The Packers have allowed more yards than they've gained, yet are 14-1. How is this possible? 
With the final week of the regular season upon us, it's time to see where things stand for the playoff contenders. As always, these numbers come courtesy of Chris Cox at NFL-forecast.com and are generated with the help of his NFL-Forecast software app, which uses the win probabilities generated by the team efficiency model to simulate the NFL season thousands of times. And if you don't buy the game probabilities from Advanced NFL Stats, you can tweak them as much as you like to generate your own playoff projections. I encourage everyone to download the app and test out your own scenarios.
The AFC West & Wild Card
All sorts of advanced degrees are required to parse the melange of tiebreakers and scenarios that surround the final two playoff spots in the AFC. The Bengals, Jets, and Titans are all still eligible for the final wild card spot, in addition to the Raiders, who also could beat out the Broncos for the AFC West. There are plenty of places to get the full breakdown of the various clinching scenarios, but let's skip all the "strength-of-victory" and "if-then-and-unless" chatter and cut straight to the numbers:
Weekly game probabilities are available now at the nytimes.com Fifth Down.
This week I regurgitate what I wrote earlier on the importance of playoff seeding.
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This week's post at the Washington Post's Redskins Insider site takes a look at the Redskins quarterback situation going into the 2012 off-season.
...with so many needs heading into the off-season, it might be tempting for the Redskins to think that Grossman is a medium-term solution at quarterback. But this is a trap...
“Best season ever”, “31st in the league”, and “leads the league in interceptions” is a combination that does not bode well for the future of a franchise that would consider standing pat at quarterback.
Earlier this season, I wrote a post about how San Francisco did an excellent job limiting their opponent's starting field position. After a similar dominant performance against Pittsburgh in Week 15, I decided to revisit this topic. This year, the 49ers lead all teams in average starting field position for their opponents; their opponents, on average, start at their own 24.4 yardline. The next best teams? New England Patriots and Green Bay Packers. In fact, this year, there is a 0.73 correlation between win percentage and average opponent starting field position.
This is the time of the year for joy and family and gifts--all that good stuff. But more importantly, it’s also the time for teams to jockey for playoff seeds. I get the sense that the conventional wisdom is that yes, seeds are somewhat important, but the notion that ‘just get in the playoffs and anything can happen’ is the dominant view. But as we'll see, seeding is critically important.The scariest 6 words ever heard by a 49ers fan: "Alex Smith is our long-term quarterback." Smith is having a slightly above-average season with a great defense to bail him out of trouble. But don't fall for the 'finally got the right coach' narrative and think Smith is suddenly a different player than he has proved to be over several seasons. The most succinct way to put it is that Smith's career peak is at league-average.With just two weeks left to play, it's crunch time for the teams on the playoff bubble. As always, these numbers come courtesy of Chris Cox at NFL-forecast.com and are generated with the help of his NFL-Forecast software app, which uses the win probabilities generated by the team efficiency model to simulate the NFL season thousands of times. And if you don't buy the game probabilities from Advanced NFL Stats, you can tweak them as much as you like to generate your own playoff projections. I encourage everyone to download the app and test out your own scenarios.
Amazingly, 22 teams are still eligible for a playoff spot. Seven have clinched. Five "control their own destiny." The remaining ten—most of which sit on the brink of elimination this week—need various degrees of help to get into the postseason.
High Leverage Games of the Week
New York Giants at New York Jets | Saturday, December 24 | 1:00 pm ETThe seasons of all four of these teams hang in the balance of these two games. The Cowboys, Giants, and Eagles all remain in contention for the division title in the NFC East, and the Jets are currently holding on to the last wild card spot in the AFC (the Ravens/Steelers have the #5 seed locked up between them). As far as the NFC East goes, the results of these two games are so inextricably linked that it only makes sense to look at them together. The table below lists each team's respective probability of making the playoffs given each of the four possible combinations of game outcomes.
This week's post at the Washington Post's Redskins Insider site uses the recent research on the contracts of top safeties to value LaRon Landry's value as an impending free agent.Weekly game probabilities are available now at the nytimes.com Fifth Down.
This week I ponder the effect home field advantage when the Giants play "at" the Jets.
Running back stat graphs are now available. The graphs are, for now, identical to the quarterback graphs. There are four tabs. Two present RB performance for a particular year, broken out by game and opponent. The other two tabs present RB performance totals by year. Any combination of RBs can be selected. The available seasons go back through 2000. 
Instead of looking at changes in the rankings and what not this week, let's be a little more focused and take a look at where the teams on the playoff bubble sit as of this morning.
In this tumultuous Week 15, we saw the winless Colts beat the Titans, the seemingly unstoppable Packers lose to a floundering Chiefs team, and his holiness, Tim Tebow, lose for the first time in 7 games. Kansas City jumped out to a 6-0 lead with two early field goals, but just as importantly, kept the ball out of Aaron Rodgers' hands by sustaining long drives. The Chiefs' first three drives totaled 38 plays consuming over 19 minutes of game clock. Newly anointed interim head coach Romeo Crennel was also faced with a few early 4th-down decisions. Using our Markov model, we can see how these drives developed.
The next step in the evolution of statistical visualizations is player graphs. Starting with quarterbacks, I've created a few different versions. For now, each one is based on Expected Points Added (EPA) per Game.
Prediction is a lot harder than people think, even with billions of dollars of research and data at your disposal.Weekly game probabilities are available now at the nytimes.com Fifth Down.
This week I look at how Tim Tebow's unusual numbers affect Denver's chances against New England.
Another crazy weekend in the NFL last week, as wins by both the Broncos and Giants resulted in huge swings in the playoff probabilities. As always, these numbers come courtesy of Chris Cox at NFL-forecast.com and are generated with the help of his NFL-Forecast software app, which uses the win probabilities generated by the team efficiency model to simulate the NFL season 5,000 times. And if you don't buy the game probabilities from Advanced NFL Stats, you can tweak them as much as you like to generate your own playoff projections. I encourage everyone to download the app and test out your own scenarios.
While the Cowboys' overall probability dropped by 30 points following their loss to the Giants, chances are that their ultimate playoff fate won't be decided until the teams meet again in Week 17. For the Giants to clinch the division before then, they'd have to win both of their games and Dallas would have to lose to Philadelphia (14% probability). For Dallas to clinch before then, they'd have to win their next two games while the Giants lose both of theirs (5% probability). In total, there is a four in five chance that the NFC East will be decided the final week of the season. Mark your calendars.
This week's post at the Washington Post's Redskins Insider site takes a look at the amazingly reliable and ageless London Fletcher.Fletcher, however, accounts for almost 17 percent of the Redskins’ tackles. That’s good for a TF of 1.54, (calculated by dividing his 17 percent by the average linebacker’s 11 percent). Fletcher’s 1.54 is the best of his 14-year career and is tied for the league lead with the 49ers’ Patrick Willis and the Falcons’ Curtis Lofton. In his five years in Washington, Fletcher’s TF has ranked ninth, fifth, fifth, 16th, and is now first among all linebackers. He’s a true tackle machine.
By request, here is how Denver quarterback Tim Tebow's performance breaks down by quarter. It's nothing short of amazing. He's a very poor performer until halftime, at which point he turns into a mediocre player. But then, in the fourth quarter, he comes alive.
Despite all the Tebow-madness, there were quite a few other games decided in the waning seconds. With 0:26 left in the game, Joe Webb and the Vikings were faced with a 4th-and-6 from the Detroit 12, down 6. If the Vikings were only down 3, this is a no brainer: Kicking the field goal results in a win probability of 43% versus only 33% if they go for it. Detroit, however, had tacked on a field goal early in the 4th quarter and their defense came up huge, stopping Webb at the goal line (ignoring any questionably missed face mask calls on the last play of the game). Let's take a look at Detroits' last scoring drive.
Anyone who's anyone knows that the peak hours for driving internet traffic are the late-afternoon ones on a December Saturday -- which is why, this late Saturday afternoon, Advanced NFL Stats presents the second installment of our acclaimed series Meet an Offensive Line.This week's post at the Washington Post's Redskins Insider site takes a look at tendencies of NFL signal callers and Kyle Shanahan in particular.The laws of zero-sum game theory say that there are only two requirements for optimizing payoffs. First, plays should be called relative to their expected effectiveness. Offenses should proportionately favor their own strengths relative to its opposition’s weaknesses. And second, play calls should be unpredictably random. There could be no play caller in the league as unpredictable as a spinner from the game Twister. As silly as it sounds, whenever people are making decisions, they can’t help but create predictable patterns — patterns that can be exploited by the opposition. But even the most prescient defensive coordinator in the world can’t predict a Twister spinner.
This week's edition of playoff probabilities debuts new tables indicating each team's probability of advancing to a given round of the playoffs. As always, these numbers come courtesy of Chris Cox at NFL-forecast.com and are generated with the help of his NFL-Forecast software app, which uses the win probabilities generated by the team efficiency model to simulate the NFL season 5,000 times. And if you don't buy the game probabilities from Advanced NFL Stats, you can tweak them as much as you like to generate your own playoff projections. I encourage everyone to download the app and test out your own scenarios.
The Broncos continue their upward climb toward the postseason. Their win last week (coupled with a Raiders' loss) increased Denver's overall playoff probability 25 points to 61%, including a 55% chance to win their division and open the postseason at home.
With four games left to play, pretty much every game is a high-leverage game for teams in contention. Cincinnati has an opportunity for a big win against the Texans; Detroit is playing a game against the Vikings they do not want to lose; and if Baltimore wants to win the race for the AFC South, they certainly don't want to drop a game to the Colts. But two games in particular stand out as especially important this week.
Weekly game probabilities are available now at the nytimes.com Fifth Down. This week I focus on the NFC East showdown between the Giants and Cowboys, and discuss penalty rate, an often overlooked but important stat.
So, broadly, Tebow has indeed exhibited “clutch” performance –– performing pretty ordinarily overall, but at a higher level when it matters most. Given our previous analysis of other quarterbacks who did this in their first year (including Tom Brady, Aaron Rodgers and Drew Brees), it’s unlikely that this is a sustainable course in the long run. However, it should be encouraging for Tebow fans that his performance has been improving in absolute terms.
Three of the members of the Trent Dilfer Club won again this week including Alex Smith, the best parallel to 2000 Trent Dilfer. The 49ers trounced the Rams 26-0, clinching their first NFC West title since 2002. San Francisco won the way they have been winning all year: Defense. The 49ers amassed a -0.37 defensive WPA (negative is good) and did not allow the Rams to pass the SF 38 yardline. In fact, when the Rams finally got to the 38, A.J. Feeley threw up a pick to Dashon Goldson. Here's a look at the drive summaries for the Rams:
I'm saying nothing that will suprise the reader very much when I state that, in football, there's a great deal of interaction between the game's constituent elements. In these pages, for example, we've considered concepts like run-pass balance, fourth-down strategy, and one- versus two-point conversions. In each case, an emphasis on one element will change the effectiveness of the other. It's hard to be rational.This week at the Post I took a look at how deep vertical passes are a vital part of an offensive scheme. This is another bit of research that applies league-wide, but uses the Redskins win over the Seahawks last Sunday as an example.Welcome to this week's edition of playoff probabilities, in which we bastardize Bible verses and take a closer look at the NFC wild card race all in the same post! As always, these numbers come courtesy of Chris Cox at NFL-forecast.com and are generated with the help of his NFL-Forecast software app, which uses the win probabilities generated by the team efficiency model to simulate the NFL season 5,000 times. And if you don't buy the game probabilities from Advanced NFL Stats, you can tweak them as much as you like to generate your own playoff projections. I encourage everyone to download the app and test out your own scenarios.
Let us therefore come boldly to the throne of Tebow, that we may obtain touchdowns and find victory in time of need. (Broncos 4:16)
In addition to further feuling Tebow-mania, Denver's win in last week's high-leverage game bumped the Broncos' overall playoff probability up 18 points to 36%, putting them right in the middle of things in the AFC. And no one's loving it more than this guy. On the other side of the ball, after starting the season 4-1, San Diego's sixth straight loss all but eliminated them from playoff contention, dropping them 14 percentage points to just 1%.
In the NFC, meanwhile, the Falcons were the big winner, as an Atlanta win combined with losses by both Detroit and Chicago to leave all three teams at 7-4 and tied for the lead in the NFC wild card race. Below we'll take a look at each team's remaining schedule in turn. The number in parentheses is their overall playoff probability, and, for reference, I've listed the degree of difficulty (DOD) of their remaining schedule, obtained by averaging the GWP of their remaining opponents after adjusting to reflect home-field advantage.
Weekly game probabilities are available now at the nytimes.com Fifth Down. The write up is a condensed version of the Tebow analysis I just posted.
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