CFZ Dak Interceptions - Regression to the Mean (Warning: Math Geek)

[blueblood70]

In Dak’s first 6 seasons, he started 85 games, and threw 50 interceptions - an average interception rate of 0.588 interceptions per game. Over a 17 game season, the expected interceptions Dak should throw is 10 interceptions per 17 game season. But last year, in only 12 games, Dak threw 1.25 interceptions per game for a total of 15 interceptions. 2022 was obviously an outlier, with Dak throwing interceptions at more than twice his normal rate.

Statistically, barring outside factors, there is a principal called “Regression to the Mean. It means that an unusually high variation will likely be counter-balances by an unusually low variation in the variable (in this case interceptions) to bring the average back down to its historical value.

If Dak interceptions regress to the mean, that means that over the next two seasons, he’ll only throw about 12 interceptions, which is about 6 per season, assuming he plays all 17 games in 2023 & 2024.

Here is the math:

• 12 games (2022) + 34 games (2023 & 2024) = 46 games.
• Average of .588 interceptions per game x 46 games = 27 interceptions over 46 games.
• 27 interceptions - 15 interceptions already thrown = 12 interceptions spread out over the next 34 games

Unless Dak Prescott suddenly got worse, or there was some outside factor that affected his play in 2022, Dak's average interception rate should revert back to what it has been over his first 85 games, which means he'll throw fewer interceptions to offset what happened in 2022.

The alternative few, still assuming that Dak's historical career average of interceptions over his first 85 games in a true picture of what we can expect, is that there was an anomaly in 2022. Some will say, maybe justifiably, that Dak's receiver corps was suspect in 2022, which is an outside factor that would affect him. If that is the case, then we should expect Dak to revert back to his normal rate, which means he'll throw about 10 interceptions in a 17 game season.

Bottom line: Unless Dak has suddenly got worse, we should expect him to throw around 6-10 interceptions in 2023, and the same in 2024. Even if you include the anomalous 2022 season, Dak's current career interception rate is 65 interceptions over 97 games played = 0.67 interceptions per game. The high end of that is 11 expected interceptions in 2023 over an entire 17 game schedule.

Now, we'll all see what actually occurs during the season, but based on Dak's historical performance, I'm not too concerned about interceptions in 2023. I do believe that Michael Gallup was hobbled last year, and I wasn't ever a huge fan of Dalton Schultz, who was competent, but not special. The addition of Cooks, the health improvement of Gallup, and the development of Tolbert bodes well for Dak's performance in 2023 - at least during the season.

some of are way way overthinking this.

its football, its year to year and not worrying about oddball math thats too analytical. Whatever is going to happen will happen and we just watch,.,hes not known to throw a lot of INTs i doubt he will be at 6 but if he plays 17 games and throws 15 I'm fine with it.,.

it will be less but hopefully that equates to 35 tds and 15 Ints. he was at 37-10 in 21 but i doubt math goes into odds and what now. Its just circumstances in games and so many moving pieces its hard to control. Matthew Stafford won a super bowl what with 41 touchdowns and 17 interceptions? he threw 3 INTs in the playoffs ,2 interceptions in the Superbowl THats 20!. that's a fact we need a better team, that's it.. the rams were so good they can afford to cover up some of those interceptions. so we need to put a better team on the field in the playoffs against the better teams , it's that simple. get a better run game and a better o....rm better against the better defenses...dak will show up with that and win !

 

[mardwin]

I think fat Mike wanted dak to take more chances and we saw the results.

Do you mean to try and drive the ball down the middle of the field?

 

[Starstruck22]

actually you would be wrong on that throw because you focused on Hilton at the end of the play and saw him wide open. if you watched film, you would see at the moment of the throws when decision was made to go to lamb, Hilton was not open. thus that would not have been the throw or should not. further, Lamb was covered by a LB, expectations are that a WR should be a LB and the QB can see that as a match up issue and target the WR.

little things in football that get lost on casual observers and fans. go watch it again. frame by frame. you will learn

Hilton was wide open from the get go….more open than lamb who was double covered btw

 

[Starstruck22]

People tend to worry too much about whose fault something was. if the offense is called to be ag and you have WR’s that aren’t getting much separation the likelihood that the WR and QB read the play differently goes up. That’s one of the aspects of Moore’s offense of doing ‘x’ if you see this and ‘y’ if you see that.

All of these circumstances are changing. in the WCO WRs will think less and go faster, the WR core is improves with Cooks and Gallup healthier, and McCarthy wants to be less aggressive.

if Dak has a bunch of INTs this year it will be for complete different reasons than last year.

Different reasons other than Dak’s stupidity and incompetence?

 

[Starstruck22]

Maybe you shouldn’t go to the bar and watch games. There’s no other excuse I can give you for this assessment.

Dont even drink dude. nice try.

 

[Vtwin]

actually you would be wrong on that throw because you focused on Hilton at the end of the play and saw him wide open. if you watched film, you would see at the moment of the throws when decision was made to go to lamb, Hilton was not open. thus that would not have been the throw or should not. further, Lamb was covered by a LB, expectations are that a WR should be a LB and the QB can see that as a match up issue and target the WR.

little things in football that get lost on casual observers and fans. go watch it again. frame by frame. you will learn

Crappy vid and music but here is the play. You couldn't be more wrong.

 

[Starstruck22]

So one possibly bad play , and all of the sudden his whole career sucks

He misses the open read frequently and throws into multiple coverage frequently. He is stupid.

 

[CowboysFaninHouston]

Hilton was wide open from the get go….more open than lamb who was double covered btw

watch the video. not just the end of it.

 

[jazzcat22]

Because I am a member of this forum and I hate to see it dragged down by someone who should be setting the example.

Not sure if you've noticed, but the decorum has been a very hot topic. A lot of bickering and angst.

Here is a legitimate question or two for you...

Why do you choose to provoke instead of lead?
Why does it concern YOU so much?

I ask these legitimate questions.

I asked a legitimate question. I provoked nothing but your angst against me. Which is all on yourself. I directed nothing toward you.
But Yet you fail to see that.

Whatever, this is your typical response to me anyway.

 

[Starstruck22]

Crappy vid and music but here is the play. You couldn't be more wrong.

Bingo, proof of the pudding wide fing open all the way down the seam for a Td. Dak does not see things because he plays frightened and makes poor decisions. If he had seen Hilton wide open it may have changed the outcome of the game. That was 6 points in the bank.

 

[Starstruck22]

watch the video. not just the end of it.

I did. Wide open from the get go for 6.

 

[Vtwin]

I asked a legitimate question. I provoked nothing but your angst against me. Which is all on yourself. I directed nothing toward you.
But Yet you fail to see that.

Whatever, this is your typical response to me anyway.

lol

If that's the path you want to lead the forum down who am I to point out the obvious result.

Carry on with your crusade.

 

[CowboysFaninHouston]

Crappy vid and music but here is the play. You couldn't be more wrong.

at the start of the 10 second mark, Dak's arm is back getting ready for the throw. Hilton is covered at that point. as you go frame by frame in the middle of the 10th second part of the video, the defender is still on Hilton and moving towards him and hilton is covered, as he throws the ball (still in the 10 second frame) and as the ball is coming out of his hand, you see hilton coming free. that's what everybody sees. not the 9th and 10th second frames where you have to decide where the play is. and again, if I see a WR against a LB. that's the hot read. that's the mismatch you are looking for, specially the best WR on the team.

now, if you want to argue the throw wasn't good. you got something there. but I take a WR lined up against a LB all day long.

 

[Vtwin]

Bingo, proof of the pudding wide fing open all the way down the seam for a Td. Dak does not see things because he plays frightened and makes poor decisions. If he had seen Hilton wide open it may have changed the outcome of the game. That was 6 points in the bank.

I bet most of us could have chucked that ball into all that open area to let Hilton go get it.

I do admit that I don't have the strength and accuracy to hit that LB in the numbers, like Dak did.

 

[Vtwin]

at the start of the 10 second mark, Dak's arm is back getting ready for the throw. Hilton is covered at that point. as you go frame by frame in the middle of the 10th second part of the video, the defender is still on Hilton and moving towards him and hilton is covered, as he throws the ball (still in the 10 second frame) and as the ball is coming out of his hand, you see hilton coming free. that's what everybody sees. not the 9th and 10th second frames where you have to decide where the play is. and again, if I see a WR against a LB. that's the hot read. that's the mismatch you are looking for, specially the best WR on the team.

Dude, You've got to learn when to say when.

Maybe if Dak hadn't locked in on Lamb and actually glanced at the other receivers he might have seen the VERY favorable alignment. Hilton was open the whole time. Dak could have hit him with a quick one underneath the LB (or safety) or even better, simply lobbed it over that defenders head for the easy TD.

This is AC level excuse making coming from you.

 

[OGSixshooter]

The San Fran game was the perfect example he had a wide open Hilton for a Td and he chose i think it was lamb who was blanketed and it was an incompletion. Plus started off game with 2 inexplicable pics in coverage. All due to stupidity. People blamed Moore but Moore is not making stupid snap judgments Dak is. I am predicting one or 2 pics in the Giants game. It will happen. Bank on it. Then we can blame McCarthy.

That is an example of a poor decision and a bad route by Gallup. Yes, but the same "interception machine" went on the road and beat Brady - something I honestly didn't think his nerves would allow him to do. (which is so odd since he seemed unflappable as a rookie). Anyway, point is that Dak has 8 years of work...I could destroy any QB's career by pulling out a few lowlights and then saying this is their problem. Logic tells you that Dak doesn't make it this far if he could not process information and endure scrutiny at the highest levels.

The problem is that there are even HIGHER levels when it comes to playoff time.

 

[OGSixshooter]

Quick thinking is like accuracy. It might be able to be improved on, but it is entirely dependent on where you start. Dak has been criticized for being slow through his reads and for needing to see the receiver open, year in and year out. He tried to change at least part of that last season and we saw the results.

Dak is "smart" but he has shown year in and year out that he struggles to quickly process and make quick, confident decisions in the heat of the second. Both of those things can be true. We saw hard evidence of it the last game he played.

Dak has gotten by on being smart, hard work and help from his teammates, with some luck thrown in. His ceiling is what it is in part because he doesn't have that innate quality of being quick under fire. A half second to late can be an eternity, sometimes.

I'll buy some of this take. I think Dak's ability - he was not a natural passer coming out college...admiring TIM TEBOW OF ALL PEOPLE - is held back his arm and accuracy. I don't think it's mental, I believe it's mostly streaky accuracy due to inconsistent mechanics. When under pressure in the hottest moments Dak wants to go back what he did in college - off-balance and off-schedule throws. Dak can dissect a defense, but in those moments of intense pressure he does not trust his arm accuracy....especially when teams rush 4 and flood the zone with defenders. Those tight windows and a pass rush will cause most QBs problems, but the Burrows and Mahomes will kill you. Dak is great against the blitz...when a defender is removed from the equation and he has to spot the open receiver. So no...he's not slow, just inaccurate due to pressure and inconsistent mechanics.

 

[VaqueroTD]

In Dak’s first 6 seasons, he started 85 games, and threw 50 interceptions - an average interception rate of 0.588 interceptions per game. Over a 17 game season, the expected interceptions Dak should throw is 10 interceptions per 17 game season. But last year, in only 12 games, Dak threw 1.25 interceptions per game for a total of 15 interceptions. 2022 was obviously an outlier, with Dak throwing interceptions at more than twice his normal rate.

Statistically, barring outside factors, there is a principal called “Regression to the Mean. It means that an unusually high variation will likely be counter-balances by an unusually low variation in the variable (in this case interceptions) to bring the average back down to its historical value.

If Dak interceptions regress to the mean, that means that over the next two seasons, he’ll only throw about 12 interceptions, which is about 6 per season, assuming he plays all 17 games in 2023 & 2024.

Here is the math:

• 12 games (2022) + 34 games (2023 & 2024) = 46 games.
• Average of .588 interceptions per game x 46 games = 27 interceptions over 46 games.
• 27 interceptions - 15 interceptions already thrown = 12 interceptions spread out over the next 34 games

Unless Dak Prescott suddenly got worse, or there was some outside factor that affected his play in 2022, Dak's average interception rate should revert back to what it has been over his first 85 games, which means he'll throw fewer interceptions to offset what happened in 2022.

The alternative few, still assuming that Dak's historical career average of interceptions over his first 85 games in a true picture of what we can expect, is that there was an anomaly in 2022. Some will say, maybe justifiably, that Dak's receiver corps was suspect in 2022, which is an outside factor that would affect him. If that is the case, then we should expect Dak to revert back to his normal rate, which means he'll throw about 10 interceptions in a 17 game season.

Bottom line: Unless Dak has suddenly got worse, we should expect him to throw around 6-10 interceptions in 2023, and the same in 2024. Even if you include the anomalous 2022 season, Dak's current career interception rate is 65 interceptions over 97 games played = 0.67 interceptions per game. The high end of that is 11 expected interceptions in 2023 over an entire 17 game schedule.

Now, we'll all see what actually occurs during the season, but based on Dak's historical performance, I'm not too concerned about interceptions in 2023. I do believe that Michael Gallup was hobbled last year, and I wasn't ever a huge fan of Dalton Schultz, who was competent, but not special. The addition of Cooks, the health improvement of Gallup, and the development of Tolbert bodes well for Dak's performance in 2023 - at least during the season.

Forget the universe, math and physics can figure out football.

Two other things going in his favor for less interceptions:

-Revamped offensive coaching staff to reduce all the nonsense and confusion with the option routes as well as bizarre pass/run calling at times. That is on the coaches.
-Broken finger. Dak is the last one to point fingers (no pun intended) and throw excuses, but don't tell me that didn't hurt his accuracy. He has been banged up the last 3 years. Going by your same odds, I would think maybe we finally get a fully healthy year? (Although the odds of that continue to go down as the Left-Side Smiths get hurt. )

 

[AbeBeta]

It's exactly the opposite. Regression to the mean is how you compensate for small recent sample sizes by looking at larger prior samples sizes. It's primarily useful at the individual level.

If there were a league-wide increase in INTs over a season, it would most likely be due to some actual change in the game, and you wouldn't necessarily expect regression to the mean without understanding the underlying mechanism. But when an individual's INT rate spikes in one season without a similar effect across the league, your first expectation would be that it would regress to the mean, precisely because the sample size is small relative to the prior sample sizes both of that QB and the league.

Dak threw 2048 passes from 2018-2021 with a very consistent 0.017 INTs per attempt. I have no idea why you think that's too small a sample size to work with.

No. You are incorrect. 2048 passes is far from large enough given all of the factors that play into interceptions. You are not making a valid statistical argument. Yeah see, stats folks understand the limitations of the math. Math folks just see numbers in a vacuum.

 

[khiladi]

In Dak’s first 6 seasons, he started 85 games, and threw 50 interceptions - an average interception rate of 0.588 interceptions per game. Over a 17 game season, the expected interceptions Dak should throw is 10 interceptions per 17 game season. But last year, in only 12 games, Dak threw 1.25 interceptions per game for a total of 15 interceptions. 2022 was obviously an outlier, with Dak throwing interceptions at more than twice his normal rate.

Statistically, barring outside factors, there is a principal called “Regression to the Mean. It means that an unusually high variation will likely be counter-balances by an unusually low variation in the variable (in this case interceptions) to bring the average back down to its historical value.

If Dak interceptions regress to the mean, that means that over the next two seasons, he’ll only throw about 12 interceptions, which is about 6 per season, assuming he plays all 17 games in 2023 & 2024.

Here is the math:

• 12 games (2022) + 34 games (2023 & 2024) = 46 games.
• Average of .588 interceptions per game x 46 games = 27 interceptions over 46 games.
• 27 interceptions - 15 interceptions already thrown = 12 interceptions spread out over the next 34 games

Unless Dak Prescott suddenly got worse, or there was some outside factor that affected his play in 2022, Dak's average interception rate should revert back to what it has been over his first 85 games, which means he'll throw fewer interceptions to offset what happened in 2022.

The alternative few, still assuming that Dak's historical career average of interceptions over his first 85 games in a true picture of what we can expect, is that there was an anomaly in 2022. Some will say, maybe justifiably, that Dak's receiver corps was suspect in 2022, which is an outside factor that would affect him. If that is the case, then we should expect Dak to revert back to his normal rate, which means he'll throw about 10 interceptions in a 17 game season.

Bottom line: Unless Dak has suddenly got worse, we should expect him to throw around 6-10 interceptions in 2023, and the same in 2024. Even if you include the anomalous 2022 season, Dak's current career interception rate is 65 interceptions over 97 games played = 0.67 interceptions per game. The high end of that is 11 expected interceptions in 2023 over an entire 17 game schedule.

Now, we'll all see what actually occurs during the season, but based on Dak's historical performance, I'm not too concerned about interceptions in 2023. I do believe that Michael Gallup was hobbled last year, and I wasn't ever a huge fan of Dalton Schultz, who was competent, but not special. The addition of Cooks, the health improvement of Gallup, and the development of Tolbert bodes well for Dak's performance in 2023 - at least during the season.

The problem you forget is the play caller, as Moore threw more, while Linehan had him in a dumbed-down ball control offense. What awaits to be seen how McCarthy and Brian are going to call the game, but one thing is for sure, MM claimed that Moore wanted to score too fast and too often, and I think he was trying to out the INT problem on Dak.