Dolphin_Daz
Dolfan in England
Heres something ive found on the web....thought some of you might enjoy it...
'Yards Per Point'
When are yards worthless? When they don’t lead to points. You can gain all the yards you want, running up and down the field till you’re blue in the face, but if you don’t punch it in (or at least kick it through the uprights) at the end of each drive, what was the point of all those yards? It’s for this reason that I believe all these stats that rank offenses on how many yards they rack up are missing the point (no pun intended) - surely scoring should come into it somewhere, right?
That’s where I come in, with a simple yet brilliant idea - yards per point, which spiffingly shortens to YPP: put simply, how many yards does team X have to gain for each point they put on the scoreboard? Conversely, there’s versus yards per point, or VYPP, which looks at how many yards a defense gives up for each point they concede. It turns out that these rankings give you a much more accurate picture of the top-performing squads on both sides of the ball, just by adding one factor to the equation.
Now, I’m guessing you’re a bit skeptical, so here’s an example. Through week eight, the NFL team that gained the most offensive yards is Seattle with 2735, but in terms of efficiency they are only 8th, scoring one point for every 15.1 yards they gain. By contrast, the Carolina Panthers are a lowly 19th in total yardage (2254 yards), but their yards-per-point value of 12.1 is the best in the league. Carolina has actually outscored Seattle 186-181 through their first seven games.
These methods can be applied to defense as well: the Redskins have the league’s fifth-ranked defense in terms of yards conceded (1982 yards), but are ranked 25th for VYPP, giving up a point for every 15 yards. At the same time, the Giants have given up 2596 yards to their opposition and are 30th out of 32 in that regard, but they only give up one point for every 20 yards their opponents gain - tied for fourth in the league. The Giants have conceded 137 points, Washington 139.
Just for poops and giggles really, I took each team’s YPP and subtracted their VYPP, the idea being that I could see which way each team leaned in terms of an offensive or defensive tendency - on which side of the ball were they more efficient? In this case, a team with a negative value would be more defensively efficient, whereas a positive value points to a more efficient offense. Upon looking at a chart of these values, with the teams ranked by order from most defensive to most offensive, one thing jumped out at me: of the fifteen teams who err on the offensive side, just three - Philadelphia, New England and Washington - had winning records, and they were each only one game over .500. The eight most offensive teams - for lack of a better phrase - had just two wins each. That old adage about offense winning games and defense winning championships? It may be defense all the way.
Hope some of you enjoyed that....thought it was different and worth posting..
'Yards Per Point'
When are yards worthless? When they don’t lead to points. You can gain all the yards you want, running up and down the field till you’re blue in the face, but if you don’t punch it in (or at least kick it through the uprights) at the end of each drive, what was the point of all those yards? It’s for this reason that I believe all these stats that rank offenses on how many yards they rack up are missing the point (no pun intended) - surely scoring should come into it somewhere, right?
That’s where I come in, with a simple yet brilliant idea - yards per point, which spiffingly shortens to YPP: put simply, how many yards does team X have to gain for each point they put on the scoreboard? Conversely, there’s versus yards per point, or VYPP, which looks at how many yards a defense gives up for each point they concede. It turns out that these rankings give you a much more accurate picture of the top-performing squads on both sides of the ball, just by adding one factor to the equation.
Now, I’m guessing you’re a bit skeptical, so here’s an example. Through week eight, the NFL team that gained the most offensive yards is Seattle with 2735, but in terms of efficiency they are only 8th, scoring one point for every 15.1 yards they gain. By contrast, the Carolina Panthers are a lowly 19th in total yardage (2254 yards), but their yards-per-point value of 12.1 is the best in the league. Carolina has actually outscored Seattle 186-181 through their first seven games.
These methods can be applied to defense as well: the Redskins have the league’s fifth-ranked defense in terms of yards conceded (1982 yards), but are ranked 25th for VYPP, giving up a point for every 15 yards. At the same time, the Giants have given up 2596 yards to their opposition and are 30th out of 32 in that regard, but they only give up one point for every 20 yards their opponents gain - tied for fourth in the league. The Giants have conceded 137 points, Washington 139.
Just for poops and giggles really, I took each team’s YPP and subtracted their VYPP, the idea being that I could see which way each team leaned in terms of an offensive or defensive tendency - on which side of the ball were they more efficient? In this case, a team with a negative value would be more defensively efficient, whereas a positive value points to a more efficient offense. Upon looking at a chart of these values, with the teams ranked by order from most defensive to most offensive, one thing jumped out at me: of the fifteen teams who err on the offensive side, just three - Philadelphia, New England and Washington - had winning records, and they were each only one game over .500. The eight most offensive teams - for lack of a better phrase - had just two wins each. That old adage about offense winning games and defense winning championships? It may be defense all the way.
Hope some of you enjoyed that....thought it was different and worth posting..
