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- May 8, 2014
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For the hell of it I put together a composite statistic that is designed with the following rough weights:
1. Passer rating (for and against).
2. Rushing game potency (for and against).
3. Sacks (for and against).
Now the key here is that the for and against are subtracted against each other to create what I hoped was a remaining "balance" number. And adjustments were made to ensure certain stats weren't overpowering, for example the sacks for/against showed enormous deviation that provided too much skew, which resulted in the weights above. Really wish I had trustworthy pressures numbers, as I think those would be far more accurate an indicator than sacks, but them's the breaks.
Also, in the case of the Eagles I replaced their passer rating marks with Nick Foles' pedestrian statistics demonstrated over a very short sample size this year, which hurt their composite score greatly as one might expect.
Anyway, some surprising final numbers resulted, to me at least:
NFC
Saints 31.4
Vikings 29.9
Rams 27.4
Eagles 13.6
Falcons 2.6
Panthers -3.8
The Saints coming out on top surprised me. But overall looking at the NFC I feel like the top 3 are represented well and you can see the dropoff with the bottom 3 teams. I've felt all along the Panthers are pretenders, and these stats bear that out through no bias of mine.
AFC
Jaguars 29.7
Chiefs 21.5
Steelers 20.4
Patriots 13.0
Bills -5.0
Titans -8.8
AFC results threw me for a loop. Obviously the Patriots dropping out of the top 3 makes no sense, given that they're the top seed and all, however that is driven by the fact that this is a composite stat that compares their offense and defense, and they gave up a very high passer rating against throughout the year. I am sure if I ran this equation based on the last six games, the Pats would be in that top group, however I wanted to keep it centered on the entire season.
Another surprise was the relative quality of the Chiefs in the final numbers. Obviously they were favored by the mix of stats chosen for this exercise, but it will also be interesting to see whether they end up being stronger in the playoffs than expected.
AFC vs NFC the numbers also show the relative strength of the top teams in the NFC in balance. Had the Eagles not lost Wentz they would have ranked out #1 in the NFC, and it would demonstrate the conference balance with four teams ranked in the neighborhood of the one AFC team that finished in the high 20s.
Looking ahead at the wildcard round, if the balance equation means anything we'll see both the Rams and Saints advance. Chiefs and Jaguars both maintain big advantages in balance as well, over their wildcard matchups. Gonna be interesting to see how things translate this weekend.
1. Passer rating (for and against).
2. Rushing game potency (for and against).
3. Sacks (for and against).
Now the key here is that the for and against are subtracted against each other to create what I hoped was a remaining "balance" number. And adjustments were made to ensure certain stats weren't overpowering, for example the sacks for/against showed enormous deviation that provided too much skew, which resulted in the weights above. Really wish I had trustworthy pressures numbers, as I think those would be far more accurate an indicator than sacks, but them's the breaks.
Also, in the case of the Eagles I replaced their passer rating marks with Nick Foles' pedestrian statistics demonstrated over a very short sample size this year, which hurt their composite score greatly as one might expect.
Anyway, some surprising final numbers resulted, to me at least:
NFC
Saints 31.4
Vikings 29.9
Rams 27.4
Eagles 13.6
Falcons 2.6
Panthers -3.8
The Saints coming out on top surprised me. But overall looking at the NFC I feel like the top 3 are represented well and you can see the dropoff with the bottom 3 teams. I've felt all along the Panthers are pretenders, and these stats bear that out through no bias of mine.
AFC
Jaguars 29.7
Chiefs 21.5
Steelers 20.4
Patriots 13.0
Bills -5.0
Titans -8.8
AFC results threw me for a loop. Obviously the Patriots dropping out of the top 3 makes no sense, given that they're the top seed and all, however that is driven by the fact that this is a composite stat that compares their offense and defense, and they gave up a very high passer rating against throughout the year. I am sure if I ran this equation based on the last six games, the Pats would be in that top group, however I wanted to keep it centered on the entire season.
Another surprise was the relative quality of the Chiefs in the final numbers. Obviously they were favored by the mix of stats chosen for this exercise, but it will also be interesting to see whether they end up being stronger in the playoffs than expected.
AFC vs NFC the numbers also show the relative strength of the top teams in the NFC in balance. Had the Eagles not lost Wentz they would have ranked out #1 in the NFC, and it would demonstrate the conference balance with four teams ranked in the neighborhood of the one AFC team that finished in the high 20s.
Looking ahead at the wildcard round, if the balance equation means anything we'll see both the Rams and Saints advance. Chiefs and Jaguars both maintain big advantages in balance as well, over their wildcard matchups. Gonna be interesting to see how things translate this weekend.
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