"The problem with strikeouts isn't that they hurt your team, it's that they hurt your feelings..." --Rob Neyer
"The single most important thing for a hitter is to get a good pitch to hit. A good hitter can hit a pitch that’s over the plate three times better than a great hitter with a ball in a tough spot.”
--Ted Williams
"My mission is to be the ray of hope, the guy who stands out there on that beautiful field and owns up to his mistakes and lets people know it's never completely hopeless, no matter how bad it seems at the time. I have a platform and a message, and now I go to bed at night, sober and happy, praying I can be a good messenger." -Josh Hamilton
Total Defense (YPG) Complete List
1. Pittsburgh Steelers 244.7
2. Baltimore Ravens 262.1
3. Philadelphia Eagles 272.7
4. Washington Redskins 284.1
5. Tennessee Titans 287.2
Passing (YPG) Complete List
1. Pittsburgh Steelers 166.1
2. Philadelphia Eagles 180.1
3. Baltimore Ravens 183.2
4. Dallas Cowboys 189.1
5. Tampa Bay Buccaneers 190.1
Rushing (YPG) Complete List
1. Minnesota Vikings 73.0
2. Pittsburgh Steelers 78.5
3. Baltimore Ravens 78.9
4. Chicago Bears 91.3
5. Tennessee Titans 91
gosteelers2
* Attended the 1990 and 2010 Reds Division clinchers *
Go 76ers, Go Steelers and Go Bucks
I think I'm a Titans fan after seeing Lendale White stomping on a terrible towel.
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
"My mission is to be the ray of hope, the guy who stands out there on that beautiful field and owns up to his mistakes and lets people know it's never completely hopeless, no matter how bad it seems at the time. I have a platform and a message, and now I go to bed at night, sober and happy, praying I can be a good messenger." -Josh Hamilton
Yards are nice, but I'm pretty sure the games are decided by points. I've never understood why the NFL ranks them on yards, it's like determining the best offense in baseball by batting average instead of runs scored.
Agreed. Your analogy is spot on. It's why I like to go by the Aikman Efficiency Ratings. They take into account 7 different factors on offense and defense, and measure them against league norms (and extremes) from the last 10 years. The points that are generated by the offensive and defensive units of each team are then ranked against each other. The factors are:
Adjusted Points (20%) -- Total Points Scored or Allowed minus Points on Returns and Safeties
Turnovers (20%)
Red-Zone Efficiency (20%) -- Measured by Percent of Possible Points (see below)
Yards Per Play -- divided into Yards Per Rush (10% of total) and Yards Per Pass Play (10% of total). Yards Per Pass Play includes yards on plays involving sacks.
First-Down Achievement -- divided into Total First Downs (10% of total) and Third-Down Conversion Percentage (10% of total)
Percentage of Possible Points in the Red Zone is figured by taking the number of Red-Zone Chances times 7, then dividing it by the number of Points Actually Scored (defined as TDs times 7 plus FGs times 3).
At any rate, the AERs haven't been updated after this past weekend's action, but going into Sunday's games the AER defensive rankings (for noted teams) looked like this:
1. Steelers (89.7 points)
2. Ravens (88.7)
4. Titans (82.9)
16. Browns (72.4)
24. Bengals (66.0)
The top points might be slightly different after Week 16, but I wouldn't expect the rankings to change much, if at all.
Last edited by Screwball; 12-23-2008 at 09:29 AM.
Yep, and then there's the fact that the median YPG offensive rank of Titans opponents has been 21st in the league, with only one top-10 offense faced the entire year (Houston- twice). In contrast, Pittsburgh's combined opponents have a median offensive ranking of 15th in the NFL and they've faced half of the NFL's top 10 offenses (HOU, PHI, NYG, NE, DAL) while tying an NFL post-merger sub-300 YPG record.
And there's also the fact that offensive points given up via turnover, Safety, and return end up counting against the team's defensive points allowed, even though they have nothing to do with the team's defensive unit. If we're using baseball analogies, that's akin to an offensive event spotting the opponent a Run and then adding the Run to your Pitcher's ERA while he's in the dugout waiting to hit. Makes no sense whatsoever.
The Titans are good, but they're a few rungs down the ladder if we're talking about the current "best" NFL defenses.
"The problem with strikeouts isn't that they hurt your team, it's that they hurt your feelings..." --Rob Neyer
"The single most important thing for a hitter is to get a good pitch to hit. A good hitter can hit a pitch that’s over the plate three times better than a great hitter with a ball in a tough spot.”
--Ted Williams
Taking those out points out (which makes more sense than leaving them in), it turns out neither dog in this fight comes out on top.
BAL 203
PIT 205
TEN 211
Baltimore may actually be 202, there's a missed XP against them somewhere and I don't know if it came after a defensive or nondefensive allowed TD, and it's not worth digging through the box scores to find it.
I've always held more value in what a football team does in terms of holding opponents below/above the other teams average.
A defense that consistently holds good offenses below their average and an offense that scores more/gains more yards than their opponents allow on average is a good barometer.
The OPS of football is yards per point however. It takes into account (according to the football stat heads I've talked to) everything like good offensive field position, turnovers etc. I'll dig up a link with a good discussion on it if anyones interested. This is a tool in the vegas handicappers tool box so if they like it, thats tells me it has some validity.
Ultimately for me, football just has such a small sample siz/short season and is so influenced by emotions that I give very little credence to the stats it generates.
Oh, it's more complex than that. Of the 223 points allowed by Pittsburgh, 18 of them were produced via INT return or Safety. However, another 15 points were the result of FG after turnover or return when the defense held the opponent to a single series of downs deep in their own territory. That shows up as a positive (as it should) in the Yards allowed. Yet, because of the starting points for those drives, it appears as a negative in the Points Allowed category (which is silly). Overall, nearly 15% of the points allowed by the Steelers had pretty much nothing to do with the defensive performance. Basically, Pts. per Game is a poisoned well.
What defenses are tasked with is allowing few yards. That's what equal points when you clear the noise away. And that's where Tennessee is good (4th in the NFL in Yards per Play- 4.50), but it's where Pittsburgh dominates (3.97 Y/P). The number 2 defense (Philly) is at 4.40 Y/P, with Baltimore 3rd at 4.49 Y/P. That's really the only thing a defense can control and when you see one team at a much better rate while playing against much better offenses than another, it's a big deal.
"The problem with strikeouts isn't that they hurt your team, it's that they hurt your feelings..." --Rob Neyer
"The single most important thing for a hitter is to get a good pitch to hit. A good hitter can hit a pitch that’s over the plate three times better than a great hitter with a ball in a tough spot.”
--Ted Williams
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