Zman5
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4 Nov 2016
Week 10 Quick Reads
by Vincent Verhei
Last week, we introduced some new metrics intended to measure players' ability to pick up big chunks of real estate in one play, to find the stars of the game who make the highlight reels by flipping field position in just one snap. Today we're going to look at the NFL's defenses and see which teams are best at preventing plays like this, not producing them, but first I want to respond to some of the feedback we got last week.
Here's a quick look at what I wrote about this idea seven days ago:
Another reader said this could be solved simply using the term "explosive plays" instead of "big plays." This makes total sense, and even better, it leads to more similar terms and abbreviations. We can now say that yards gained after the first down line are called extra yards (XY), and by using XY we can tally the total number of explosive plays (XP).
...continue reading at
http://www.footballoutsiders.com/quick-reads/2016/week-10-quick-reads
Week 10 Quick Reads
by Vincent Verhei
Last week, we introduced some new metrics intended to measure players' ability to pick up big chunks of real estate in one play, to find the stars of the game who make the highlight reels by flipping field position in just one snap. Today we're going to look at the NFL's defenses and see which teams are best at preventing plays like this, not producing them, but first I want to respond to some of the feedback we got last week.
Here's a quick look at what I wrote about this idea seven days ago:
The basic concept is to divide all offense yardage into two categories: those yards that move a team towards (or, in the cases of sacks, stuffs, and penalties, pull a team away from) the first down, and those that are accumulated after the first-down line has been crossed. I like to call these extra yards. So a 2-yard gain on third-and-1 has 1 extra yard. A 15-yard gain on third-and-5 includes 10 extra yards. A 9-yard gain on first-and-10 is a good play, but it produces zero extra yards. All incompletions and sacks also produce zero extra yards. By this definition, there can never be negative extra yardage on a play -- extra yards either happen or they don't, and once gained they don't go away.
This seems like a reasonable method for counting the total yardage gained on big plays, but we still need a concrete definition of what is and is not a big play if we want to measure their frequency. Rather than arbitrarily set a designation at 10 or 20 or 30 yards, I propose this definition: a play counts as a big play when it gains a first down, then gains enough yardage after that to effectively grant the offense at least one more first down on top of that. In other words, all plays that gain at least 10 extra yards count as big plays, because by their nature they basically produce two first downs at once.
As some of the reader comments pointed out, the terminology and methodology don't exactly match up here. A 1-yard gain can certainly be a big play if it comes on fourth-and-goal in the fourth quarter -- just ask any Patriots fan who watched the final minutes of the Sunday night game against Seattle.This seems like a reasonable method for counting the total yardage gained on big plays, but we still need a concrete definition of what is and is not a big play if we want to measure their frequency. Rather than arbitrarily set a designation at 10 or 20 or 30 yards, I propose this definition: a play counts as a big play when it gains a first down, then gains enough yardage after that to effectively grant the offense at least one more first down on top of that. In other words, all plays that gain at least 10 extra yards count as big plays, because by their nature they basically produce two first downs at once.
Another reader said this could be solved simply using the term "explosive plays" instead of "big plays." This makes total sense, and even better, it leads to more similar terms and abbreviations. We can now say that yards gained after the first down line are called extra yards (XY), and by using XY we can tally the total number of explosive plays (XP).
...continue reading at
http://www.footballoutsiders.com/quick-reads/2016/week-10-quick-reads