Don't know if you've read Pro Football Prospectus yet--it's an attempt to bring the Bill James style statistical analysis to football.
I actually like the Pro Football Prospectus stuff more than the Baseball Prospectus. The heart of the PFP analysis is a "stat" called DVOA. I wish they'd given it a more accessible name, because it's less a statistic than it is an assessment of effectiveness.
What the PFP guys do is assign a success rate to every play a football team does--for example, a three yard gain on third and two is worth lots, a three yard gain on third and 18 is worth little.
They'll tally this up, weight it for scheduling and such, and you can see just how successful a team has been during a season.
What struck me about the thing is how incredibly inconsistent teams can be from week to week.
For example: the #1-ranked team in DVOA was Baltimore, with 31.8% DVOA (that's 31.8% better than an average team).
The #32-ranked team in DVOA was Oakland, with -30.0% DVOA.
But--Baltimore had a game where their DVOA was -37.1%. And Oakland had a game where their DVOA was 34.8%. So, for one game at least, Baltimore played as poorly as Oakland, and Oakland played as well as Baltimore.
This is all to say that we shouldn't read too much into the Hawks debacle against New Orleans. Yes, it was discouraging. But even great teams play like shit every once in a while.
Photo of Doug Henning is completely unrelated to anything in this post and merely included because I find it hilarious. Why don't magicians wear unicorn overalls anymore?
Wednesday, October 17, 2007
What Does One Game Portend? Not Much.
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2 comments:
Someone posted a comment here, and then deleted it, pointing out that this had been TWO bad games for the Hawks in a row, not just one. That's a good point.
But I'd argue that it's two bad games in a row from the offense, which we all know is in decline, and one bad game from the defense, which I think is the future of the team. Should've made that more clear.
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