This article is from a writer and historian whose work and opinion I respect quite a lot, Brad Oremland. Brad recently took a hiatus from writing about football (you can read more about it in his most recent column in his archives at Sports Central), but he was gracious enough to bring this great piece of work to me as a challenge to a fun post I made five years ago. The following words are Brad’s, and I hope you enjoy them as much as…
In the analytics community, using touchdowns to measure player performance is generally looked down upon; touchdowns are great for fantasy football but don’t matter in real football. I agree with this line of thinking for running backs, wide receivers, and tight ends. But I think touchdowns can be a very useful took for evaluating quarterbacks if done in the right context. I’ll start by saying that using touchdowns to measure single game performance is a terrible idea. If QB A tosses three goal line TD…
I’ve written several histories of NFL career records, but the history of the career receiving touchdowns record is the most fascinating to me. Twelve men held the receptions title, and eleven held the receiving yards record. Seven different players held the record for rushing yards and for rushing touchdowns. Eleven quarterbacks held the passing yardage crown, while ten captured the touchdown title. This record is different. Thanks, primarily, to Don Hutson and Jerry Rice, only four players have held the record for receiving touchdowns since…
Today’s post is from friend of the site Topher Doll, a fastidious recordkeeper who has spent the past few years tracking the success of myriad predictions and metrics used to measure team strength. Enjoy. Each year we are bombarded with predictions on how the season will shape up. From models built by people far smarter to me to predictions based on the feelings of a writer or researcher. Individually these are fun to read while agreeing or disagreeing with each team. They are wonderful conversation…
With the full 2018 season in the rear view, it’s time to hand out some awards. As always, I include postseason performance when deciding on awards, but my rule is this: the postseason can only help.1 In general, I lean toward players who played the entire season. However, I will make exceptions for those who missed a few games but either produced at such a high level that I had to include them or played as many snaps as those who played in all sixteen…
I am not the sole proprietor of The GridFe, so I don’t want to call this the GridFe All Pro Team. The players and coaches I have selected are my own choices, and they are often at odds with the picks of my fellow contributors. This is my all pro team. There are many like it, but this one is mine. I base my selections on traditional and advanced stats, film study, and my own futile attempts at properly applying context to each player’s season.…
Below are the SRS ratings through Week 9; as noted last week, the offense and defense ratings do not include “non-offense” scores. This ranking is telling us that on a neutral field, the spread for a Chiefs/Bills matchup would be Chiefs -26. That’s an insane spread, but pretty reasonable considering what our eyeballs tell us about these two teams. Is Chicago really a better team (albeit only slightly) than New England? Probably not. This rating (and PFR’s) includes all games and gives all games equal…
If you like using points per game as a reference for team strength (SOS), it makes sense to adjust for strength of opponent. Pro Football Reference has been doing this for years with their Simple Ranking System; in fact, the term “SRS” is now commonly used to refer to a team’s point differential that has been adjusted for SOS. PFR goes even further by giving us offensive and defensive ratings – OSRS and DSRS – which are pretty handy for seeing where a team’s strength…
Named in honor of Automatic Otto Graham, the Automatic Award goes to the most valuable player in the league each season. Given the value of passing for most of NFL (and AFL and AAFC) history, this award will almost always go to a quarterback. He touches the live ball more than any other player, has by far the largest impact on the outcome of his team’s success, and mans arguably the most important position in team sports.1 By and large, I am going to give…
With its name taken from Lawrence Taylor‘s college appellation, the Godzilla Award is bestowed annually upon the top defensive player in the league. Stats are relevant, of course, but they require context. For example, in 2006 Shawne Merriman led the league with 17 sacks. He did that while playing for Wade Phillips and getting a ton of relatively easy paths to the quarterback. Jason Taylor had only 13.5 sacks, but he did it primarily by beating his blocker and padding his box score on his own…
