I think we’ve all probably had enough griping for a bit so I want to get back to talking about football.
I think we all came into the season with significant questions about the defense and with good reason. Replacing Logan, Miller, Young, and Booker was a lot to ask. I think it’s too early to say for certain that everything is sunshine and rainbows, but so far the early returns on the defense look pretty good.
I track a ton of data. When it comes to defense I really look at 14 metrics to view how things actually went. It helps me to see a well rounded view of performance. Because I’m a nerd and care about that sort of thing. All of the metrics are “offensive” metrics, but are used for defense to show how well they performed.
The metrics are:
Please note, I’m not saying that this is a world beater defense or anything like that. I’m also not saying that just because it happened the past two weeks means that it will continue like that. We could be talking about this in 2-3 weeks and saying “wow that was a bad take”. Totally get it. I’m simply saying that so far the early returns look good.
I’ll drop some data tables in posts below.
I think we all came into the season with significant questions about the defense and with good reason. Replacing Logan, Miller, Young, and Booker was a lot to ask. I think it’s too early to say for certain that everything is sunshine and rainbows, but so far the early returns on the defense look pretty good.
I track a ton of data. When it comes to defense I really look at 14 metrics to view how things actually went. It helps me to see a well rounded view of performance. Because I’m a nerd and care about that sort of thing. All of the metrics are “offensive” metrics, but are used for defense to show how well they performed.
The metrics are:
- Yards/Play (YPP)-It’s a measure of offensive productivity.
- Points/Play (PPP)-It’s a measure of offensive efficiency and throughput. The higher the number, the fewer plays the offense needed to get points on the board.
- Yards/Carry (YPC)-its a measure of run game productivity and efficiency
- Yards/Attempt (YPA)-its a measure of passing game productivity and efficiency
- Sack Rate-it measures the number of times that a defense is sacking the quarterback as a percentage of total passing plays
- Int Rate-it’s a measure of the number of times that a defense is generating an interception as a percentage of total passing plays
- Havoc Rate-it combines sacks, TFL’s, turnovers, PBU’s and forced fumbles as a percentage of the total plays run…if I could accurately track hurries, it would go here but I can’t…so I don’t.
- Plays/1st Down-this helps understand if the offense is sustaining drives or if the defense can get them off of the field.
- Success Rate-measurement of how a team is staying ahead of the chains. Not all plays are necessarily created equal…a 3 yard gain on 3rd and 2 is more important to the game than a 3 yard gain on 1st and 10.
- Explosive Rate-measurement of how many plays of greater than 10 yards are occurring relative to the total number of plays.
- Eckel Rate-it’s a measurement of the number of possessions get into scoring position relative to the total number of possessions.
- Points/Eckel-its a measurement of efficiency when you get into scoring range
- Red Zone Rate (RZR)-it’s a measurement of how many drives get into the red zone relative to the total number of drives.
- Points/Red Zone Attempt-It’s a measurement on how you convert once you get into the red zone.
Please note, I’m not saying that this is a world beater defense or anything like that. I’m also not saying that just because it happened the past two weeks means that it will continue like that. We could be talking about this in 2-3 weeks and saying “wow that was a bad take”. Totally get it. I’m simply saying that so far the early returns look good.
I’ll drop some data tables in posts below.
