An objective quantitative analysis of Skins vs. Hawks

[UofMSkinsFan]

footballoutsiders.com collects what I think are among the most useful and telling statistics on the NFL. In particular, they estimate how good an offense is relative to all other offenses in the league after controlling for the quality of the opponent. They produce similar statistics for defense, for the team as a whole, and even for individual players and then they produce rankings based on the results. I highly recommend checking out their site.

Based on these statistics, they rank Seattle #6 and Washington #7 among NFL teams (using their weighted measure, which puts more emphasis on recent games), but with very little difference between them. And although the two teams are ranked very similarly, the reasons are completely different. The Redskins offense is ranked almost exactly average for the NFL (note: not bad or great, but average) whereas the defense is ranked #2. Conversely, Seattle's defense is almost exactly average whereas their offense is ranked #5.

The bottom line based on this analysis is that the game will probably be close. An important caveat is that the numbers do NOT consider home-field advantage which certainly gives Seattle an edge. On the other hand, I'd rather have a great defense than a great offense: Defense wins championships!

HTTR

[SkinFan63]

When my mom's right foot swells up and turns purple, and gets kinda dry and flaky, the Redskins win!

When her back starts growing thick black hair...we lose.

Her foot is purple and swollen and gettin kinda dry and flaky.

Hail!:point2sky

[kingdaddy]

When my mom's right foot swells up and turns purple, and gets kinda dry and flaky, the Redskins win!

When her back starts growing thick black hair...we lose.

Her foot is purple and swollen and gettin kinda dry and flaky.

Hail!:point2sky

Those symptoms would rank your mom in the top 10 % of mom's for purple, flaky feet. But, in the bottom third of mom's with thick black back hair. Seattle is an intersting matchup for your mom. Turnovers could decide it.

[wahoos911]

When my mom's right foot swells up and turns purple, and gets kinda dry and flaky, the Redskins win!

When her back starts growing thick black hair...we lose.

Her foot is purple and swollen and gettin kinda dry and flaky.

Hail!:point2sky

...........

uhm

no comment...

[Fischer fan]

Those symptoms would rank your mom in the top 10 % of mom's for purple, flaky feet. But, in the bottom third of mom's with thick black back hair. Seattle is an intersting matchup for your mom. Turnovers could decide it.

Now THIS is my kind of medical humor.

lmao :laugh:

wtg kingdaddy and skinfan63

[36HAMMER]

the thing that makes this game soo hard to call are the intangibles,like the heart of this skins team. the scrapy 60 plus min of fight attitude. we are not loved on by the media because we are not a pretty team, we are what we have always been, a lunch pail carring full game fighting slobberknocking football team.hey, that's my kind of football team. i do respect seattle, holmgren is a great coach and i really like ray rhodes.skinfan63 you should warn someone before wrinting that stuff about your mom. i was eating dinner when i read that and just about tossed my food. with all due respect to yo momma, that's just plain nasty. :laugh: :point2sky

[UofMSkinsFan]

A few more rankings based on stats (again controlling for opponents/SOS):

QBs:

SEA Hasselback #5

WAS Brunell #12

RBs:

SEA Alexander #2

WAS Portis #9

Receivers:

SEA Jurevicius #20

SEA Jackson #26

WAS Moss #3

WAS Patten (before injury) #89 (last among receivers with at least 50 catches!)

Tight Ends:

SEA Stevens #5

WAS Cooley #4

O-Lines (Run Blocking):

SEA #6

WAS #5

O-Lines (Pass Blocking):

SEA #9

WAS #16

D-Line (Runs):

SEA #1

WAS #11

D-Line (Passes):

SEA #6

WAS #23

Special Teams:

SEA #15

WAS #14

Most of these stats match my intuition fairly well except for the D-Line rankings. I don't see how the Skins D-Line can be ranked #11 against the run and #23 against the pass, especially given that our defense as a whole is ranked #2! I was also very surprised to see Seattle's D-Line ranked #1 against the run given that their defense ranks in the middle of the pack. Any insights?

[Daklu]

I was also very surprised to see Seattle's D-Line ranked #1 against the run given that their defense ranks in the middle of the pack. Any insights?

Only that official NFL defensive rankings are based on yards given up. No other factors are brought into consideration. All year the Seahawks have been playing a bend-but-don't-break defense, giving up a (reletively) high amount of yards but not giving up many points.

Even so, I'm pretty surprised also at a #1 ranking for the D-line against the run.

[pgitta]

This is the raw data from NFL.com. FOR NFC ONLY

[worm]

The hell with rankings. How's this:

Jacksonville 12-4

Atlanta 8-8

Arizona 5-11

Washington 10-6

St Louis 6-10

Houston 2-14

Dallas 9-7

Arizona 5-11

St Louis 6-10

San Francisco 4-12

New York Giants 11-5

Philadelphia 6-10

San Francisco 4-12

Tennessee 4-12

Indianapolis 14-2

Green Bay 4-12

How many teams did you beat with a winning record that were playing their 1st stringers?

[tjo62]

The hell with rankings. How's this:

Jacksonville 12-4

Atlanta 8-8

Arizona 5-11

Washington 10-6

St Louis 6-10

Houston 2-14

Dallas 9-7

Arizona 5-11

St Louis 6-10

San Francisco 4-12

New York Giants 11-5

Philadelphia 6-10

San Francisco 4-12

Tennessee 4-12

Indianapolis 14-2

Green Bay 4-12

How many teams did you beat with a winning record that were playing their 1st stringers?

And during this AMAZING run to the playoffs you beat-AZ, St. Louis(with a 3rd string QB), Giants, Cowgirls, Philly(with a High School QB). Seems we played(and beat) all those teams...but OUR schedule was weak?

[DCsportsfan53]

And during this AMAZING run to the playoffs you beat-AZ, St. Louis(with a 3rd string QB), Giants, Cowgirls, Philly(with a High School QB). Seems we played(and beat) all those teams...but OUR schedule was weak?

Um, hello, because while you were playing GB, Ten, Houston, Atl, Colts without Manning, 2 games agianst all those crappy Nfc west teams and the Pats when they were totally injured we were playing Den, KC, SD, Chi, road games agianst Dal and NYG. Remeber, we took Den and the Chiefs to the wire on the road, you guys needed 2 picks and multiple errant passes from Manning as well as Feely's collapse to beat the G-men at home. The hawks haven't seen a smash mouth team like ours all season and I'm including our earlier meeting because this is a much tougher team now. The hawks have had nothing but easy games and smooth sailing since then. They ain't ready for the way they're gonna get hit in the mouth. I can't wait. All these trash talking girlie bird fans and retarded media geniuses will only make it that much better. Go skins.

[terpfan]

WAS Patten (before injury) #89 (last among receivers with at least 50 catches!)

Im curious how that works considering Patten only had 22 catches himself...

[Thiebear]

Collected Turnovers in the last 6 games?

3 metric tons...... nuff said.

[Daklu]

How many teams did you beat with a winning record that were playing their 1st stringers?

All that we needed to to secure the #1 seed.

Um, hello, because while you were playing GB, Ten, Houston, Atl, Colts without Manning, 2 games agianst all those crappy Nfc west teams and the Pats when they... blah, blah, blah.

The truth of the matter is that everytime you point out the Hawks should have lost to the Giants, we can point out that the Skins should have lost to the Hawks. You say you easily handled the 49ers at home (52-17) while we struggled against them on the road (27-25)? We say we also demolished the 49ers at home (41-3) and also destroyed the Eagles in Philly on MNF (42-0) versus your less impressive win (31-20). You say we barely beat the Cowboys, we say you lost to the Raiders. You say we're weak because we play in a pansy division, we say both teams went 6-0 versus common opponents in the same venue.

It's tit-for-tat all the way down the line...

[Daklu]

This is the raw data from NFL.com. FOR NFC ONLY

Yikes! That analysis is flawed on so many levels I'm not sure where to begin... Sorry pgitta, I don't know what you were trying to show with that data but as near as I can tell it's worth less than the photons it's printed on.

[SkinsFTW]

Um, hello, because while you were playing GB, Ten, Houston, Atl, Colts without Manning, 2 games agianst all those crappy Nfc west teams and the Pats when they were totally injured we were playing Den, KC, SD, Chi, road games agianst Dal and NYG. Remeber, we took Den and the Chiefs to the wire on the road, you guys needed 2 picks and multiple errant passes from Manning as well as Feely's collapse to beat the G-men at home. The hawks haven't seen a smash mouth team like ours all season and I'm including our earlier meeting because this is a much tougher team now. The hawks have had nothing but easy games and smooth sailing since then. They ain't ready for the way they're gonna get hit in the mouth. I can't wait. All these trash talking girlie bird fans and retarded media geniuses will only make it that much better. Go skins.

You tell them man!!! but they won't see until the game gets going.

:point2sky

[Dat Dude88]

When my mom's right foot swells up and turns purple, and gets kinda dry and flaky, the Redskins win!

When her back starts growing thick black hair...we lose.

Her foot is purple and swollen and gettin kinda dry and flaky.

Hail!:point2sky

Puhleeeeeeeeeeeeaaaaaasssssssse...

Don't wash her foot!

[SkinsFTW]

I always follow the footballoutsiders too. Its much more accurate than just a bunch of ESPN idiots telling us that they think this team is better because they said so.

Also if we went by ESPN we spent most of the season between 15th and 18th because they didn't think we could beat the Giants or Cowboys the second time.

[UofMSkinsFan]

Only that official NFL defensive rankings are based on yards given up. No other factors are brought into consideration. All year the Seahawks have been playing a bend-but-don't-break defense, giving up a (reletively) high amount of yards but not giving up many points.

Even so, I'm pretty surprised also at a #1 ranking for the D-line against the run.

Actually the rankings posted above were based on the footballoutsiders.com stats which are NOT based only on yards given up. To quote from that site:

"Teams are ranked according to Adjusted Line Yards. Based on regression analysis, the Adjusted Line Yards formula takes all running back carries and assigns responsibility to the offensive line based on the following percentages:

Losses: 120% value

0-4 Yards: 100% value

5-10 Yards: 50% value

11+ Yards: 0% value

These numbers are then adjusted based on down, distance, and situation, and normalized so that the league average for Adjusted Line Yards per carry is the same as the league average for RB yards per carry (in 2005, 4.07). Defensive line stats (more accurately, defensive front seven stats) represent the performance of offensive lines against each defense, adjusted for the quality of offensive opponents." (http://www.footballoutsiders.com/stats/dl.php)

As you can see, these rankings are NOT based on total yards but on "success" on individual plays and furthermore they control for the quality of the opponents.

So my question remains: What's up with the DLine rankings? How could the Skins DLine rankings be worse than the Hawks (against both the run & the pass) while the Team Defense ranking is better? In fact, Football Outsiders also ranks pass defense and rush defense (not just DLine) and those stats are much more reflective of the overall defensive ranks (and more consistent with my own intuitions):

Pass Defense:

WAS #7

SEA #25

Rush Defense:

WAS #5

SEA #7

The only hypothesis I can come up with is that the secondary plays a more important role in Williams' defensive schemes than it does for other teams (e.g., coming up against the run, blitzing) and that the DLine stats suffer as a result. Other thoughts?

[SkinsFTW]

Maybe because they got more sacks and turnovers from the DL?

[pgitta]

Yikes! That analysis is flawed on so many levels I'm not sure where to begin... Sorry pgitta, I don't know what you were trying to show with that data but as near as I can tell it's worth less than the photons it's printed on.

There's no analysis to it bird-flu-boy Hense the term "raw stats"

[Daklu]

There's no analysis to it bird-flu-boy

Geez, what's with all the name calling and hostility? Don't people know how to be civil?

Regarding analysis, I had originally thought that the numbers at the bottom of each column in the unlabelled row were sums, and that by looking at the relative sums for each team we should be able to deduce which teams were better. Summing the numbers would be considered analysis.

As it is, the numbers don't quite add up. Do you know what those numbers represent? Could there be some rankings that were excluded?

[onedrop]

Um, hello, because while you were playing GB, Ten, Houston, Atl, Colts without Manning, 2 games agianst all those crappy Nfc west teams and the Pats when they were totally injured we were playing Den, KC, SD, Chi, road games agianst Dal and NYG. Remeber, we took Den and the Chiefs to the wire on the road, you guys needed 2 picks and multiple errant passes from Manning as well as Feely's collapse to beat the G-men at home. The hawks haven't seen a smash mouth team like ours all season and I'm including our earlier meeting because this is a much tougher team now. The hawks have had nothing but easy games and smooth sailing since then. They ain't ready for the way they're gonna get hit in the mouth. I can't wait. All these trash talking girlie bird fans and retarded media geniuses will only make it that much better. Go skins.

God bless you Sir.

[pjmjr123]

:doh:

ummmm...what?