
The 2001-2006 Kansas City Chiefs o-line and the 1989-2000 "Great Wall of Dallas" Dallas Cowboys o-line are two fitting units to top this list, and admittedly gave me a bit of relief as to the overall viability of this metric. These are two of the most heavily decorated and well-regarded offensive lines in NFL history. The Chiefs (who between their five starters in 2003 averaged career totals of 184 starts, six Pro Bowls and 3.4 All-Pros. Willie Roaf and Will Shields were both shoe-in Hall of Famers and widely regarded as some of the best players at their position ever) and the Cowboys (1995, average of 177 career starts, six Pro Bowls and 2.2 All-Pros. And Larry Allen? Enough said.) were extremely close in this index, and in fact if you judge it by Protection Score instead of just sack percentage the Cowboys just barely edge out the Chiefs for the top spot. Don't know if I need to do much explanation here, anyone who knows anything about this subject knows that these lines were so notoriously good that they are often used as arguments against the various skill position players and quarterbacks that were on these teams, which is how you really know an OL is good.
The 1982-1992 Miami Dolphins o-line is the first unit that you might be a little curious about, even if they end up on some "best offensive line" lists. They're famous for protecting Dan Marino, and some of you will almost surely argue that this relationship extends beyond the purely symbiotic and will instead say that the hilariously low average sack percentage of 3.15 over the course of this unit's lifespan has more to do with Marino than it does with the protection ability of this OL. Which is a reasonable assumption. But they weren't without their stars, center Dwight Stephenson is a Hall of Famer with five All-Pros to his name, right guard Ed Newman made an All-Pro team in 1984, and left guard Roy Foster was a two-time Pro Bowler. Obviously their astronomical pass protection numbers serve them much better than their rather pedestrian rushing efficiency score.
The 1959-1968 Green Bay Packers o-line is one of the other extremely decorated groups that lived up to their billing in this metric. They have three Hall of Famers between center Jim Ringo, right guard Jerry Kramer and right tackle Forrest Gregg and their five starters from 1960 average 135 career starts, 4.6 Pro Bowls and 5 All-Pros between them. The executors of the famed "Packer Sweep", Lombardi took these guys' unique ability to block on the move to great heights which led to some of the most effective ground games of the era with some truly ridiculous rushing touchdown numbers. Their mark of nearly 2.6 rushing touchdowns per game in 1962 is the most since 1945, with their 1960 season just behind it at 2.42 rushing touchdowns per game.
Gotta give some credit to the 1981-1992 Washington Redskins o-line, aka "the Hogs", one of the more fabled and notorious lines in NFL history and they proved it in this index. They're a rare unit in this database that actually does quite well in terms of career Z-Scores despite their long lifespan, they finished as a great pass-protecting offensive line year after year with the occasionally dominant rushing efficiency season as well.
The last unit I’ll talk about is the 1972-1978 St. Louis Cardinals o-line. This group was led by famed broadcaster and NFL Hall of Famer Dan Dierdorf at right tackle and the dirtiest player in NFL history in right guard Conrad Dobler. I think this group tends to get overlooked because the Cardinals didn’t exactly do much in St. Louis (be honest, did you even know the NFL football Cardinals used to play in St. Louis?), but in the old days this group actually got a decent amount of press for being one of the best offensive lines in NFL history. In 1975, they achieved a then NFL record for fewest sacks allowed in a season with 8 (was broken by the 1988 Dolphins, with 7 sacks allowed) and in 1974, they helped lead the Cardinals to the playoffs for the first time since 1948.
On a related note, the history of the Chicago/St. Louis/Phoenix/Arizona Cardinals is quite depressing.
I originally intended for this to be a much shorter post than last time, a promise to myself that has already gone to shit. But I'll throw these two charts out there without commentary for convenience's sake. Peruse at your leisure.
In terms of individual seasons...
I don't imagine that too many will argue with the top-ranked 1995 Dallas Cowboys o-line. They were the top-ranked team by a very significant margin, with the gap between them and the second-ranked team being almost identical to the gap from the second-ranked team to the ninth-ranked team. This was Emmitt Smith's best season as a pro and Troy Aikman was sacked just 14 times. Mark Tuinei, Nate Newton, Ray Donaldson, Larry Allen, Erik Williams. Does it get more dominant than this?
Good to see the 1975 "Electric Company" Buffalo Bills o-line get some love considering their disappointing performance in the overall unit ranking. This team pops up everywhere a "best offensive line ever" conversation exists, and even though the sack numbers aren't always particularly kind, they get a bad shake because the QB's (and defenses) those Bills teams fielded were truly terrible. O.J. Simpson was the beneficiary of this group's exceptional blocking, and the per game stats for 1973 and 1975 as a general team rushing offense are something to behold (we'll dive into that in later episodes).
The Los Angeles Rams' o-lines of the 1950's come up multiple times in the top 100 of this database, but I really didn't think it was fair to include them for that reason alone considering they really did not have many notable offensive linemen. I don't think any individual made more than a single career Pro Bowl. and most of them didn't even get that. This was of course the Rams team that completely annihilated the NFL record books for offense and completely reconceptualized how offensive football could be played.
The 1979 New Orleans Saints o-line is a head scratcher and a bit of a sore spot for this metric overall. None of these offensive linemen achieved much in terms of career accolades, and in 1980 running back Chuck Muncie left for San Diego, the Saints went from 8-8 to 1-15, and that team's offensive line plummeted down to the 1,517th ranked unit in my database (some of you who read my post last week might remember the 1980 Saints as the LEAST Badass NFL Team of All-Time). I'm throwing up my hands at this one, folks. Who the fuck knows? Sometimes football is merely a roll of the dice.
And just so that we can briefly explore the have-nots of the offensive line spectrum...
In a win for the index, the infamous 2002 inaugural season Houston Texans o-line suffers the ugly distinction of being the worst-ranked offensive line ever, with the difference between them and the second-to-last ranked team being the same as the second-to-last to the 11th-to-last. Anyone old enough will remember the absolute hell that former first overall pick David Carr was put through by this unfortunately overmatched unit, and as a team they averaged just 3.2 yards per carry.
The 1986 Philadelphia Eagles o-line was such a hilarious outlier in terms of sack percentage Z-Score (and even worse in Protection Score) that you almost have to check them out, especially considering the fact that quarterbacks got sacked at a WAY higher rate in the late 80's than they were at almost any other period in NFL history (which would even out their Z-Score, comparatively). That line gave up 104 FUCKING SACKS and Randall Cunningham, in his second year as a part-time starter, WAS SACKED ON NEARLY 26% OF ALL OF HIS DROPBACKS. I don't even know what to say about that. LMAO. Care to explain that one, Buddy Ryan?
Hopefully this disgusting ranking of the 1982 Kansas City Chiefs o-line serves to assuage any concerns you have about homerism, but just to give the Raiders fans in the audience something to hate me for... 72 sacks allowed? In 2006? Fascinating.
Now time for the boring stuff.
What the hell did I measure to try to find the best offensive line?
Obviously the two areas that correlate best with offensive line play are rushing statistics and sacks allowed. In order to take away things outside of an offensive lines control (namely, the amount of times the offense around them attempts to run the ball or attempts to pass), I decided on three stats as being central to this project:
I determined that the most representative way of comparing these teams is by taking the scores from what the index determines to be the four best years in the lifespan of the OL group and averaging them, so the overall "Prime Total" is what is used in this ranking. Otherwise, teams with a short lifespan would have a disproportionate advantage. Overall career scores as well as an average of career and prime scores are also included in that linked spreadsheet.
I narrowed my field down to 39 individual offensive line units, drawn from various "best offensive line ever" articles I found online, units that had multiple high rankings in the individual season database, or any other unit that I could find that had at least one All-Pro and two other players who made a Pro Bowl at the same time. I ran into a "Theseus' Ship" problem every so often for teams that were able to consistently replace previous Pro Bowlers/All-Pros with new ones, but basically if ever there was a season in which a team had under three foundational members of the unit, that unit's lifespan ended, even if another's from the same team began soon after. Typically. To be honest I pulled all of the teams and years from a prototype of this post I planned to make a couple years ago and I honestly couldn't tell you exactly what my parameters were. All units listed had at least five seasons together.
That's all for now, folks!
Thank you all for for joining me on this episode of "Dead Period Hijinks". Let me know if you guys have some interest in anything else specific that you're curious about. I'm planning on doing a broader series on passing offense, rushing offense, passing defense and rushing defense in the coming weeks but I really am going to try to make those posts a little shorter. I promise.
I appreciate anyone who reads or engages with this ridiculous exercise. Even if you're heading down to the comments right now to call me a dickhead and a loser for wasting everybody's time, I appreciate the feedback. Thankfully, this wasn't a project that required an exceptional amount of prep work.
As always, thank you to the very handsome football nerds at Pro-Football-Reference for being even bigger dweebs than I am.
Remember to like, comment and subscribe. Just kidding. That's for YouTube.
submitted by gyman122 to nfl [link] [comments]
Anyways, what we're going to be exploring in this post is how to quantify offensive lines using statistics and spreadsheets.
Here's the spreadsheet that I'll be referencing in this post.
Last week, I made a pretty popular piece of original content in which I used a massive database of stats from ProFootballReference that I've compiled and Z-Scores I've calculated from those stats to try to answer the question of "Who Was The Most Badass NFL Team Of All Time?". This is a small part of the same broader database that I'm using for this post, and many others that I'll be doing over the course of the dead period. A deeper explanation of just what Z-Score is and how it was calculated for this exists within the Methodology section of that post, but as a quick refresher...
Z-Score is a way to compare across eras. A sack percentage of 8% from 1986 is going to rate much better than a sack percentage of 8% in 2019 because the overall, league average sack percentage was much higher from 1984-1988 than it was from 2017-2021. A Z-Score of "0" is totally average, a Z-Score of "1" is pretty good, a Z-Score of "2" is one of the best in a given year if not the decade, and a Z-Score of "3" is a historically significant outlier. Anything higher than that is ridiculous.
Before we get into anything, I'd like to explicitly state that this should not be seen as any sort of definitive, comprehensive ranking. At best, this should be used in the context of a much broader offensive line ranking conversation. So I don't need to make your comments telling me about how I'm trying to definitively boil qualitative truth down into some sort of quantitative number. Much like last week, this is just a fun thing that I realized that I could theoretically attempt to quantify using this database that I've built. There are, of course, far too many factors relating to overall offensive scheme and supporting cast to render this little more than a minor consideration. Perhaps try to think of it as more of a measure of how well an offensive line performed in the totality of an offense as opposed to how comprehensively talented it was, or even how well an offense as a whole was able to maximize the talent of these offensive lines, or whatever minor thing you might deign to extrapolate from this.
If you care about how exactly this was all measured, how I came to the conclusion to judge this based on "Prime Totals" (and what that means), and why exactly I studied 39 specific units, head on down to the Methodology section. Otherwise...
The Best Offensive Line Units in NFL History
| Team Rank | Team | Best Season (All-Time Rank) | Prime Total | Prime Sack% | Prime Rushing |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 2001-2006 Kansas City Chiefs | 2003 (8th) | 1.3838 | .7314 | 2.0362 |
| 2 | 1989-2000 Dallas Cowboys | 1995 (1st) | 1.3394 | 1.3197 | 1.3592 |
| 3 | 1982-1992 Miami Dolphins | 1984 (39th) | 1.2275 | 2.2172 | .2378 |
| 4 | 1959-1968 Green Bay Packers | 1960 (25th) | 1.2216 | .5427 | 1.9005 |
| 5 | 1981-1992 Washington Redskins | 1983 (15th) | 1.2015 | 1.5552 | .8479 |
| 6 | 1973-1980 New England Patriots | 1976 (10th) | 1.1896 | 1.1638 | 1.2155 |
| 7 | 1972-1979 Pittsburgh Steelers | 1979 (27th) | 1.1682 | .4988 | 1.8377 |
| 8 | 1972-1978 St. Louis Cardinals | 1975 (9th) | 1.1676 | 1.9144 | .4208 |
| 9 | 2007-2011 New Orleans Saints | 2011 (32nd) | 1.1588 | 1.7222 | .5954 |
| 10 | 1995-1999 Denver Broncos | 1998 (7th) | 1.1266 | .7670 | 1.4861 |
| 11 | 1976-1982 San Diego Chargers | 1982 (9th) | 1.0760 | 1.4462 | .7058 |
| 12 | 1984-1991 Chicago Bears | 1988 (62nd) | 1.0435 | .9326 | 1.1544 |
| 13 | 1971-1979 Miami Dolphins | 1973 (42nd) | 1.0239 | .6232 | 1.4246 |
| 14 | 1991-1996 San Francisco 49ers | 1993 (71st) | 1.0243 | .4587 | 1.5898 |
| 15 | 2008-2017 Carolina Panthers | 2008 (13th) | 1.0113 | .0999 | 1.9226 |
| 16 | 1966-1977 Oakland Raiders | 1972 (114th) | 1.0014 | .6879 | 1.3149 |
| 17 | 2005-2010 New York Giants | 2010 (48th) | 1.0012 | .9532 | 1.0491 |
| 18 | 2006-2011 Tennessee Titans | 2009 (5th) | .9917 | .9814 | 1.0020 |
| 19 | 1958-1967 Cleveland Browns | 1967 (77th) | .9483 | .1496 | 1.7469 |
| 20 | 1986-1991 Cincinnati Bengals | 1986 (16th) | .9282 | .2235 | 1.6328 |
| 21 | 1976-1987 Los Angeles Rams | 1982 (111th) | .9071 | .6309 | 1.1832 |
| 22 | 1966-1974 Los Angeles Rams | 1972 (34th) | .8906 | .9746 | .8066 |
| 23 | 2014-2021 Dallas Cowboys | 2019 (63rd) | .8729 | .5702 | 1.1757 |
| 24 | 1990-1997 Kansas City Chiefs | 1995 (112th) | .8668 | 1.3248 | .4088 |
| 25 | 1983-1987 San Francisco 49ers | 1984 (54th) | .8490 | .9778 | .7203 |
| 26 | 1985-1993 Houston Oilers | 1991 (113th) | .7845 | .9689 | .6002 |
| 27 | 1957-1964 Baltimore Colts | 1958 (35th) | .7308 | .4764 | .9852 |
| 28 | 1988-1992 Buffalo Bills | 1992 (186th) | .7125 | .4259 | .9991 |
| 29 | 1964-1973 Kansas City Chiefs | 1966 (97th) | .6904 | .1720 | 1.2088 |
| 30 | 1985-1989 Indianapolis Colts | 1985 (68th) | .6628 | .5085 | .8171 |
| 31 | 2006-2013 Minnesota Vikings | 2012 (184th) | .6515 | -.2803 | 1.5834 |
| 32 | 2011-2019 Philadelphia Eagles | 2011 (107th) | .6323 | .2154 | 1.0492 |
| 33 | 2008-2014 Houston Texans | 2010 (187th) | .6238 | .3938 | .8537 |
| 34 | 2001-2005 Seattle Seahawks | 2005 (34th) | .6036 | .2545 | .9527 |
| 35 | 1972-1977 Buffalo Bills | 1975 (2nd) | .5075 | -.0310 | 1.0460 |
| 36 | 1969-1976 Dallas Cowboys | 1971 (185th) | .4898 | .0905 | .8891 |
| 37 | 1980-1989 Atlanta Falcons | 1983 (246th) | .3548 | .3115 | .3981 |
| 38 | 2008-2012 New York Jets | 2008 (224th) | .3397 | .0644 | .6151 |
| 39 | 1998-2006 Pittsburgh Steelers | 2001 (334th) | .3032 | .0654 | .5410 |
The 2001-2006 Kansas City Chiefs o-line and the 1989-2000 "Great Wall of Dallas" Dallas Cowboys o-line are two fitting units to top this list, and admittedly gave me a bit of relief as to the overall viability of this metric. These are two of the most heavily decorated and well-regarded offensive lines in NFL history. The Chiefs (who between their five starters in 2003 averaged career totals of 184 starts, six Pro Bowls and 3.4 All-Pros. Willie Roaf and Will Shields were both shoe-in Hall of Famers and widely regarded as some of the best players at their position ever) and the Cowboys (1995, average of 177 career starts, six Pro Bowls and 2.2 All-Pros. And Larry Allen? Enough said.) were extremely close in this index, and in fact if you judge it by Protection Score instead of just sack percentage the Cowboys just barely edge out the Chiefs for the top spot. Don't know if I need to do much explanation here, anyone who knows anything about this subject knows that these lines were so notoriously good that they are often used as arguments against the various skill position players and quarterbacks that were on these teams, which is how you really know an OL is good.
The 1982-1992 Miami Dolphins o-line is the first unit that you might be a little curious about, even if they end up on some "best offensive line" lists. They're famous for protecting Dan Marino, and some of you will almost surely argue that this relationship extends beyond the purely symbiotic and will instead say that the hilariously low average sack percentage of 3.15 over the course of this unit's lifespan has more to do with Marino than it does with the protection ability of this OL. Which is a reasonable assumption. But they weren't without their stars, center Dwight Stephenson is a Hall of Famer with five All-Pros to his name, right guard Ed Newman made an All-Pro team in 1984, and left guard Roy Foster was a two-time Pro Bowler. Obviously their astronomical pass protection numbers serve them much better than their rather pedestrian rushing efficiency score.
The 1959-1968 Green Bay Packers o-line is one of the other extremely decorated groups that lived up to their billing in this metric. They have three Hall of Famers between center Jim Ringo, right guard Jerry Kramer and right tackle Forrest Gregg and their five starters from 1960 average 135 career starts, 4.6 Pro Bowls and 5 All-Pros between them. The executors of the famed "Packer Sweep", Lombardi took these guys' unique ability to block on the move to great heights which led to some of the most effective ground games of the era with some truly ridiculous rushing touchdown numbers. Their mark of nearly 2.6 rushing touchdowns per game in 1962 is the most since 1945, with their 1960 season just behind it at 2.42 rushing touchdowns per game.
Gotta give some credit to the 1981-1992 Washington Redskins o-line, aka "the Hogs", one of the more fabled and notorious lines in NFL history and they proved it in this index. They're a rare unit in this database that actually does quite well in terms of career Z-Scores despite their long lifespan, they finished as a great pass-protecting offensive line year after year with the occasionally dominant rushing efficiency season as well.
The last unit I’ll talk about is the 1972-1978 St. Louis Cardinals o-line. This group was led by famed broadcaster and NFL Hall of Famer Dan Dierdorf at right tackle and the dirtiest player in NFL history in right guard Conrad Dobler. I think this group tends to get overlooked because the Cardinals didn’t exactly do much in St. Louis (be honest, did you even know the NFL football Cardinals used to play in St. Louis?), but in the old days this group actually got a decent amount of press for being one of the best offensive lines in NFL history. In 1975, they achieved a then NFL record for fewest sacks allowed in a season with 8 (was broken by the 1988 Dolphins, with 7 sacks allowed) and in 1974, they helped lead the Cardinals to the playoffs for the first time since 1948.
On a related note, the history of the Chicago/St. Louis/Phoenix/Arizona Cardinals is quite depressing.
I originally intended for this to be a much shorter post than last time, a promise to myself that has already gone to shit. But I'll throw these two charts out there without commentary for convenience's sake. Peruse at your leisure.
The Top Ten Offensive Line Units by Rushing Efficiency
| Team Rank | Team | Prime Rushing |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | 2001-2006 Kansas City Chiefs | 2.0362 |
| 2 | 2008-2017 Carolina Panthers | 1.9226 |
| 3 | 1959-1968 Green Bay Packers | 1.9005 |
| 4 | 1972-1979 Pittsburgh Steelers | 1.8377 |
| 5 | 1958-1967 Cleveland Browns | 1.7469 |
| 6 | 1986-1991 Cincinnati Bengals | 1.6328 |
| 7 | 1991-1996 San Francisco 49ers | 1.5898 |
| 8 | 2006-2013 Minnesota Vikings | 1.5834 |
| 9 | 1995-1999 Denver Broncos | 1.4861 |
| 10 | 1971-1979 Miami Dolphins | 1.4246 |
The Top Ten Offensive Line Units by Sack Percentage
| Team Rank | Team | Prime Sack% |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1982-1992 Miami Dolphins | 2.2172 |
| 2 | 1972-1978 St. Louis Cardinals | 1.9144 |
| 3 | 2007-2011 New Orleans Saints | 1.7222 |
| 4 | 1981-1992 Washington Redskins | 1.5552 |
| 5 | 1976-1982 San Diego Chargers | 1.4462 |
| 6 | 1990-1997 Kansas City Chiefs | 1.3248 |
| 7 | 1989-2000 Dallas Cowboys | 1.3197 |
| 8 | 1973-1980 New England Patriots | 1.1638 |
| 9 | 2006-2011 Tennessee Titans | .9814 |
| 10 | 1983-1987 San Francisco 49ers | .9778 |
The Top Ten Offensive Line Seasons by Combined Z-Score
| Rank | Team | Combined Score | Sk% Z-Score | Rushing Eff. Z-Score |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1995 Dallas Cowboys | 1.9303 | 1.5419 | 2.3187 |
| 2 | 1975 Buffalo Bills | 1.7909 | 1.0565 | 2.5252 |
| 3 | 1951 Los Angeles Rams | 1.7731 | 1.7861 | 1.7601 |
| 4 | 1979 New Orleans Saints | 1.7667 | 1.5811 | 1.9523 |
| 5 | 2009 Tennessee Titans | 1.7041 | 1.5699 | 1.8382 |
| 6 | 1975 St. Louis Cardinals | 1.6850 | 2.4831 | .8869 |
| 7 | 1998 Denver Broncos | 1.6689 | 1.1247 | 2.2130 |
| 8 | 2003 Kansas City Chiefs | 1.6601 | 1.3536 | 1.9666 |
| 9 | 1982 San Diego Chargers | 1.6511 | 1.8611 | 1.4411 |
| 10 | 1976 New England Patriots | 1.6484 | 1.0380 | 2.2588 |
Good to see the 1975 "Electric Company" Buffalo Bills o-line get some love considering their disappointing performance in the overall unit ranking. This team pops up everywhere a "best offensive line ever" conversation exists, and even though the sack numbers aren't always particularly kind, they get a bad shake because the QB's (and defenses) those Bills teams fielded were truly terrible. O.J. Simpson was the beneficiary of this group's exceptional blocking, and the per game stats for 1973 and 1975 as a general team rushing offense are something to behold (we'll dive into that in later episodes).
The Los Angeles Rams' o-lines of the 1950's come up multiple times in the top 100 of this database, but I really didn't think it was fair to include them for that reason alone considering they really did not have many notable offensive linemen. I don't think any individual made more than a single career Pro Bowl. and most of them didn't even get that. This was of course the Rams team that completely annihilated the NFL record books for offense and completely reconceptualized how offensive football could be played.
The 1979 New Orleans Saints o-line is a head scratcher and a bit of a sore spot for this metric overall. None of these offensive linemen achieved much in terms of career accolades, and in 1980 running back Chuck Muncie left for San Diego, the Saints went from 8-8 to 1-15, and that team's offensive line plummeted down to the 1,517th ranked unit in my database (some of you who read my post last week might remember the 1980 Saints as the LEAST Badass NFL Team of All-Time). I'm throwing up my hands at this one, folks. Who the fuck knows? Sometimes football is merely a roll of the dice.
And just so that we can briefly explore the have-nots of the offensive line spectrum...
The Top Ten WORST Offensive Line Seasons by Combined Z-Score
| Rank | Team | Combined Score | Sk% Z-Score | Rushing Eff. Z-Score |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 2002 Houston Texans | -2.7440 | -3.7619 | -1.7261 |
| 2 | 1986 Philadelphia Eagles | -2.2413 | -3.8054 | -.6772 |
| 3 | 1982 Kansas City Chiefs | -2.0336 | -2.4362 | -1.6309 |
| 4 | 1968 Atlanta Falcons | -2.0187 | -3.2314 | -.8060 |
| 5 | 1977 Tampa Bay Buccaneers | -1.9726 | -1.8220 | -2.1232 |
| 6 | 2006 Oakland Raiders | -1.9699 | -2.9510 | -.9889 |
| 7 | 1996 New York Giants | -1.8121 | -2.0763 | -1.5479 |
| 8 | 1960 Washington Redskins | -1.7974 | -2.2781 | -1.3166 |
| 9 | 1997 Arizona Cardinals | -1.7640 | -2.3553 | -1.1727 |
| 10 | 1992 New England Patriots | -1.7450 | -2.5828 | -.9071 |
The 1986 Philadelphia Eagles o-line was such a hilarious outlier in terms of sack percentage Z-Score (and even worse in Protection Score) that you almost have to check them out, especially considering the fact that quarterbacks got sacked at a WAY higher rate in the late 80's than they were at almost any other period in NFL history (which would even out their Z-Score, comparatively). That line gave up 104 FUCKING SACKS and Randall Cunningham, in his second year as a part-time starter, WAS SACKED ON NEARLY 26% OF ALL OF HIS DROPBACKS. I don't even know what to say about that. LMAO. Care to explain that one, Buddy Ryan?
Hopefully this disgusting ranking of the 1982 Kansas City Chiefs o-line serves to assuage any concerns you have about homerism, but just to give the Raiders fans in the audience something to hate me for... 72 sacks allowed? In 2006? Fascinating.
Now time for the boring stuff.
Methodology
If you want to know about the wider context of my database and how I calculated these Z-Scores in general, I'll refer you back to the Methodology section of my post that I made last week that first tried to explore my findings. For the stuff specific to this post...What the hell did I measure to try to find the best offensive line?
Obviously the two areas that correlate best with offensive line play are rushing statistics and sacks allowed. In order to take away things outside of an offensive lines control (namely, the amount of times the offense around them attempts to run the ball or attempts to pass), I decided on three stats as being central to this project:
- Rushing yards per attempt, as this is probably the best indicator of a running game's general effectiveness.
- Rushing touchdowns, as one would assume that teams with better offensive lines are more willing and better at running the ball in short yardage (I considered using my "rushing attempts per touchdown" stat, but this I believe would favor teams that were disproportionately unwilling to run the ball in neutral game situations)
- Sack percentage, as teams that are sacked more frequently per dropback are a more accurate way of determining the overall best and worst pass blocking than total sacks allowed. Initially, I also included total sacks allowed, but determined sack percentage was just better for this overall.
I determined that the most representative way of comparing these teams is by taking the scores from what the index determines to be the four best years in the lifespan of the OL group and averaging them, so the overall "Prime Total" is what is used in this ranking. Otherwise, teams with a short lifespan would have a disproportionate advantage. Overall career scores as well as an average of career and prime scores are also included in that linked spreadsheet.
I narrowed my field down to 39 individual offensive line units, drawn from various "best offensive line ever" articles I found online, units that had multiple high rankings in the individual season database, or any other unit that I could find that had at least one All-Pro and two other players who made a Pro Bowl at the same time. I ran into a "Theseus' Ship" problem every so often for teams that were able to consistently replace previous Pro Bowlers/All-Pros with new ones, but basically if ever there was a season in which a team had under three foundational members of the unit, that unit's lifespan ended, even if another's from the same team began soon after. Typically. To be honest I pulled all of the teams and years from a prototype of this post I planned to make a couple years ago and I honestly couldn't tell you exactly what my parameters were. All units listed had at least five seasons together.
Thank you all for for joining me on this episode of "Dead Period Hijinks". Let me know if you guys have some interest in anything else specific that you're curious about. I'm planning on doing a broader series on passing offense, rushing offense, passing defense and rushing defense in the coming weeks but I really am going to try to make those posts a little shorter. I promise.
I appreciate anyone who reads or engages with this ridiculous exercise. Even if you're heading down to the comments right now to call me a dickhead and a loser for wasting everybody's time, I appreciate the feedback. Thankfully, this wasn't a project that required an exceptional amount of prep work.
As always, thank you to the very handsome football nerds at Pro-Football-Reference for being even bigger dweebs than I am.
Remember to like, comment and subscribe. Just kidding. That's for YouTube.
2022.05.14 15:10 gyman122 (OC) I Used Math To Rank All 2,053 Teams In NFL History By How Badass They Are
First off, I'd like to begin by saying that I'm fine. Things are fine in my personal life. I spend appropriate amounts of time with friends and family, love to travel, enjoy meaningful employment and am an engaged citizen.
Now, that said, over the last few years I have been compiling and organizing a database of every individual season by a team that is currently available on ProFootballReference. I have then used this database to calculate Z-Scores for each individual stat for each individual team. Which is fine, Warren Buffett plays the ukulele, Aaron Rodgers makes his own soap and Sylvia Plath liked to bake. Everybody has their hobbies.
Here's the spreadsheet I'll be referencing in this post, which includes the complete ranking of all 2,053 individual team seasons, if you're interested.
What is Z-Score? Who cares. Most of you are probably barely skimming over this or skipping to the findings.
If you do care, head down to the Methodology section at the bottom of this post and you can tell me about all the ways in which this has been an extremely flawed undertaking.
For our purposes all you need to know is that, using Z-Score, I have devised a way to compare across different eras of the sport by comparing the raw numbers of a given stat (adjusted to per game averages to account for the differences in games played per season) to a given team's peers within their own era. So, for example, a team from 1973 rushing for 2000 yards as a team will have a lower score in "total rushing yards" than a team from 2015 rushing for 2000 yards because the average rushing totals from 1971-1975 are higher than 2013-2017, and it will take a higher mark from the 1973 team to overcome that handicap. And vice versa, if we are talking about passing yards or something like that.
A higher Z-score is better (except for in the case of Protection Score, because allowing sacks is not badass). a score of "0" is totally average. A score of "1" is very good. A score of "2" means they were one of the best performers in a given stat over a five year range if not the decade. A score of "3" means they are a historically significant outlier, and anything higher than that is utter ridiculousness.
I'm probably gonna be doing a lot of fun stuff with this database over the next few months, but I figured what more fun way to introduce you all to this index than something that seeks to objectively rank the most badass, smashmouth, hard-nosed, and physically terrifying teams in NFL history? To begin, we have to ask ourselves...
What does "badass" mean?
Some of this should come as no surprise. The Steel Curtain Steelers are widely considered to be one of the best dynasties of all-time, most well-known for their overwhelming defenses and the rushing contributions of Franco Harris and Rocky Bleier. The 1976 Pittsburgh Steelers led the league in total rushing defense, fewest rushing touchdowns allowed and fewest yards per attempt allowed by massive margins. Additionally, as of 1976, this was the third most rushing yards a team had ever totaled to go along with a ridiculous 2.36 rushing touchdowns per game. Though this wasn't the best season in the history of the Steel Curtain, it was definitely their most badass.
In a three-year span from 1984-1986, the Chicago Bears were so insanely badass that they made the top five three times (and I should note, several other Bears teams from that era were not far off). I think most people would have anticipated the 1985 Bears on this list, but this truly does illustrate the way in which Ditka and Ryan took smashmouth football to it's logical extremes with immense rushing totals, historically anachronistic reliance on the ground game, and the utterly bonkers defensive numbers that these Chicago teams have come to be famous for.
The 1973 Los Angeles Rams might be less familiar to you all than the others on this list, but I can vouch for their badassery. They were one of the most comprehensively good teams to never win a playoff game, for starters. They ran the ball an average of over 47 times per game for an average of nearly 209 yards per game, the sixth most of the Super Bowl era. They also led the league in most rushing defense categories and had the third most sacks, and though this holds less weight, they allowed QB John Hadl to be sacked just 17 times.
The 1949 Philadelphia Eagles get a bump by virtue of being the single most run-heavy team in the recorded history of the NFL, rushing for a (still standing!) NFL record 53 times per game. Better stated, that constitutes over 70% of all of their offensive plays. They also had an elite rushing defense and averaged 3.75 sacks per game defensively en route to an NFL Championship. Running back Steve Van Buren set an NFL record that season with 1,146 yards (on an NFL record 263 attempts) that wouldn't be broken until Jim Brown utterly shattered it in 1958, rushing for 1,527 yards on six fewer attempts (which, I'll say, is pretty badass).
The 2001 Pittsburgh Steelers are our first 21st century team, and one of the more superficially badass teams on the list with their big OL, classical Steelers defensive grit, running QB in Kordell Stewart and a bruising 260-pound RB in Jerome Bettis. They have the fourth highest rushing attempts total of the last twenty years. They get dragged down a bit by their general lack of turnovers created.
Perhaps the most surprising inclusion in the top ten is the 2017 Jacksonville Jaguars, because we don't really associate them with either rushing offense or defense which this list has henceforth been centered around (they, in fact had a relatively average if not below average rushing defense for the era while their top two rushers averaged under 4 YPC on the season). They benefit from the "Sacksonville" bump, they had the second highest sack totals and sack rate of the era behind the 2017 Steelers (who sucked at running the ball) as well as a very high rushing attempts Z-Score. They also were such a substantial outlier as a passing defense that they made significant gains in the "total defense" category.
And finally, it wouldn't be a list about badass teams without including the Baltimore Ravens. Most of you are probably baffled about the exclusion of the 2000 Ravens in favor of these two teams (the 2000 team ranks 28th). I'll admit this gave me some degree of pause about the validity of the formula, but all in all I've made my peace with it. The 2000 Ravens had a below average pass rush, weren't great at protecting the QB, and weren't particularly dominant as a rushing offense. The 2019 Ravens, by contrast, weren't quite as dominant in many defensive stats as you'd expect from a Ravens team but were so intergalactically, astronomically off the charts in their rushing figures for the era that they supersede all that. The 2003 Ravens, notable for being the year that Jamal Lewis rushed for 2,066 rushing yards, were more aesthetically traditional and balanced on the badassery front.
Those of you who aren't Steelers, Ravens or Bears fans might be somewhat disappointed by the exclusion of one of your team's most badass seasons, which is why I have taken the liberty of also compiling...
I won't spend too much time on this and will let you folks look into this at your own leisure. But there's a few interesting ones.
The 2013 Cincinnati Bengals might seem like an interesting "most badass" team, as I'm sure there are plenty of fans here who remember that team and don't remember them as being particularly badass. This is backed up by their relatively meager .7009 Badass Score!TM and 265th rank, which is basically just in the "pretty badass" range. Their defense was generally quite good and allowed just six total rushing touchdowns, and they ran the ball a lot (but poorly). The 1988 Bengals are just down the line at rank 274th, that was the second Super Bowl run of their franchise's history which saw the likes of Ickey Woods and James Brooks dominate the rushing scene (for my money, one of the most underrated running games of all-time).
The 1977 "Grits Blitz" Atlanta Falcons, famous for achieving a still-standing Super Bowl era record for points allowed per game (just 9.2!), are another low-ranking badass team. This is largely because of how one-sided their badassery manifested, they were a dominant defense in almost all respects while being an utterly putrid offense, despite high rushing attempts.
The 1972 Miami Dolphins, famous for being the only team in the Super Bowl era to have a comprehensively undefeated season, just barely missed out on the top ten by coming in at #11. I feel like the badassery of this team is oftentimes understated in discussions about the season, but this team really was truly badass. Led by a beefed up Marlboro model in fullback Larry Csonka, the Dolphins put together one of the best running games of all time and forced an average of nearly 3.3 turnovers per game.
Now, let's get into something that will really rile people up...
To the dismay of AFC North fans and to the surprise of absolutely no one else, the Ravens are unequivocally NFL history's most badass franchise, followed in turn by the Steelers, Bears and Cowboys before a substantial drop off to the #5 Panthers.
This is not surprising because A) The Ravens as a franchise have historically defined themselves by their throwback, smashmouth approach to the game of football that has in many ways remained consistent since they moved to Baltimore and rebranded in 1996 and B) because... well, their franchise history only goes back to 1996 (the Panthers also benefit from this). It's much easier to achieve outlier status in rankings such as these when the sample size is much smaller.
I should note something that anyone who is actually reading this whole thing (what's your deal, by the way?) has probably already identified, which is that it's much easier to be badass when your team is good. The Ravens and even the Panthers have been successful franchises in their short lives and when you aren't constantly dealing with totally floundering quarterbacks and a general lack of talent you can commit more fully to a singular vision of what you want your team to look and play like. Alternatively, we can also say that in this sport of large men crashing into each other violently, it's no surprise that being extremely badass correlates well with success.
This makes it all the more impressive and interesting that the Steelers and Cowboys, but particularly the Bears, have been able to maintain this common thread of hard-nosed excellence through the ups and downs their franchises have experienced in their long histories. The Steelers and Cowboys have been pretty consistently good for the last 50 years or so, and that helps, but the Bears coming in at third despite being one of the founding teams of the NFL and not enjoying that same level of success consistently is a real achievement in badassery.
EDIT: Little late but I actually ran the numbers for the Steelers from 1996-present and, sorry Ravens fans, the Steelers have a Z-Score of .5076 which means they actually have the lead since the "start" of the Ravens franchise.
And just for shits and giggles because I'm sure someone out there is curious...
This obviously could read just as much like a who's who of generally shitty NFL teams as much as ones about the least badass.
The Colts and the Falcons, my index's least badass NFL franchise, have the unfortunate distinctions of being the only franchises to have two teams in the bottom ten. The 2006 Indianapolis Colts (1,663rd) are also the lowest-ranked team to win a Super Bowl or league championship.
The 1980 New Orleans Saints are the only one I'll devote too much time to. This was right smack dab in the ugliest part of the team's history and they finished with a record of 1-15 with their sole player of significance being quarterback Archie Manning. The Saints passed the ball nearly 59% of the time which was pretty unusual in those days, and they actually finished with a respectable .5401 total passing Z-Score (which we'll get into in the coming weeks). But their rushing attempts and rushing totals were terrible, and they were notable for their awful defense which gave up the second most rushing yards of any team in the 16-game era (to go along with giving up more TDs and more Y/A than the 1978 Buffalo Bills, who were first in yards).
Outside of them, I think we're all pretty familiar with how generally godawful the 2008 Detroit Lions and the 1999 Cleveland Browns were at basically everything. And though the 2020 Houston Texans had some more success as a team because of the efforts of a certain controversial quarterback, I'm sure it doesn't take too much recollection to remember that they were a pretty pitiful defense as a whole.
And now to the boring stuff.
I'll begin with some important considerations and concessions.
I settled on Z-Score (which is a measurement that takes a given value subtracted by the average of a given data set with the sum then divided by the standard deviation of that given data set) because I believed it would be the best and easiest way to compare across eras, taking all of the guesswork out of the equation by converting a team's performance in a given stat within their era to a raw figure that can then be easily compared to a figure from another era.
I used Google Sheets' ArrayFormula, AVERAGE, STDEV, IF, and ISBETWEEN functions to calculate a rolling Z-Score for each individual statistic within a five-year range. What I mean by this is that the formula will take the information in a given adjacent cell that I want to calculate a Z-Score for, find the year that corresponds with that cell, and calculate only the cells in the column that constitute teams from two years prior to that given cell, the year that the cell is a part of, and the two years succeeding the year of that given cell.
In past iterations I did this calculation in fixed five year ranges, For example, I'd calculate the average and standard deviation of a stat from 1955-1959 (and then 1960-1964, 1965-1969 and so on) and it wouldn't matter if the team statistic I'm calculating is from 1955 or 1959 because they're all being calculated within the same fixed range. Now, with my current method, a statistic from 1955 is only being compared to that statistic from 1953-1957, a statistic from 1959 is only being compared to that statistic from 1957-1961, etc. I think this makes for a more fair comparison and a more accurate representation of reality.
I breezed through that for all of the important stats, and made two scores of my own in Protection Score ([Sacks Allowed Z-Score+Sack% Z-Score]/2) and Rush Score ([Sacks Z-Score+Sack Rate Z-Score]/2).Then I took the ones that most constitute "badassery" (which were pulled from a Reddit post I made a while ago asking people what they believe makes a team "badass"), made sure the seasons were all aligned across the different spreadsheets, and pasted them into the spreadsheet that I linked at the top of this post. Then I did a simple calculation with all of them to find a given team's Badass Score!TM, which is as follows:
If I had to do it over again I'd probably add a 1.2 or 1.3 multiplier to rushing defense, that feels like it was underrepresented.
Until next time!
Thanks to anyone who reads any bit of this. I realize this may seem pointless and excessive but this is a goofy hobby I periodically choose to do over rewatching Community again or whatever and, believe it or not, I get a real kick out of it.
I "started" this back in 2018 and have never shared it with anyone, and I fully understand that by making a shitpost this high effort I am opening myself up to a certain level of ridicule, but I'm truly interested in whatever you guys have to say. This is just a tiny part of the things this database has to offer and I hope to share it with you all even more as I use it to explore NFL history's excellence, intrigue and catastrophic failure.
Join me next time, when we break up the doldrums of the months prior to training camp by delving into another episode of "Dead Period Hijinks". Passing offense, maybe? Let me know what you want.
Thanks to the beautiful football nerds at ProFootballReference, perhaps the only people on this planet who are bigger geeks about this stuff than I am.
Like, comment and subscribe. Haha. Just joking.
EDIT: Really appreciating the love guys. This post was a long-time coming and it feels awesome that I was able to share this with you all and people appreciate it.
Just a heads up, I just created a few different sheets within that spreadsheet that organizes all of the teams by decade. So if you're interested, make sure to check that out. :)
submitted by gyman122 to nfl [link] [comments]
Now, that said, over the last few years I have been compiling and organizing a database of every individual season by a team that is currently available on ProFootballReference. I have then used this database to calculate Z-Scores for each individual stat for each individual team. Which is fine, Warren Buffett plays the ukulele, Aaron Rodgers makes his own soap and Sylvia Plath liked to bake. Everybody has their hobbies.
Here's the spreadsheet I'll be referencing in this post, which includes the complete ranking of all 2,053 individual team seasons, if you're interested.
What is Z-Score? Who cares. Most of you are probably barely skimming over this or skipping to the findings.
If you do care, head down to the Methodology section at the bottom of this post and you can tell me about all the ways in which this has been an extremely flawed undertaking.
For our purposes all you need to know is that, using Z-Score, I have devised a way to compare across different eras of the sport by comparing the raw numbers of a given stat (adjusted to per game averages to account for the differences in games played per season) to a given team's peers within their own era. So, for example, a team from 1973 rushing for 2000 yards as a team will have a lower score in "total rushing yards" than a team from 2015 rushing for 2000 yards because the average rushing totals from 1971-1975 are higher than 2013-2017, and it will take a higher mark from the 1973 team to overcome that handicap. And vice versa, if we are talking about passing yards or something like that.
A higher Z-score is better (except for in the case of Protection Score, because allowing sacks is not badass). a score of "0" is totally average. A score of "1" is very good. A score of "2" means they were one of the best performers in a given stat over a five year range if not the decade. A score of "3" means they are a historically significant outlier, and anything higher than that is utter ridiculousness.
I'm probably gonna be doing a lot of fun stuff with this database over the next few months, but I figured what more fun way to introduce you all to this index than something that seeks to objectively rank the most badass, smashmouth, hard-nosed, and physically terrifying teams in NFL history? To begin, we have to ask ourselves...
What does "badass" mean?
- Running the ball a lot (rushing attempts)
- Running the ball well (total rushing, "total" meaning a combination of yards, TDs and Y/A)
- Stopping the run (total rushing defense)
- Having a good defense in general (total defense)
- Forcing turnovers (turnovers forced)
- Having a good offensive line (a combination of sacks allowed and sack%)
- Having a good pass rush (a combination of sacks and sack rate)
The Top 10 Most Badass Teams of All Time
| Team | Badass Score! | Rushing Att | Rushing Total | Rushing Defense | Total Defense | Turnovers Forced | Protection Score | Pass Rush |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. 1976 Pittsburgh Steelers | 1.8088 | 2.5801 | 2.5416 | 1.8571 | 1.8212 | 1.5558 | -.2320 | .6921 |
| 2. 1985 Chicago Bears | 1.7769 | 1.9359 | 1.9644 | 1.5001 | 2.1531 | 2.1072 | .1804 | 1.6678 |
| 3. 1986 Chicago Bears | 1.7471 | 2.0086 | 1.5644 | 1.7512 | 2.4323 | 1.4060 | -1.1450 | 1.6134 |
| 4. 1973 Los Angeles Rams | 1.6787 | 2.9212 | 1.4354 | 1.6269 | 1.7140 | .5144 | -1.1323 | 1.8546 |
| 5. 1984 Chicago Bears | 1.6653 | 2.9891 | 1.6984 | 1.2396 | 1.9351 | -.4892 | -.2286 | 2.8014 |
| 6. 1949 Philadelphia Eagles | 1.6478 | 2.7979 | 1.1051 | 1.3981 | 2.1978 | .3935 | -1.4197 | 1.9981 |
| 7. 2001 Pittsburgh Steelers | 1.5792 | 2.7232 | 1.7435 | 1.6233 | 1.7852 | -.2375 | -.3693 | 1.9534 |
| 8. 2017 Jacksonville Jaguars | 1.5749 | 2.2948 | .9430 | .1364 | 1.9667 | 1.8451 | -1.2058 | 2.4650 |
| 9. 2019 Baltimore Ravens | 1.5618 | 3.5770 | 2.9060 | .4837 | 1.2390 | .6330 | -.5888 | -.0475 |
| 10. 2003 Baltimore Ravens | 1.5403 | 2.0442 | 1.6645 | 1.4504 | 1.6376 | 1.8970 | .8440 | 1.2575 |
In a three-year span from 1984-1986, the Chicago Bears were so insanely badass that they made the top five three times (and I should note, several other Bears teams from that era were not far off). I think most people would have anticipated the 1985 Bears on this list, but this truly does illustrate the way in which Ditka and Ryan took smashmouth football to it's logical extremes with immense rushing totals, historically anachronistic reliance on the ground game, and the utterly bonkers defensive numbers that these Chicago teams have come to be famous for.
The 1973 Los Angeles Rams might be less familiar to you all than the others on this list, but I can vouch for their badassery. They were one of the most comprehensively good teams to never win a playoff game, for starters. They ran the ball an average of over 47 times per game for an average of nearly 209 yards per game, the sixth most of the Super Bowl era. They also led the league in most rushing defense categories and had the third most sacks, and though this holds less weight, they allowed QB John Hadl to be sacked just 17 times.
The 1949 Philadelphia Eagles get a bump by virtue of being the single most run-heavy team in the recorded history of the NFL, rushing for a (still standing!) NFL record 53 times per game. Better stated, that constitutes over 70% of all of their offensive plays. They also had an elite rushing defense and averaged 3.75 sacks per game defensively en route to an NFL Championship. Running back Steve Van Buren set an NFL record that season with 1,146 yards (on an NFL record 263 attempts) that wouldn't be broken until Jim Brown utterly shattered it in 1958, rushing for 1,527 yards on six fewer attempts (which, I'll say, is pretty badass).
The 2001 Pittsburgh Steelers are our first 21st century team, and one of the more superficially badass teams on the list with their big OL, classical Steelers defensive grit, running QB in Kordell Stewart and a bruising 260-pound RB in Jerome Bettis. They have the fourth highest rushing attempts total of the last twenty years. They get dragged down a bit by their general lack of turnovers created.
Perhaps the most surprising inclusion in the top ten is the 2017 Jacksonville Jaguars, because we don't really associate them with either rushing offense or defense which this list has henceforth been centered around (they, in fact had a relatively average if not below average rushing defense for the era while their top two rushers averaged under 4 YPC on the season). They benefit from the "Sacksonville" bump, they had the second highest sack totals and sack rate of the era behind the 2017 Steelers (who sucked at running the ball) as well as a very high rushing attempts Z-Score. They also were such a substantial outlier as a passing defense that they made significant gains in the "total defense" category.
And finally, it wouldn't be a list about badass teams without including the Baltimore Ravens. Most of you are probably baffled about the exclusion of the 2000 Ravens in favor of these two teams (the 2000 team ranks 28th). I'll admit this gave me some degree of pause about the validity of the formula, but all in all I've made my peace with it. The 2000 Ravens had a below average pass rush, weren't great at protecting the QB, and weren't particularly dominant as a rushing offense. The 2019 Ravens, by contrast, weren't quite as dominant in many defensive stats as you'd expect from a Ravens team but were so intergalactically, astronomically off the charts in their rushing figures for the era that they supersede all that. The 2003 Ravens, notable for being the year that Jamal Lewis rushed for 2,066 rushing yards, were more aesthetically traditional and balanced on the badassery front.
Those of you who aren't Steelers, Ravens or Bears fans might be somewhat disappointed by the exclusion of one of your team's most badass seasons, which is why I have taken the liberty of also compiling...
Every NFL Franchise's Most Badass Team
| Team | Badass Score! | Rushing Att | Rushing Total | Rushing Defense | Total Defense | Turnovers Forced | Protection Score | Pass Rush |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| NFC North | ||||||||
| 1985 Chicago Bears (2nd) | 1.7769 | 1.9359 | 1.9644 | 1.5001 | 2.1531 | 2.1072 | .1804 | 1.6678 |
| 1962 Green Bay Packers (14th) | 1.4544 | 1.6559 | 2.3024 | 1.0758 | 2.1270 | 1.1846 | .3117 | .7515 |
| 1969 Minnesota Vikings (45th) | 1.1758 | 1.0371 | .1961 | 1.7341 | 2.4797 | .9477 | .1834 | 1.5274 |
| 1962 Detroit Lions (51st) | 1.1479 | 1.1370 | .0291 | 1.4793 | 2.0171 | .7991 | -.3544 | 2.1055 |
| NFC East | ||||||||
| 1971 Dallas Cowboys (27th) | 1.3182 | .9152 | 1.5896 | 1.5267 | 1.0252 | 2.4735 | -.0109 | .9419 |
| 1983 Washington Redskins (19th) | 1.4048 | 2.1188 | 1.6810 | 1.3654 | -.3130 | 2.8984 | -1.5517 | .4258 |
| 1949 Philadelphia Eagles (6th) | 1.6478 | 2.7979 | 1.1051 | 1.3981 | 2.1978 | .3935 | -1.4197 | 1.9981 |
| 1985 New York Giants (46th) | 1.1714 | 1.4497 | 1.2211 | 1.3345 | 1.7204 | -.0802 | .5992 | 1.9530 |
| NFC South | ||||||||
| 1987 New Orleans Saints (44th) | 1.1782 | 2.0609 | .7022 | .7909 | .8641 | 2.0542 | -.5763 | .7538 |
| 1977 Atlanta Falcons (140th) | .8736 | 1.3595 | -1.1356 | 1.0625 | 2.0763 | 1.9032 | .9753 | 1.1073 |
| 2015 Carolina Panthers (25th) | 1.3319 | 2.1081 | 1.1764 | .7715 | 1.0339 | 2.7216 | -.2536 | .4419 |
| 2000 Tampa Bay Buccaneers (123rd) | .9166 | .9477 | .7578 | .1419 | .9817 | 1.6618 | .2462 | 1.4955 |
| NFC West | ||||||||
| 1973 Los Angeles Rams (4th) | 1.6787 | 2.9212 | 1.4354 | 1.6269 | 1.7140 | .5144 | -1.1323 | 1.8546 |
| 2014 Seattle Seahawks (22nd) | 1.3476 | 1.9702 | 2.3429 | 1.6013 | 2.2606 | .0254 | .8574 | .2250 |
| 1997 San Francisco 49ers (24th) | 1.3345 | 1.5580 | .3860 | 1.3723 | 1.9924 | 1.7465 | .8133 | 1.9739 |
| 1960 St. Louis Cardinals (20th) | 1.4003 | 2.1735 | 1.2669 | 1.1681 | 1.1818 | 1.2297 | -.4220 | 1.6093 |
| AFC North | ||||||||
| 1976 Pittsburgh Steelers (1st) | 1.8088 | 2.5801 | 2.5416 | 1.8571 | 1.8212 | 1.5558 | -.2320 | .6921 |
| 2019 Baltimore Ravens (9th) | 1.5618 | 3.5770 | 2.9060 | .4837 | 1.2390 | .6330 | -.5888 | -.0475 |
| 2013 Cincinnati Bengals (265th) | .7009 | .9856 | -.3655 | .9695 | 1.3690 | 1.0452 | -.9255 | .4076 |
| 1954 Cleveland Browns (183rd) | .8024 | 1.0870 | .5788 | 1.9463 | 1.7782 | .2851 | .0898 | -.5286 |
| AFC East | ||||||||
| 2009 New York Jets (15th) | 1.4470 | 3.3105 | 1.7302 | .6979 | 2.3470 | .7515 | .0155 | -.2150 |
| 1976 New England Patriots (26th) | 1.3205 | 1.4883 | 2.3987 | .2697 | .4343 | 2.1265 | -1.2181 | .9540 |
| 1972 Miami Dolphins (11th) | 1.5249 | 2.4715 | 2.4910 | .6153 | 1.3267 | 1.8078 | -.6007 | .2729 |
| 1992 Buffalo Bills (50th) | 1.1484 | 1.9484 | 1.5257 | 1.2578 | .7933 | .5785 | -.6844 | .6649 |
| AFC South | ||||||||
| 2011 Houston Texans (62nd) | 1.1150 | 2.1482 | 1.1658 | .7827 | 1.4832 | .1669 | -.1334 | 1.0192 |
| 2000 Tennessee Titans (30th) | 1.2984 | 2.0808 | .2119 | 1.1376 | 2.4181 | .0455 | -.8378 | 2.2281 |
| 2017 Jacksonville Jaguars (8th) | 1.5749 | 2.2948 | .9430 | .1364 | 1.9667 | 1.8451 | -1.2058 | 2.4650 |
| 1958 Baltimore Colts (60th) | 1.1190 | .8568 | 1.5488 | .6029 | .8986 | 2.4836 | -.9947 | .3890 |
| AFC West | ||||||||
| 1998 Denver Broncos (83rd) | 1.0336 | 1.5215 | 2.1999 | 1.1084 | .3222 | .0338 | -1.1892 | .5366 |
| 1969 Kansas City Chiefs (16th) | 1.4367 | 1.6945 | 1.3058 | 1.3817 | 1.6105 | 1.6736 | -.4980 | 1.3245 |
| 2006 San Diego Chargers (31st) | 1.2980 | 1.3985 | 2.4761 | .1716 | .7007 | .0729 | -.4876 | 2.9413 |
| 1967 Oakland Raiders (34th) | 1.2721 | .6409 | .9183 | 1.3211 | 1.5464 | 1.2602 | .2132 | 2.8212 |
The 2013 Cincinnati Bengals might seem like an interesting "most badass" team, as I'm sure there are plenty of fans here who remember that team and don't remember them as being particularly badass. This is backed up by their relatively meager .7009 Badass Score!TM and 265th rank, which is basically just in the "pretty badass" range. Their defense was generally quite good and allowed just six total rushing touchdowns, and they ran the ball a lot (but poorly). The 1988 Bengals are just down the line at rank 274th, that was the second Super Bowl run of their franchise's history which saw the likes of Ickey Woods and James Brooks dominate the rushing scene (for my money, one of the most underrated running games of all-time).
The 1977 "Grits Blitz" Atlanta Falcons, famous for achieving a still-standing Super Bowl era record for points allowed per game (just 9.2!), are another low-ranking badass team. This is largely because of how one-sided their badassery manifested, they were a dominant defense in almost all respects while being an utterly putrid offense, despite high rushing attempts.
The 1972 Miami Dolphins, famous for being the only team in the Super Bowl era to have a comprehensively undefeated season, just barely missed out on the top ten by coming in at #11. I feel like the badassery of this team is oftentimes understated in discussions about the season, but this team really was truly badass. Led by a beefed up Marlboro model in fullback Larry Csonka, the Dolphins put together one of the best running games of all time and forced an average of nearly 3.3 turnovers per game.
Now, let's get into something that will really rile people up...
Which NFL FRANCHISE Is The Most Badass?
| Rank | Team | Franchise Average |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Ravens | .4793 |
| 2 | Steelers | .3392 |
| 3 | Bears | .2592 |
| 4 | Cowboys | .2459 |
| 5 | Panthers | .1510 |
| 6 | 49ers | .1367 |
| 7 | Chiefs | .1224 |
| 8 | Vikings | .1185 |
| 9 | Rams | .0810 |
| 10 | Patriots | .0783 |
| 11 | Giants | .0655 |
| 12 | Bills | .0532 |
| 13 | Broncos | .0505 |
| 14 | Packers | .0294 |
| 15 | Eagles | .0162 |
| 16 | Seahawks | -.0120 |
| 17 | Titans/Oilers | -.0179 |
| 18 | Raiders | -.0279 |
| 19 | Commanders/Football Team/Redskins | -.0428 |
| 20 | Chargers | -.0560 |
| 21 | Dolphins | -.0642 |
| 22 | Browns | -.0808 |
| 23 | Saints | -.1106 |
| 24 | Jaguars | -.1195 |
| 25 | Jets/Titans | -.1317 |
| 26 | Bengals | -.1331 |
| 27 | Colts | -.1507 |
| 28 | Lions | -.1567 |
| 29 | Texans | -.1997 |
| 30 | Buccaneers | -.2171 |
| 31 | Cardinals | -.2267 |
| 32 | Falcons | -.3473 |
This is not surprising because A) The Ravens as a franchise have historically defined themselves by their throwback, smashmouth approach to the game of football that has in many ways remained consistent since they moved to Baltimore and rebranded in 1996 and B) because... well, their franchise history only goes back to 1996 (the Panthers also benefit from this). It's much easier to achieve outlier status in rankings such as these when the sample size is much smaller.
I should note something that anyone who is actually reading this whole thing (what's your deal, by the way?) has probably already identified, which is that it's much easier to be badass when your team is good. The Ravens and even the Panthers have been successful franchises in their short lives and when you aren't constantly dealing with totally floundering quarterbacks and a general lack of talent you can commit more fully to a singular vision of what you want your team to look and play like. Alternatively, we can also say that in this sport of large men crashing into each other violently, it's no surprise that being extremely badass correlates well with success.
This makes it all the more impressive and interesting that the Steelers and Cowboys, but particularly the Bears, have been able to maintain this common thread of hard-nosed excellence through the ups and downs their franchises have experienced in their long histories. The Steelers and Cowboys have been pretty consistently good for the last 50 years or so, and that helps, but the Bears coming in at third despite being one of the founding teams of the NFL and not enjoying that same level of success consistently is a real achievement in badassery.
EDIT: Little late but I actually ran the numbers for the Steelers from 1996-present and, sorry Ravens fans, the Steelers have a Z-Score of .5076 which means they actually have the lead since the "start" of the Ravens franchise.
And just for shits and giggles because I'm sure someone out there is curious...
The Top 10 LEAST Badass Teams of All Time
| Team | Badass Score! | Rushing Att | Rushing Total | Rushing Defense | Total Defense | Turnovers Forced | Protection Score | Pass Rush |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. 1980 New Orleans Saints | -1.9271 | -2.9003 | -1.1670 | -2.6361 | -2.2819 | -2.2334 | .3470 | -.9353 |
| 2. 1999 Cleveland Browns | -1.7911 | -2.5863 | -1.1081 | -2.5518 | -1.4126 | -1.4183 | 1.7673 | -1.7630 |
| 3. 1987 Atlanta Falcons | -1.7200 | -2.1845 | -1.2280 | -2.3395 | -1.9394 | -1.0418 | .4562 | -2.1311 |
| 4. 1972 New England Patriots | -1.6173 | -1.4115 | -.2718 | -2.5556 | -2.7992 | -1.5086 | .8806 | -1.9757 |
| 5. 2008 Detroit Lions | -1.5773 | -1.7216 | -.9853 | -2.8053 | -2.7676 | -1.2193 | 1.5205 | -.2232 |
| 6. 1981 Baltimore Colts | -1.5217 | -1.1995 | -.2619 | -1.9002 | -3.2232 | -1.2110 | -.1611 | -2.4715 |
| 7. 2000 Arizona Cardinals | -1.4943 | -1.9747 | -1.2283 | -2.3212 | -1.2772 | -1.4238 | -.4089 | -1.4105 |
| 8. 1992 Atlanta Falcons | -1.4640 | -2.2886 | -1.1781 | -2.0432 | -1.9017 | -1.3309 | .0928 | -.4345 |
| 9. 2020 Houston Texans | -1.4322 | -1.5880 | -.7427 | -2.2154 | -1.7651 | -2.2529 | 1.0908 | -.3984 |
| 10. 1993 Indianapolis Colts | -1.4269 | -1.5437 | -1.3615 | -2.0424 | -1.2348 | -1.6139 | -.7689 | -1.5765 |
The Colts and the Falcons, my index's least badass NFL franchise, have the unfortunate distinctions of being the only franchises to have two teams in the bottom ten. The 2006 Indianapolis Colts (1,663rd) are also the lowest-ranked team to win a Super Bowl or league championship.
The 1980 New Orleans Saints are the only one I'll devote too much time to. This was right smack dab in the ugliest part of the team's history and they finished with a record of 1-15 with their sole player of significance being quarterback Archie Manning. The Saints passed the ball nearly 59% of the time which was pretty unusual in those days, and they actually finished with a respectable .5401 total passing Z-Score (which we'll get into in the coming weeks). But their rushing attempts and rushing totals were terrible, and they were notable for their awful defense which gave up the second most rushing yards of any team in the 16-game era (to go along with giving up more TDs and more Y/A than the 1978 Buffalo Bills, who were first in yards).
Outside of them, I think we're all pretty familiar with how generally godawful the 2008 Detroit Lions and the 1999 Cleveland Browns were at basically everything. And though the 2020 Houston Texans had some more success as a team because of the efforts of a certain controversial quarterback, I'm sure it doesn't take too much recollection to remember that they were a pretty pitiful defense as a whole.
And now to the boring stuff.
Methodology
- This database is compiled purely from regular season statistics. Sorry folks, playoff statistics organized neatly for compilation are just hard to come by and to be honest I'm not even sure how I'd weight them.
- I did not differentiate between teams in the NFL, AFL and AAFC so they were all calculated together. In previous iterations of this database I did, but when I recently figured out a Google Sheets formula I liked to calculate everything from all six of my spreadsheets within a matter of a couple hours, I decided I was not that interested in adding a few more hours finding and separating these teams to calculate their Z-Scores that way. It is also my belief that outside of the first few years of the AFL the two major leagues were not massively different in their league averages. So the only real big thing is that the AAFC has some historically anachronistic offensive totals and that should be taken into account.
- Because of the method that I used to calculate this, the two seasons on the most recent end of the time spectrum (2020 and 2021) were not calculated within a five-year range like all of the other teams but were instead calculated by a three-year range (2021 from 2019-2021) and a four-year range (2020 from 2018-2021).
- No consideration was given to removing outliers from a given data set. I might be sort of decent at this type of spreadsheet wizardry but that seemed like too much work to figure out.
- There have, of course, been more than 2,053 individual team seasons in NFL history, but the ProFootballReference database only goes back to 1932 and the most recent year in which most of the necessary stats were available for every team was 1937. Any statistic that is not available for a team in this particular database (for instance, the 1941 Bears did not record sacks and sacks allowed) was replaced with a Z-Score of "0", totally average. Also, who here is really going to care about teams prior to the 40's?
I settled on Z-Score (which is a measurement that takes a given value subtracted by the average of a given data set with the sum then divided by the standard deviation of that given data set) because I believed it would be the best and easiest way to compare across eras, taking all of the guesswork out of the equation by converting a team's performance in a given stat within their era to a raw figure that can then be easily compared to a figure from another era.
I used Google Sheets' ArrayFormula, AVERAGE, STDEV, IF, and ISBETWEEN functions to calculate a rolling Z-Score for each individual statistic within a five-year range. What I mean by this is that the formula will take the information in a given adjacent cell that I want to calculate a Z-Score for, find the year that corresponds with that cell, and calculate only the cells in the column that constitute teams from two years prior to that given cell, the year that the cell is a part of, and the two years succeeding the year of that given cell.
In past iterations I did this calculation in fixed five year ranges, For example, I'd calculate the average and standard deviation of a stat from 1955-1959 (and then 1960-1964, 1965-1969 and so on) and it wouldn't matter if the team statistic I'm calculating is from 1955 or 1959 because they're all being calculated within the same fixed range. Now, with my current method, a statistic from 1955 is only being compared to that statistic from 1953-1957, a statistic from 1959 is only being compared to that statistic from 1957-1961, etc. I think this makes for a more fair comparison and a more accurate representation of reality.
I breezed through that for all of the important stats, and made two scores of my own in Protection Score ([Sacks Allowed Z-Score+Sack% Z-Score]/2) and Rush Score ([Sacks Z-Score+Sack Rate Z-Score]/2).Then I took the ones that most constitute "badassery" (which were pulled from a Reddit post I made a while ago asking people what they believe makes a team "badass"), made sure the seasons were all aligned across the different spreadsheets, and pasted them into the spreadsheet that I linked at the top of this post. Then I did a simple calculation with all of them to find a given team's Badass Score!TM, which is as follows:
Badass Score!^TM=((RushingAttemptsZ-Score*1.3)+(Rushing Z-Score*1.3)+(RushingDefenseZ-Score)+(([TotalYardsA Z-Score+TotalPointsA Z-Score+YPA Z-Score]/3)+(TurnoversForcedZ-Score)+(-ProtectionScore/3)+(RushScore*1.2))/7Then it was as simple as sorting the whole spreadsheet by Column B from Z to A. The truth is since I already had the vast majority of the teams copy-pasted into spreadsheets and their totals adjusted to per game averages from several years ago, this project didn't take me more than a few hours.
If I had to do it over again I'd probably add a 1.2 or 1.3 multiplier to rushing defense, that feels like it was underrepresented.
Thanks to anyone who reads any bit of this. I realize this may seem pointless and excessive but this is a goofy hobby I periodically choose to do over rewatching Community again or whatever and, believe it or not, I get a real kick out of it.
I "started" this back in 2018 and have never shared it with anyone, and I fully understand that by making a shitpost this high effort I am opening myself up to a certain level of ridicule, but I'm truly interested in whatever you guys have to say. This is just a tiny part of the things this database has to offer and I hope to share it with you all even more as I use it to explore NFL history's excellence, intrigue and catastrophic failure.
Join me next time, when we break up the doldrums of the months prior to training camp by delving into another episode of "Dead Period Hijinks". Passing offense, maybe? Let me know what you want.
Thanks to the beautiful football nerds at ProFootballReference, perhaps the only people on this planet who are bigger geeks about this stuff than I am.
Like, comment and subscribe. Haha. Just joking.
Just a heads up, I just created a few different sheets within that spreadsheet that organizes all of the teams by decade. So if you're interested, make sure to check that out. :)
2022.03.11 11:21 BenderRodriguez14 First Python Code - works, but looks extremely inefficient... help?
So I'm doing a cert course in python, and basically I am just seeing if there are any ways for me to clean up my code to make it more efficient?
It is doing all that I want it to and is functioning fine which is a relief for my first effort, but I am certain I could reduce the number of lines by quite a lot if I could get multiple arguments into the same line(s). Newbie that I am though, I keep running into errors that I have no idea how to get around when I try this, so am hoping someone might be able to lend a hand?
I will likely be replicating this 10 times to cover a decade, so it could be pretty unwieldy otherwise, and best to get off on the right foot about good/bad practices in code!
A quick run through of what I am looking to do with the below:
submitted by BenderRodriguez14 to CodingHelp [link] [comments]
It is doing all that I want it to and is functioning fine which is a relief for my first effort, but I am certain I could reduce the number of lines by quite a lot if I could get multiple arguments into the same line(s). Newbie that I am though, I keep running into errors that I have no idea how to get around when I try this, so am hoping someone might be able to lend a hand?
I will likely be replicating this 10 times to cover a decade, so it could be pretty unwieldy otherwise, and best to get off on the right foot about good/bad practices in code!
A quick run through of what I am looking to do with the below:
- Pull the data from profootballreference.com
- Drop the rows at 29, 60 and 91 (they just repeat the columns headers for easier web viewing/scrolling).
- Fill the NaNs at 'Pos' with 'QB' (quarterback) and for two other columns that have some with '0'.
- Separate 'QBrec' into three columns named QBwin, QBloss, QBdraw, with '-' as the delimiter (as 13-3-1 in QBrec would be for 13 wins, 3 losses, and 1 draw).
- Take a large number of the columns (which seem to be defaulting as str) and switch them to numeric.
- Filter the 'Att' (passes the QB attempted in the season) column to a minimum of 250.
- Create a column named 'W/L%' by getting 'QBwin' (from the 3 separated above) as a percentage of 'GS' (games this QB started).
- Round the W/L% column to just 3 decimal places.
- Sort the dataframe by the 'W/L%' column.
- Set the W/L% column as the index.
- Have it display all rows & columns upon printing.
- Print.
import pandas as pd url = 'https://www.pro-football-reference.com/years/2020/passing.htm' twenty = pd.read_html(url)[0] twentyfixed = twenty.drop(labels=[29, 60, 91]) twentyfixed['Pos'] = twentyfixed['Pos'].fillna('QB') twentyfixed['4QC'] = twentyfixed['4QC'].fillna('0') twentyfixed['GWD'] = twentyfixed['GWD'].fillna('0') twentyfixed[['QBwin', 'QBloss', 'QBdraw']] = twentyfixed['QBrec'].str.split('-', expand=True) twentyfixed[['Rk', 'Age', 'G', 'GS', 'Cmp', 'Att', 'Cmp%', 'Yds', 'TD', 'TD%', 'Int', 'Int%', '1D', 'Lng', 'Y/A', 'AY/A', 'Y/C', 'Y/G', 'Rate', 'QBR', 'Sk', 'Yds.1', 'Sk%', 'NY/A', 'ANY/A', '4QC', 'GWD', 'QBwin', 'QBloss', 'QBdraw']] = twentyfixed[['Rk', 'Age', 'G', 'GS', 'Cmp', 'Att', 'Cmp%', 'Yds', 'TD', 'TD%', 'Int', 'Int%', '1D', 'Lng', 'Y/A', 'AY/A', 'Y/C', 'Y/G', 'Rate', 'QBR', 'Sk', 'Yds.1', 'Sk%', 'NY/A', 'ANY/A', '4QC', 'GWD', 'QBwin', 'QBloss', 'QBdraw']].apply(pd.to_numeric) twentyfinal = twentyfixed[twentyfixed['Att'] > 250] twentyfinal['W/L%'] = twentyfinal['QBwin'] / twentyfinal['GS'] * 100 twentyfinal['W/L%'] = twentyfinal['W/L%'].round(3) twentyfinal = twentyfinal.sort_values(by=['W/L%'], ascending=False) twentyfinal = twentyfinal.set_index('W/L%') twentyfull= pd.set_option("display.max_rows", None, "display.max_columns", None) print(twentyfinal) ``` 2022.01.10 16:44 16bitFantasy Player Evolution YoY By Position
Hey everyone! Now that the regular season is settled, I've already started to do some initial research based on this past season. This could get pretty long.
I recently got into Fantasy football and easy to say I'm pretty hooked. Anyway, I wanted to do an analysis on how players tend to evolve by position group as their careers progress, in order to see if I can get a slight edge when drafting Rookies, sophomores, or 3rd-year players next season. Any and all feedback is appreciated, as I’m looking to tweak and edit this project (in the future, looking at year 4 and year 5 players as well to further validate) as well as other analysis I think could be useful this offseason. These numbers are PPR scoring, and data comes from profootballreference.com
To do this, I took the overall stats and fantasy points averages for players who were in their 3rd year in the league during the 2021-22 season (NOTE: These charts only take into account drafted rookies so far for simplicity's sake, I know there's undrafted guys that have had major impacts). Some of my key questions included:
TL;DR
3rd Year Player Evolution YoY
Okay cool, so players tend to get better the longer they're in the league, great.
The next step is to see how this breaks down by position group. Based on what I had been reading about the TE position the last couple of years, TEs are late bloomers by every stretch of the imagination, and finding one that's super productive in Year 1 or 2 is rare. Let's see how much TEs tended to improve.
Tight Ends
3rd Year TEs
3rd-year TEs averaged 6.3ppg in year 1, and increased production by 40% in year 2, then a whopping 77% (compared to their rookie years) in year 3 to 11.2ppg. These players included guys like Dawson Knox, Noah Fant, TJ Hockensen. I also have data from the Sophomore class on hand, and the growth was similar:
Sophomore TEs
So preliminarily, I would be inclined to expect a 25%-35% increase in production for the second year TEs (Cole Kmet, Albert Okwugenbaum, Adam Trautman, Foster Moreau, Harrison Bryant). Obviously, this is largely dependent on the opportunity. And honestly, a 25% increase in production from 5.3 ppg isn't great. But, for someone like Cole Kmet, a 25% increase from 8ppg would be 10ppg. I'd be okay with something like that if it held true. Anyway, onto the Running Backs!
Running Backs
3rd Year Running Backs
Running Backs roughly improved as much in year 2 as the TEs at 38% increased production, but actually saw a decrease in production from year 2, with only +34% production from year 1 (-3% production from their year 2 performance). To me, I wouldn't say to expect Running Backs to decrease in production in year 3, but rather, most running backs are likely at their ceiling by that time. Take a couple of examples of 3rd year players here:
3rd Year Running Back Examples
So you have a player like David Montgomery, who has had a great opportunity and slightly regressed this past year, but it would be safe to assume that if given the same opportunity as this past season, he could have a realistic range of maybe 15-18ppg. Josh Jacobs looks like he is who he is, and has been since year 1 in retrospect (I'm doing another analysis, but he's definitely a high floor, low upside guy). Then you have guys like Benny Snell and Miles Sanders kind of skewing the progression %. With Sanders, one could argue that the drop in fantasy ppg is due to coaching, not necessarily ability. But at the very least, you could say that even in a bad situation, he can still net you 10 points. Again, this isn't meant to be your only predictive measure, as teams are constantly changing, injuries happen, etc, but its nice to notice some trends. The sophomore class really didn't see as much growth, but there were a lot of guys who got minimal playing time. The class did include Jonathan Taylor, De'andre Swift, CEH, Antonio Gibson, but also DeeJay Dallas, Eno Benjamin, Ke'Shawn Vaughn, Anthony Macfarland, La'Michel Perine, and JJ Taylor. Not to mention injured guys like JK Dobbins and Cam Akers
Sophmore RBs
(Maybe I do an analysis where I look at players with a higher PPG threshold). But for now, it seems like RBs are highly influenced by opportunity, so you should chase GUARANTEED opportunities (Thanks a lot Trey Sermon!) along with talent, and adjust rankings accordingly.
Wide Receivers
3rd Year Wide Receivers
Finally, for WRs, their rookie year can really be a good indicator for future success (assuming they played). By that, I mean this: If a WR gets decent playing time in their rookie year, you could realistically expect a 10-14% increase in production the next 2 years. There are some outliers here, and you need to take certain things in context. DJ Chark is a good example:
DJ Chark
Chark’s production decreased steadily from his rookie year in terms of fantasy ppg. Obviously, this could be attributed to coaching, Chark’s injury cutting the 2021 season short, QB play, etc. Using this data alone, one could conclude that Chark could be a player that’s hard to predict going forward, but that he obviously has the talent to be a roughly 15PPR ppg scorer. Could be a high upside pick later in your drafts. Conversely, Diontae Johnson has increased in production every year he’s been in the league.
Diontae Johnson
Is he going to take another big jump forward? Tough to say, but could be near his ceiling, so when evaluating him as a draft candidate, you could argue that you’re drafting him at his ceiling, and he may be losing Big Ben as a QB. This could contribute to a downtick, but you could also argue Big Ben hasn’t been great on his own, so insert someone like Aaron Rodgers, and you could at least expect Diontae to return similar if not better receiving numbers next season. Then you have someone like Mecole Hardman.
Mecole Hardman
He has not really improved or gotten worse his 3 years in the league. This could mean that he is likely already who he is. He’ll have a couple really good games, with mostly underwhelming ones throughout the season (more to come on boom-bust stuff at some point this offseason). Especially with an already fantastic QB, it’s tough to imagine he’s going to suddenly double his production. At the same time, you know he has a somewhat consistent role on his team and could be a great option in deeper leagues.
All in all, initial conclusions seem to be that RBs growth/regression is largely due to opportunity and depth as opposed to pure talent alone, and it makes sense to look at a player’s projected role on the depth chart to make assumptions (Initial thought, draft capital may not matter a TON, but maybe more to come). For WRs, it seems fair to assume a 10-18% increase in production in year 2, and a 30-40% increase in production in year 2 for TEs.
Again, all feedback is appreciated! Looking forward to seeing what conclusions/opinions you all may have about some of this data, and I'm curious to hear what everyone thinks of some of the players heading into their 2nd and 3rd years in the league!
submitted by 16bitFantasy to fantasyfootball [link] [comments]
I recently got into Fantasy football and easy to say I'm pretty hooked. Anyway, I wanted to do an analysis on how players tend to evolve by position group as their careers progress, in order to see if I can get a slight edge when drafting Rookies, sophomores, or 3rd-year players next season. Any and all feedback is appreciated, as I’m looking to tweak and edit this project (in the future, looking at year 4 and year 5 players as well to further validate) as well as other analysis I think could be useful this offseason. These numbers are PPR scoring, and data comes from profootballreference.com
To do this, I took the overall stats and fantasy points averages for players who were in their 3rd year in the league during the 2021-22 season (NOTE: These charts only take into account drafted rookies so far for simplicity's sake, I know there's undrafted guys that have had major impacts). Some of my key questions included:
TL;DR
- TEs see the most growth in their first 3 years
- Do different positions see a different evolution in production YoY?
- TL;DR - Yes, but you probably knew that
- Is there a linear relationship between years in the league and overall production?
- TL;DR – On average, yes, to varying degrees
- How much of a role does depth chart/opportunity really play?
- TL;DR – For RBs, seems like a LOT. Other positions may be less so.
- Can I rely solely on this data to draft?
- TL;DR – I wouldn't, but it can be good supplemental information as you try and predict how much a player will improve with other factors in play
- This is only data from Weeks 1-17
- Points are based on PPR scoring
- Only players that were drafted are included in this analysis
3rd Year Player Evolution YoY
Okay cool, so players tend to get better the longer they're in the league, great.
The next step is to see how this breaks down by position group. Based on what I had been reading about the TE position the last couple of years, TEs are late bloomers by every stretch of the imagination, and finding one that's super productive in Year 1 or 2 is rare. Let's see how much TEs tended to improve.
Tight Ends
3rd Year TEs
3rd-year TEs averaged 6.3ppg in year 1, and increased production by 40% in year 2, then a whopping 77% (compared to their rookie years) in year 3 to 11.2ppg. These players included guys like Dawson Knox, Noah Fant, TJ Hockensen. I also have data from the Sophomore class on hand, and the growth was similar:
Sophomore TEs
So preliminarily, I would be inclined to expect a 25%-35% increase in production for the second year TEs (Cole Kmet, Albert Okwugenbaum, Adam Trautman, Foster Moreau, Harrison Bryant). Obviously, this is largely dependent on the opportunity. And honestly, a 25% increase in production from 5.3 ppg isn't great. But, for someone like Cole Kmet, a 25% increase from 8ppg would be 10ppg. I'd be okay with something like that if it held true. Anyway, onto the Running Backs!
Running Backs
3rd Year Running Backs
Running Backs roughly improved as much in year 2 as the TEs at 38% increased production, but actually saw a decrease in production from year 2, with only +34% production from year 1 (-3% production from their year 2 performance). To me, I wouldn't say to expect Running Backs to decrease in production in year 3, but rather, most running backs are likely at their ceiling by that time. Take a couple of examples of 3rd year players here:
3rd Year Running Back Examples
So you have a player like David Montgomery, who has had a great opportunity and slightly regressed this past year, but it would be safe to assume that if given the same opportunity as this past season, he could have a realistic range of maybe 15-18ppg. Josh Jacobs looks like he is who he is, and has been since year 1 in retrospect (I'm doing another analysis, but he's definitely a high floor, low upside guy). Then you have guys like Benny Snell and Miles Sanders kind of skewing the progression %. With Sanders, one could argue that the drop in fantasy ppg is due to coaching, not necessarily ability. But at the very least, you could say that even in a bad situation, he can still net you 10 points. Again, this isn't meant to be your only predictive measure, as teams are constantly changing, injuries happen, etc, but its nice to notice some trends. The sophomore class really didn't see as much growth, but there were a lot of guys who got minimal playing time. The class did include Jonathan Taylor, De'andre Swift, CEH, Antonio Gibson, but also DeeJay Dallas, Eno Benjamin, Ke'Shawn Vaughn, Anthony Macfarland, La'Michel Perine, and JJ Taylor. Not to mention injured guys like JK Dobbins and Cam Akers
Sophmore RBs
(Maybe I do an analysis where I look at players with a higher PPG threshold). But for now, it seems like RBs are highly influenced by opportunity, so you should chase GUARANTEED opportunities (Thanks a lot Trey Sermon!) along with talent, and adjust rankings accordingly.
Wide Receivers
3rd Year Wide Receivers
Finally, for WRs, their rookie year can really be a good indicator for future success (assuming they played). By that, I mean this: If a WR gets decent playing time in their rookie year, you could realistically expect a 10-14% increase in production the next 2 years. There are some outliers here, and you need to take certain things in context. DJ Chark is a good example:
DJ Chark
Chark’s production decreased steadily from his rookie year in terms of fantasy ppg. Obviously, this could be attributed to coaching, Chark’s injury cutting the 2021 season short, QB play, etc. Using this data alone, one could conclude that Chark could be a player that’s hard to predict going forward, but that he obviously has the talent to be a roughly 15PPR ppg scorer. Could be a high upside pick later in your drafts. Conversely, Diontae Johnson has increased in production every year he’s been in the league.
Diontae Johnson
Is he going to take another big jump forward? Tough to say, but could be near his ceiling, so when evaluating him as a draft candidate, you could argue that you’re drafting him at his ceiling, and he may be losing Big Ben as a QB. This could contribute to a downtick, but you could also argue Big Ben hasn’t been great on his own, so insert someone like Aaron Rodgers, and you could at least expect Diontae to return similar if not better receiving numbers next season. Then you have someone like Mecole Hardman.
Mecole Hardman
He has not really improved or gotten worse his 3 years in the league. This could mean that he is likely already who he is. He’ll have a couple really good games, with mostly underwhelming ones throughout the season (more to come on boom-bust stuff at some point this offseason). Especially with an already fantastic QB, it’s tough to imagine he’s going to suddenly double his production. At the same time, you know he has a somewhat consistent role on his team and could be a great option in deeper leagues.
All in all, initial conclusions seem to be that RBs growth/regression is largely due to opportunity and depth as opposed to pure talent alone, and it makes sense to look at a player’s projected role on the depth chart to make assumptions (Initial thought, draft capital may not matter a TON, but maybe more to come). For WRs, it seems fair to assume a 10-18% increase in production in year 2, and a 30-40% increase in production in year 2 for TEs.
Again, all feedback is appreciated! Looking forward to seeing what conclusions/opinions you all may have about some of this data, and I'm curious to hear what everyone thinks of some of the players heading into their 2nd and 3rd years in the league!
2021.11.11 18:52 jingerbaud In his so-called "MVP Season", COVID CAM had ONE game with multiple rushing TDs. In addition to his 10,000 passing yards, 500 passing TDs, and 18 defensive INTs this season, the GEQBUS has TWO multi rush TD games!! NOTHING BUT RESPECT FOR MY QB!!!!
Source: ProFootballReference
Cam's came in MEANINGLESS Week 17.
submitted by jingerbaud to the_darnold [link] [comments]
Cam's came in MEANINGLESS Week 17.
2021.11.03 19:12 squizzage I fell down a ProFootballReference rabbit hole this morning and wanted to compare Derek Carr to Aaron Rodgers so I googled "Aaron Rodgers" and would now like to die.
 | submitted by squizzage to NFCNorthMemeWar [link] [comments] |
2021.10.05 15:21 knave_of_knives How Bad is Our Offensive Line? A Statistical Look
I've been waiting to post this until the official stats were recorded and submitted to ProFootballReference for Darnold. For those that don't know, ProFootballReference is an aggregator site that keeps track of stats throughout the season, including in-depth advanced rushing, passing, receiving, etc. stats. It's one of the most important tools that I believe is available to us, as viewers, when it comes to what a player is doing on the field versus what they are achieving.
Where PFF gives arbitrary grades, PFR focuses specifically on the objective stats of the game. I bring this up because I've seen the PFF grades for this offensive line and thought that they are extremely off-base in terms of what is actually happening on the field. There is no way Matt Paradis should be near a 70/100 as a blocker. That's absurd. The eye-test alone will prove that, and I'm not sure where PFF gets their grade from. (I know they have the "how we grade" thing on their site, but offensive line is one of the most complex groupings in the NFL, because at any given time a player might be responsible for zone blocks, duo blocks, second level blocks, etc., and PFF has no way to know that information.) Instead, we look at the pressures the QB is facing.
Here's where it gets really bad.
For reference, when Sam Darnold played for the Jets, they were consistently talked about as having a terrible offensive line. Here's an article from the NY Daily News:
The point is, the offensive line that Sam played with during his time with the Jets was terrible. Absolutely terrible. Yet, somehow, some way, we're still on pace to absolutely destroy the ineptitude of their line.
POCKET TIME CAREER HIGH: 2.5s (w/ Jets '19)
POCKET TIME CAREER LOW: 2.4s (w/ Jets '18, '20 and w/ us '21)
HIGHEST NUMBER OF TIMES BLITZED: 166 (w/ Jets '19)
ON PACE IN '21 FOR: 174
HIGHEST NUMBER OF TIMES HURRIED: 69 (w/ Jets '18)
ON PACE IN '21 FOR: 72
HIGHEST NUMBER OF TIMES HIT: 39 (w/ Jets '19)
ON PACE IN '21 FOR: 68 (!!!)
HIGHEST NUMBER OF TIMES PRESSURED: 135 (w/ Jets '19)
ON PACE IN '21 FOR: 187 (!!!)
HIGHEST PRESSURE RATE: 28.0% (w/ Jets '19)
ON PACE IN '21 FOR: 27.3%
LOWEST PRESSURE RATE: 24.2% (w/ Jets '18)
submitted by knave_of_knives to panthers [link] [comments]
Where PFF gives arbitrary grades, PFR focuses specifically on the objective stats of the game. I bring this up because I've seen the PFF grades for this offensive line and thought that they are extremely off-base in terms of what is actually happening on the field. There is no way Matt Paradis should be near a 70/100 as a blocker. That's absurd. The eye-test alone will prove that, and I'm not sure where PFF gets their grade from. (I know they have the "how we grade" thing on their site, but offensive line is one of the most complex groupings in the NFL, because at any given time a player might be responsible for zone blocks, duo blocks, second level blocks, etc., and PFF has no way to know that information.) Instead, we look at the pressures the QB is facing.
Here's where it gets really bad.
For reference, when Sam Darnold played for the Jets, they were consistently talked about as having a terrible offensive line. Here's an article from the NY Daily News:
All the off-season propaganda about how Douglas built a wall for Darnold looks pretty silly right now.(Shout out to GVR for getting mentioned, I guess.)
Free-agent addition Greg Van Roten has given up more pressures (15) and hurries (13) than any interior offensive lineman in the league, according to Pro Football Focus.
Center Connor McGovern and guard Alex Lewis, who were also signed this offseason, are tied for the third-most pressures (13) among interior linemen through the first four games. Lewis has allowed the fifth most hurries (11), while McGovern is tied for the sixth-most (nine).
The point is, the offensive line that Sam played with during his time with the Jets was terrible. Absolutely terrible. Yet, somehow, some way, we're still on pace to absolutely destroy the ineptitude of their line.
SAM DARNOLD CAREER HIGH PRESSURES
These are the career highs and lows that that Sam has faced in the pressures category of his advanced passing stats:POCKET TIME CAREER HIGH: 2.5s (w/ Jets '19)
POCKET TIME CAREER LOW: 2.4s (w/ Jets '18, '20 and w/ us '21)
ON PACE IN '21 FOR: 174
ON PACE IN '21 FOR: 72
ON PACE IN '21 FOR: 68 (!!!)
ON PACE IN '21 FOR: 187 (!!!)
ON PACE IN '21 FOR: 27.3%
LOWEST PRESSURE RATE: 24.2% (w/ Jets '18)
2021.09.01 18:01 pfref Hey r/nfl, this is Pro Football Reference! Ask us anything (AMA)
Given how close we are to the beginning of the 2021 NFL regular season kicking off, we were asked by nfl moderators to hold an AMA and are happy to do that! In case you’re not familiar with us, Pro Football Reference is a website that tracks statistics from the current season as well as all of the NFL’s history. PFR is always looking to improve what we can offer; for example in July we were able to incorporate John Turney and Nick Webster’s research of unofficial sacks from 1960 to 1981.
We also have Stathead, a premium service that has a wide variety of tools that you can use to do very specific statistical searches across league history. We offer a one-month free trial for new monthly subscribers, or if you’d like to jump for the annual subscription, you can use discount code NFLAMA20 for a $20 discount! You can get started at Stathead.com.
If you want to get regular updates from us, there’s a couple of ways to do that. We have a newsletter you can sign up for free that will provide Monday, Wednesday and Friday issues recapping and previewing NFL action. We are on Twitter @pfref providing fun stats on Sunday and throughout the week. If you want something a little more visual, we just launched an Instagram as well.
We’re excited to have the 2021 season finally get started, and we’re happy to answer any questions you have for us about the site or football or whatever else you want to know! We’ll begin answering questions around 1 PM ET (an hour after this was posted).
EDIT, 2:45 PM ET: Going to log off for a bit but will be back to answer some more questions later in the day if you still want to get one in. Thanks so much to everyone who has commented so far, and look forward to seeing you all around nfl in the coming months!
submitted by pfref to nfl [link] [comments]
We also have Stathead, a premium service that has a wide variety of tools that you can use to do very specific statistical searches across league history. We offer a one-month free trial for new monthly subscribers, or if you’d like to jump for the annual subscription, you can use discount code NFLAMA20 for a $20 discount! You can get started at Stathead.com.
If you want to get regular updates from us, there’s a couple of ways to do that. We have a newsletter you can sign up for free that will provide Monday, Wednesday and Friday issues recapping and previewing NFL action. We are on Twitter @pfref providing fun stats on Sunday and throughout the week. If you want something a little more visual, we just launched an Instagram as well.
We’re excited to have the 2021 season finally get started, and we’re happy to answer any questions you have for us about the site or football or whatever else you want to know! We’ll begin answering questions around 1 PM ET (an hour after this was posted).
EDIT, 2:45 PM ET: Going to log off for a bit but will be back to answer some more questions later in the day if you still want to get one in. Thanks so much to everyone who has commented so far, and look forward to seeing you all around nfl in the coming months!
2021.06.10 23:25 Dodger_that What are the best stats to look at for evaluating CB performance?
I usually find it a bit difficult to evaluate CB’s just looking at stats. The basic stats on most sites (INTs, PD, fumbles, tackles)don’t tell you much, with the exception of PD. Even stats like cmp%, yds/cmp, yds/tgt don’t give you the full picture, for example, if they’re shutting down their WR and therefore barely seeing any targets.
Is there something like a route win % (similar to rush win % for a DE)? Or I would think more stats based on a per-route basis, like cmp/RR or yds/RR, would give a much better picture of their performance. I’m sure this exists somewhere but im wondering if it is readily available to the public. Ive looked on a few sites like ProFootballReference and some others but couldn’t find anything like it.
submitted by Dodger_that to nfl [link] [comments]
Is there something like a route win % (similar to rush win % for a DE)? Or I would think more stats based on a per-route basis, like cmp/RR or yds/RR, would give a much better picture of their performance. I’m sure this exists somewhere but im wondering if it is readily available to the public. Ive looked on a few sites like ProFootballReference and some others but couldn’t find anything like it.
2021.04.23 15:17 raymondy88 potential Jordan Love trade: implicit value
Based on Draft Value Chart on profootballreference.com
Jordan Love is worth 375 points which equates to a mid to late 2nd rounder.
Being that they used 700 points to pick him last year at 26 Overall the Packers experienced a depreciation of 325 points. In other words they lost an equivalent of a late 2nd round pick of draft capital based on that selection.
Background
15th pick = 1050 points
29th pick = 640 points
142nd pick = 35 points
submitted by raymondy88 to NFL_Draft [link] [comments]
Jordan Love is worth 375 points which equates to a mid to late 2nd rounder.
Being that they used 700 points to pick him last year at 26 Overall the Packers experienced a depreciation of 325 points. In other words they lost an equivalent of a late 2nd round pick of draft capital based on that selection.
Background
15th pick = 1050 points
29th pick = 640 points
142nd pick = 35 points