Advanced NFL Stats

Mar 17, 2010

Playoff Filter

Individual player stat pages now include a filter for playoff performance. You can select one of three options: all games including playoffs, regular season only, and playoffs only.

Now you can see how insane Kurt Warner's passing game really was in the 2008 run to the Super Bowl. And how costly was Jake Delhomme's 5-interception performance in 2008?

Brandon Jacobs and Ahmad Bradshaw both had about 200 yards in the 2007 championship run, but which runner really made the bigger difference?

Mar 16, 2010

Mathletics

With the football calendar at its darkest nadir--no games, no signings, no draft, just some off-season workouts--and basketball season getting into full swing, maybe it's a good time to broaden our statistical horizons. If you're new to sports analytics or want to become more familiar with the methods used in other sports than football, I recommend Wayne Wilson's book Mathletics.

Wayne is a professor of decision science at Indiana University and has consulted for the Dallas Mavericks for several of the last few seasons. Basketball is his wheelhouse, but Mathletics covers baseball and football analytics as well. The book is really two things. It's a primer on the various principles and techniques used in sports analysis, and it's a how-to book on how to use Excel to do the actual computations. It's perfect for the guy who wants to grab some data off the Web and get his feet wet crunching numbers.

Mar 10, 2010

Yards Per Target

Yards Per Target (YPT) has been added for WRs and TEs on the individual stat pages. It's exactly what it sounds like: receiving yards divided by how many passes were attempted to the receiver. It's hopefully something a little more useful than Yards Per Reception.

Mar 9, 2010

Individual Player Pages

Another new addition to the individual player stats is up and running. Each player now has his own page for all years of his career, or at least since 2000. There are pages by position, by team, and now by player. You can navigate to each player page via the position pages or team pages.

If you're curious about the career arcs of Ladanian Tomlinson and Brian Westbrook, you can check out their pages. All the fantasy stats aside, it's interesting to see who really helped his team win more.

How does Anquan Boldin compare to the current stable of Ravens receivers? Boldin is a big upgrade over Derrick Mason...right?

Mar 7, 2010

Bill Polian Doesn't Get It

Polian thinks Belichick made the right call on the infamous 4th and 2 play. But according to him, "All of the statistical analysis that’s done over the course of a season means nothing."

As one of the guys who authored that analysis, I find it ironic that the rest of his comments were laced with pseudo-statistical mumbo-jumbo:

Mar 3, 2010

"Tackle Factor"

I keep seeing 49ers linebacker Patrick Willis' name listed at the top of defensive player statistics the last few years. He led the league in tackles in 2009 and 2007, and was second in 2008, but does this mean that Willis is really a top player?

Most fans understand that the tackle statistic is not a very good way to measure a defender. Weaker defenses tend to give up longer drives, giving players more opportunities to make tackles. So in a perverse way, more tackles can be a bad thing. If a defensive back has a lot of tackles, it may be because he's being thrown on successfully. Plus, certain positions get more tackles by the nature of team defense. Middle and inside linebackers will naturally have the most tackles by virtue of their role and where they are at the snap. If you scan down the list of the season leaders in tackles, you're likely to see a simple list of each team's central linebacker, assuming he was healthy most of the year. So how can we tell if Patrick Willis is really that good using just tackle information?