Week 6 NFL Projected Wins

Here’s the Project Wins based off of TSHI heading into Week 6. Tomorrow I'll further analyze the 'Decoding Garrett' and Friday I hope to have a post as to who I would like to be the next Cowboys Head Coach.

Rnk……….Team………………Proj. Wins
1…..New York Jets……….11.79
2…..New England Patriots……….11.76
3…..Indianapolis Colts……….10.47
4…..Atlanta Falcons……….10.45
5…..Pittsburgh Steelers……….10.39
6…..Tennessee Titans……….10.29
7…..San Diego Chargers……….10.24
8…..Green Bay Packers……….9.96
9…..Kansas City Chiefs……….9.84
10…..Philadelphia Eagles……….9.48
11…..Detroit Lions……….9.05
12…..Tampa Bay Buccaneers……….9.04
13…..New York Giants……….8.81
14…..New Orleans Saints……….8.75
15…..Cincinnati Bengals……….8.73
16…..Chicago Bears……….8.43
17…..Baltimore Ravens……….8.32
18…..Washington Redskins……….7.85
19…..Seattle Seahawks……….7.51
20…..Denver Broncos……….7.23
21…..Dallas Cowboys……….7.01
22…..St. Louis Rams……….6.87
23…..Cleveland Browns……….6.25
24…..Minnesota Vikings……….6.03
25…..Miami Dolphins……….5.74
26…..Jacksonville Jaguars……….5.29
27…..Houston Texans……….5.28
28…..Arizona Cardinals……….4.70
29…..Oakland Raiders……….4.65
30…..Buffalo Bills……….4.10
31…..San Francisco 49ers……….3.50
32…..Carolina Panthers……….3.35

If we were to round the numbers off, their projected records would look like this:

AFC EAST

NY Jets 12-4
New England 12-4
Miami 6-10
Buffalo 4-12

AFC North

Pittsburgh 10-6
Cincinnati 9-7
Baltimore 8-8
Cleveland 6-10

AFC South

Indianapolis 10-6
Tennessee 10-6
Jacksonville 5-11
Houston 5-11

AFC West

San Diego 10-6
Kansas City 10-6
Denver 7-9
Oakland 5-11

NFC East

Philadelphia 9-7
NY Giants 9-7
Washington 8-8
Dallas 7-9

NFC North

Green Bay 10-6
Detroit 9-7
Chicago 8-8
Minnesota 6-10

NFC South

Atlanta 10-6
Tampa Bay 9-7
New Orleans 9-7
Carolina 3-13

NFC West

Seattle 8-8
St. Louis 7-9
Arizona 5-11
San Francisco 4-12






3JACK

Week 5 NFL Projected Wins

Here's my Week 5 proj. wins

1…..New York Jets………12.43
2…..New England Patriots………11.69
3…..San Diego Chargers………11.58
4…..Green Bay Packers………11.50
5…..Indianapolis Colts………10.47
6…..Pittsburgh Steelers………10.32
7…..Kansas City Chiefs………10.24
8…..Atlanta Falcons………10.02
9…..Tennessee Titans………9.91
10…..Philadelphia Eagles………9.58
11…..New Orleans Saints………9.32
12…..Cincinnati Bengals………9.15
13…..St. Louis Rams………8.80
14…..Tampa Bay Buccaneers………8.64
15…..Chicago Bears………8.40
16…..Baltimore Ravens………8.24
17…..Dallas Cowboys………8.22
18…..Washington Redskins………7.67
19…..Denver Broncos………7.39
20…..Seattle Seahawks………7.22
21…..Cleveland Browns………6.68
22…..New York Giants………6.62
23…..Houston Texans………5.88
24…..Minnesota Vikings………5.86
25…..Detroit Lions………5.82
26…..Miami Dolphins………5.80
27…..Jacksonville Jaguars………4.81
28…..Oakland Raiders………3.72
29…..Carolina Panthers………3.19
30…..Arizona Cardinals………3.05
31…..Buffalo Bills………2.89
32…..San Francisco 49ers………2.84






YR

Week 5 Stats

Here’s a look at some stats for Dallas this year.

- Rank 8th in total team efficiency according to FO.com. Unfortunately, Seattle ranks 9th

- Here’s why I think there’s a major flaw in FO.com’s stats. Dallas ranks 6th in offensive efficiency and 22nd in defensive efficiency. I think anybody who watched the first 3 games can see that the defense is much better than the offense right now and one lousy game against the Bears shouldn’t detract from that point. But what has the offense done so far? Throw a ton of passes. And a ton of short, dink and dunk passes. FO.com pretty much has favored the Eagles and the Pats every year they’ve been in existence, two other teams known for their short dink and dunk, heavy passing offenses. Tough to blame them too much on the Pats, but the Eagles have had some rough years in between and they projected the Eagles for a successful season this year despite losing their star QB. Perhaps some day I’ll come up with a statistical formula that I feel better represents offenses.

- The Bears game has hurt our defensive FO.com stats. 24th against #1 WR, although neither Andre Johnson or Santana Moss killed us and Hester pretty much had short passes for TD’s. 32nd against #2 WR and I don’t recall Galloway or Walter killing us. 24th vs. TE’s. Cooley had a nice game and so did Olsen. We did do a good job of containing Owen Daniels, which tells me that when the defense is focused it can stop TE’s.

- Yes, we are ranked 1st in Adjusted Sacks Allowed Ratio (which play a part in a team’s ability to win games). We are getting good run blocking from Doug Free as well with the Cowboys ranking 16th on runs at left end (to his left) and 2nd in runs at left tackle (directly behind him). The problem spot is we are 20th in runs up the gut. In fact, I’d probably look to avoid runs up the gut and runs outside of Free for now if I were Garrett (which means he won’t, and we’ll just keep running at those two zones).

- True to form, Dallas mostly runs up the gut and at left end, the two spots they are weakest at. They run up the gut 60% of the time. This is where teams run the most. But the league average is usually at 50% of the time, so we overdo it. We also run at left end 15% of the time, while the league average is 11%

- Dallas is 13th in defensive sacks adjusted rate. Wade is typically one of the best in this category and usually gets his defenses in the top 5 year in and year out. Like the offensive adjusted sacks allowed, it’s early yet and we need to wait on this one.

- Where we’ve struggled on run defense is runs up the gut and at right tackle. I’m not so sure Spears or Ratliff is to blame, although this suggest more Spears than Ratliff. I know I’ve seen times where both Ware and Spencer make a gamble and pay for it. Teams only run up the gut on the Cowboys 42% of the time, which further suggests that Ratliff really isn’t the issue.

- The offense has converted 40% of their first downs, ranking t-13th

- The defense has only allowed 24% of their 3rd downs to be converted, ranking t-1st

- We’re 3rd in average time of possession.

I’ll probably have a TSHI ranking come Wednesday as that’s when FO.com usually has their Adjusted Sacks Allowed Ratio out. And I will take a look at the Titans stats on either Thursday or Friday.






YR

Team Statistical Health Index Week 3

Recently I’ve been working on a better way to compile team statistics and to project team wins. A very good and easy way is use what I call ‘QB Rating Differential.’ This takes a team’s offensive QB Rating and subtracts their defensive QB rating allowed.

For you non-stat buff people out there, a good way to figure out the ‘power’ behind a statistic is to find what’s called the ‘correlation coefficient.’ This is a number that tells how on thing correlates to another thing. And it is a number that goes from -1.0 to +1.0.

The closer the number is to +1.0, the stronger of a direct correlation is. So for instance, if you owned a store and wanted to see the correlation between iced tea sold and temperature, you may come up with a correlation coefficient of +0.7 which is a pretty strong correlation….meaning, the higher the temperature outdoors, the more likely you are to sell more iced tea. The closer the number is to -1.0, the stronger the indirect correlation is. And the closer to 0 means there is no correlation.

The cool thing about QBRD is that it’s easy to figure out and it has a very strong correlation to winning and losing in the NFL. Over the past 6 seasons, the correlation coefficient of QBRD to wins is at +0.8. Furthermore, QBRD can be easy to understand because typically a team’s QBRD that is close to zero usually means they’ll win about 8 games.

When we have the correlation coefficient of any statistic, we can then make projections/predictions. And the closer that coefficient is to +1.0, the more accurate our projections/predictions will be.

And while QBRD has a very strong correlation coefficient and generally does a very good job of projecting wins, there is always about 4 teams each year that are ‘way off’ from the projection. Usually 1-2 teams will ‘overachieve’ (have much more wins than their QBRD suggests they should have) and 1-2 teams that ‘underachieve.’ (have much less wins than their QBRD suggests).

So I wanted to come up with a way to use some other stats so I can get an even stronger correlation coefficient.

So I took what I believe to be important factors in the game and also sought out to see what teams that that greatly ‘overachieved’ and ‘underachieved’ to see what they did that allowed them to skew so far from what their QBRD was. 2008 was the season where we saw some big ‘overachievers’ and ‘underachievers’ in the ’08 Carolina Panthers (overachieved), ’08 Denver Broncos (overachieved), and the ’08 Green Bay Packers (underachieved).

Obviously, the first statistic I use is QBRD. It’s correlation is strong, so those 3-4 teams a year that skew from the QBRD don’t really ‘spoil the pot.’

The 2nd statistic I came up with was this formula: (Points Scored / Total Yards Gained) * 1000

I found that points scored / total yards gained has a very strong correlation of +0.75. I needed to multiply it by 1000 in order to show the significant effect this stat has. This statistic I think shows a few things:

1. A teams ability to move the ball. Theoretically you may only move the ball 20 yards a drive and score 40 points, but that would require tremendous field position. So in order to score, you just have to move the ball, period.

2. A teams ability to ‘finish off’ the drive. Not only how well they do it by scoring TD’s over FG’s, but also making those field goals.

3. A team’s ability to win the field position battle. Not only in special teams, but getting turnovers.

Now, I tried to do something similar for defense (total yards allowed / total points allowed), but the correlation wasn’t nearly as strong (about +0.5) so I disregarded it.


The 3rd stat is the team’s Points Allowed Ranking. This I found this interesting because from 1984 to 2005, only 1 team NO team had *made* the Super Bowl and finished higher than 8th in points allowed that season.

After ’05, we then had the ’06 Colts, the ’07 G-Men, the ’08 Cardinals and the ’09 Saints all make the Super Bowl and finish outside the top 8 in points allowed. The Colts defense had just regained Bob Sanders before the playoffs and shutdown opposing offenses with Sanders playing. The G-Men’s defense was starting to come along and led the league in sacks. The Cardinals were very unique to make the SB, although they played in a super weak division and had the advantage of homefield. And the ’09 Saints had a great offense and created a massive amount of turnovers.

Perhaps the correlation is going to fall in time and the league becomes more of a scoring league, but the correlation between winning and points allowed is still pretty good (around +0.65) so I kept it in there.

Lastly, the statistic I used was FootballOutsiders.com’s Adjusted Sacks *allowed* rate. This is a stat that not only factors sacks allowed, but how many pass attempts you had, the down and distance (3rd and long being an easier situation to give up a sack) and the quality of pass rush the team is facing.

In the past I had used defensive sacks, but the correlation between defensive sacks and winning or losing its steam. Probably because of the more shotgun happy offenses and the more blitz happy defenses. The correlation is decent (+0.61) but this was usually the missing link between all of the overachievers and underachievers.

The ’08 Panthers and Broncos whom ‘overachieved’ did very well that year in Adjusted Sacks Allowed and the ’08 Packers who underachieved did very poorly in Adjusted Sacks Allowed.

My guess is that the reason for this is that not only does it prevent the QB from getting rattled, but also the likelihood of the QB getting injured is influenced by this as well. Lastly, it plays a big difference in both field position and down and distance. Get sacked on 1st down and then you’re left with a 2nd and 17 and the defense knows you’re almost likely to throw the next 2 downs so you can pick up a first down.

With that, I made a formula to weight these stats and over a 6 season span I got a correlation of +0.9. Since I can’t really figure in strength of schedule, I can’t imagine it getting much higher than that. But with:

QBRD
Points Per Yards Gained
Turnover Margin
Points Allowed Ranking
Adjusted Sacks Allowed

I think I’ve attacked key elements of the game in the passing offense, passing defense, pass protection, ability to score points, turnovers, FG kicking, field position, etc.

So with that, I’ve used a linear regression (a formula that can be used to project something) to project the wins based on current performance. Obviously, this will fluctuate, I really haven’t come up with a name for my formula of projecting wins other than Team Statistical Health Index. But here’s the projections going into Week 4.

1…Indianapolis Colts……………11.77
2…New York Jets……………11.67
3…Green Bay Packers……………11.52
4…Pittsburgh Steelers……………11.14
5…Tennessee Titans……………10.91
6…Atlanta Falcons……………10.82
7…Philadelphia Eagles……………10.51
8…Kansas City Chiefs……………10.03
9…Chicago Bears……………10.02
10…New England Patriots……………9.90
11…New Orleans Saints……………9.79
12…Cincinnati Bengals……………9.39
13…San Diego Chargers……………9.18
14…Seattle Seahawks……………9.17
15…Tampa Bay Buccaneers……………8.71
16…Miami Dolphins……………8.25
17…St. Louis Rams……………8.19
18…Dallas Cowboys……………8.15
19…Baltimore Ravens……………7.86
20…Denver Broncos……………7.06
21…Washington Redskins……………6.96
22…Cleveland Browns……………6.71
23…Detroit Lions……………5.74
24…Arizona Cardinals……………5.37
25…Minnesota Vikings……………5.30
26…New York Giants……………5.21
27…Houston Texans……………4.33
28…Oakland Raiders……………3.93
29…Buffalo Bills……………3.06
30…Carolina Panthers……………2.54
31…Jacksonville Jaguars……………2.22
32…San Francisco 49ers……………1.38



3JACK

A Look at the Week 3 Personnel Stats...

Another special thanks to Bob Sturm’s blog (link over to the right of this page) for his compiling this data.

As we could see anyway, the Cowboys were much more balanced on offense, running the 46% of the time. Before the Texans game, the Cowboys were running the ball 30% of the time. Like I mentioned, Andy Reid usually gets skewered, and rightfully so, for throwing the ball 60% of the time.

Dallas had 3 personnel groups that worked, by far the best. 12 (one back, 2 tight ends), 21 (two backs, 1 tight end) and S11 (shotgun, 1 back, 1 tight end). And the good news is that they were smart enough to use those formations on 75% of the plays.

This was also one of the games where you feel like the team has been reading this stuff.

Here’s the formula I discussed for winning Cowboys football:

Keep Romo under 36 pass attempts

Run the ball at least 25 times

Keep the 1st and 2nd down shotgun formations to under 25% of the time.

Run more out of the shotgun.

Dallas nailed all of those and had their most successful offensive performance of the year and got their first victory. According to reports, Romo mainly called the plays with Garrett serving as the final ‘editor.’ As Sturm mentioned, in Dallas ’ 8 drives, they started off each drive with a running play. So the commitment to run the ball was there.

For the year, we run the ball best out of the 12 personnel (4.4 ypc) and throw the ball the best from the 21 personnel (10.9 ypa). Here’s a look at our personnel and yards per play.

11……….1.3
12……….6.4
21……….7.5
22……….4.6
S01……...6.0
S11……...7.0
S12……..4.7

The good news is that we’ve used the personnel groups that work best the most. I would certainly imagine that Romo will call plays against the Titans, but the issue with QB’s calling plays is that they tend to favor the pass too much. A key part of the NFL is to still be willing to run the ball when there are 8 defenders in the box in order to keep the defense honest. As well as being willing to throw the ball when there are 6 defenders in the box. With Garrett’s issues in unbalanced playcalling, I’m not too keen on him being an ‘editor’ either.







YR

A Focus on QBRD

Dallas' current QBRD is at -15.6, which projects to 5.3 wins. Nothing really to worry about now because it's so early in the season. But going 0-2 is since teams that start off 0-2 have a 13% chance of making the playoffs.

Part of the big issue is the lack of turnovers. Most fans think about getting fumbles when it comes to turnovers, but where teams need to get turnovers is on INT's and QB strip fumbles. Why? Because on average each season, about 75% of the league's total turnovers are from the QB position (INT's and strip fumbles).

To go into this further, the problem has been from the safety position where Dallas has 2 INT's from all of the safeties that have been on their roster in the last 41 games.

Typically, the top 5 teams in INT's each year get about 8+ INT's from their safeties. Wade likes to play a lot of zone, but it seems like most of our INT's come on man-to-man coverage with the corners.

Another thing to point out and I think Jerry needs a coaching staff to focus on. The Cowboys road QB rating allowed by the defense since 2007 is 78. However, at home thier QB Rating Allowed by the defense is 84. I don't blame the 'home crowd' because it still makes no sense that the defense can go on the road and play much better than at home. Something tells me that the defense loses focus when they get home.






YR

Week 2 Personnel Grouping Stats

A big thanks to Bob Sturm’s blog, otherwise Statistical Cowboys would not exist.

A few things:

- The team is currently operating out of the shotgun 47% of the time and has run out of the shotgun only 3 times (4.5% of the time). And they haven’t run well out of the shotgun. Obviously, most teams don’t run a lot out of the shotgun or run that well out of the shotgun, but that’s part of the problem with a heavy shotgun offense, the opposing defense has no reason to worry about the possibility of running the ball and can pin the offense’s ears back.

I remember when Joe Gibbs became the coach for the Skins in his second go-a-round, he stated that he wasn’t a fan of the shotgun and I sort of wondered why, particularly on 3rd downs. Eventually Gibbs relented and let Mark Brunnel run the offense on the shotgun, but only on 3rd downs. I’ve discussed the importance of a team’s QB rating because it is so important to have a high QBRD. But, if you’re running out of the shotgun a ton, then you’re allowing the defense to not only know that they have to play for the pass, but you also increase the likelihood of getting your starting QB injured because the pass rushers are going full bore after him.

- Just as alarming, Dallas used shotgun on 23 1st or 2nd down plays. There were 57 total 1st or 2nd down plays. Meaning that 40% of the 1st or 2nd downs, Dallas used the shotgun formation where the defense knew we were going to pass. This game the shotgun worked a bit better as Romo averaged 7.4 yards per pass attempt, but that’s still down 9% from his career average (prior to this season).

- Here’s a look at the personnel groupings and formations and the percentage of time they were called.


Formation…………………% of time called

S11………………...……31%

21………………...……..17%

22………………...……..15%

S12………………...……15%

12………………...……..11%

31………………...……….4%

11………………...……….3%

WC22………………..……1%

S01………………...…...…0%


So we ran out of the S11 formation (shotgun, 1 tailback, 1 tight end), the most amount of the time. The good news is that Garrett did for good reason as it had by far the highest yards per play of all of the formations (8.8 ypp). We also used the 21 formation (under center, 2 tailbacks, 1 tight end) the second most amount of time as that was netting us a nice 7.1 yards per play. But the 22 formation (under center, 2 tailbacks, 2 tight ends) we ran almost as much as the 21 formation and that only netted the team 4.5 ypp. So some decent adjustments by Garrett although I still feel that we need to ‘bite the bullet’ and run a lot more often to help keep the opposing defense off balance and hopefully open things up for a big pass play opportunity. One thing is for sure, Garrett has zero confidence in the O-Line’s pass protection as the high amount of shotgun or 2 tight end formations suggest.

So far for the year, the offense has ran 78.7% of its plays from either the shotgun or a 2 tight end formation. A basic personnel group, like the 3 WR, 1 TE group (aka 11 personnel), Dallas has only used that formation 5 times this year (3.5% of all of the plays) and only thrown it from that personnel once.

Still, it boggles my mind that Garrett would continue to throw the ball so much and use so much shotgun, if anything to protect the O-Line’s pass protection deficiencies.


- So far for the year, the team’s best personnel group is the 21 personnel (2 running backs, 1 tight end). Followed by the S11 personnel (shotgun, 1 tailback and 1 tight end). If I were Wade Phillips (because Garrett ain’t going to do it), I’d start running more on 1st down and try and keep that down as balanced as we can. I would also dramatically cut down our 1st and 2nd down shotgun plays, and use more 21, 22 and 11 personnel groups. Then I would stick to more S11 personnel when we do use shotgun.







3JACK