[mike777]

The NFL has on field violence as a huge attraction for fans. The NFL also has gambling as the other big attraction. With football you can have your local office pool, fantasy football, hard core gamblers or even numerous prop bets.


Stats for the NFL are really used by those gamblers, where as in baseball the fan just enjoys the discussions and those few of us who play Rotisserie Baseball.

[Cthulhu D]

mycroft, on 2013-March-04, 10:57, said:

Yet again, "European" != "Britain". Football/Soccer is a different story, I think, but Cricket statistics - oh, my, cricket statistics...

I am interested in the Sabermetrics discussion. It seems to say that "ground-ball pitchers" are irrelevant (except in the HRs allowed, I guess), as they will have low K score compared to strikeout pitchers. That "seems" odd, but it wouldn't be the first time statistics beat feeling - especially *my* feeling re: baseball. I wonder how many Ks/game == 1 HR/season?

Three singles are worth a home run under linear weights. Given that the league BABIP is .300, ~9 strikeouts and one home run has about the same run expectancy as 10 balls in play.

However, you do need to remember that the type of pitchers that give up lots of homers have other advantages. Confining the discussion to quality pitchers, consider Robin Roberts. He gave up a ton of home runs because he went in over the plate with a huge percentage of first pitch strike fastballs, but he also got a ton of first pitch swings and a ton of first pitch outs. This means he can pitch a lot of innings because he can keep his pitch count down.

Ground ball pitchers though do have another big advantage - you cannot turn two on a strikeout or a long fly ball.

billw55, on 2013-March-04, 07:19, said:

Sounds like an overbid. Batting average is certainly worth something: definitely not the best indicator, but not useless. OBP matters, and has been in use a long time, although maybe doesn't meet your definition of "traditional".

Sure, but batting average in a baseball context has much less informational content than batting average in test cricket, which was my point.

[mycroft]

Well, seeing the jjbrr link above, one of the metrics includes 13*HR - 2*K (+3*BB) in the calculation. So it looks like 6.5Ks approx == 1 HR (8Ks == 1HR + 1BB). With a 35-appearance season, looks like about 3Ks/game make up for one HR.

[jjbrr]

Figure 6. (Left) The optimal decisions. (Right) The most popular decision from actual NFL games given a certain fourth down situation.
(Red = punt, Green = go for first, Blue = field goal attempt.) Coaches overuse the punt (instead of going for the first down) on their own side of the field, and perhaps go for the first down too much on the opponents side when they should settle for the field goal in fourth and short situations

Very interesting study

[cherdano]

jjbrr, on 2013-October-17, 14:18, said:

Very interesting study

That's a very strange article, as it seems completely ignorant of the classic:
http://elsa.berkeley...JPE_April06.pdf
(which comes to slightly different conclusions).

[jjbrr]

Before I click that, I think I recognize it as an article from 2005

[jjbrr]

derp apr 06

[cherdano]

Lol the article you linked to seems to be unaware that after a made field goal, you are forced to give the ball to the other team (unless you try an onside kick)... Really any single article posted on advancednflstats.com is more knowledgeable.

(It assumes the value of a made field goal is 3 points, where in reality it is 3 points minus the average value of the opponent's field position after kickoff.)

This article is a bit like a statistician writing an article about bridge in 2013 claiming that you should consider restricted choice! (But then getting all the computations wrong.)

[billw55]

cherdano, on 2013-October-18, 05:12, said:

(It assumes the value of a made field goal is 3 points, where in reality it is 3 points minus the average value of the opponent's field position after kickoff.)

The same is true for a touchdown. So the difference in value between a FG and TD is unchanged. Unless of course they subtracted the ops possession in one case but not the other.

[cherdano]

billw55, on 2013-October-18, 06:08, said:

The same is true for a touchdown. So the difference in value between a FG and TD is unchanged. Unless of course they subtracted the ops possession in one case but not the other.

If you consider going for it on 4th down at the 10-yard line, you are comparing an (essentially) 100% field goal with a an uncertain outcome of sometimes turning the ball over on downs, sometimes kicking a field goal, and sometimes a touchdown. So in the latter case, you only have to subtract the value of "opp's possession after kickoff" weighted by some probability.

So the two mistakes don't cancel out. Isn't that obvious?

[y66]

Chip Kelly appears to be off to a good start. "In his first NFL coaching stint of any kind, Kelly has produced the first offense in league history to rack up at least 425 yards in each of its first six games" -- reported by Geoff Mosher on Wednesday.

[Fluffy]

wodahs, on 2013-February-22, 17:32, said:

Wrong time of year for this I know, but just saw the '2nd and 2' topic.

You were 7 points behind in the game. You have just scored a touchdown, very late in the game ... there are scant seconds left, not enough to give the other team a chance to score. You can (1) elect to kick the 98% (or whatever) 1-point conversion, and play sudden-death, or (2) take your chances now with a 2-point conversion.

Seems to me (1) is a 50% proposition, so if your chances of scoring the 2-pointer are greater than 50%, you should go for that. I do believe I googled that awhile back, and the chances of scoring a 2-pointer were in the low 50's, but I might be misremembering.

The thing is, I've never heard this option discussed by any announcers, nor seen it discussed in print. Or maybe I'm overlooking something, and it is just a stupid idea.

America is different of course, but this would be unthinkable in my country.

Why? because televisions want over times!, and they have the power, Tevisions control the Federation who controls the referee, as soon as some idiot starting decreasing their rates for some silly reason their team would start suffering from extraneous referee's decisions, none of them very obvious, but all of them on the same side.

My soccer team was 'sent' to second division just after the president started to have too many political aspirations 10 years ago.

[Fluffy]

jjbrr, on 2013-October-17, 14:18, said:

Figure 6. (Left) The optimal decisions. (Right) The most popular decision from actual NFL games given a certain fourth down situation.
(Red = punt, Green = go for first, Blue = field goal attempt.) Coaches overuse the punt (instead of going for the first down) on their own side of the field, and perhaps go for the first down too much on the opponents side when they should settle for the field goal in fourth and short situations

Very interesting study

I am not an expert, but looking at a radical example such as 4th&1 where the ball is almost on your own endzone (top left corner), it looks like the clock should be a very important factor.

[ArtK78]

Fluffy, on 2013-October-19, 05:13, said:

I am not an expert, but looking at a radical example such as 4th&1 where the ball is almost on your own endzone (top left corner), it looks like the clock should be a very important factor.

It is impossible to have 4th & 1 and be located almost in your own endzone. That is why that part of the graph is in black.

[ArtK78]

wodahs, on 2013-February-22, 17:32, said:

Wrong time of year for this I know, but just saw the '2nd and 2' topic.

You were 7 points behind in the game. You have just scored a touchdown, very late in the game ... there are scant seconds left, not enough to give the other team a chance to score. You can (1) elect to kick the 98% (or whatever) 1-point conversion, and play sudden-death, or (2) take your chances now with a 2-point conversion.

Seems to me (1) is a 50% proposition, so if your chances of scoring the 2-pointer are greater than 50%, you should go for that. I do believe I googled that awhile back, and the chances of scoring a 2-pointer were in the low 50's, but I might be misremembering.

The thing is, I've never heard this option discussed by any announcers, nor seen it discussed in print. Or maybe I'm overlooking something, and it is just a stupid idea.

There are examples of this.

If I remember correctly, many years ago, Nebraska played Miami in the Orange Bowl. This was before college football had overtime, so a tie result was possible.

Nebraska, trailing by 7 with very little time remaining, scored a touchdown. Rather than play for the tie (with the game likely to end in a tie), Nebraska played for the win and went for 2, failing.

I have not seen this in the pro game. Perhaps someone can come up with an instance.

[cherdano]

NFL success rate for 2-point conversions is slightly below 50% (though see advanced NFL stats for an interesting discussion about run versus pass success rates; seems to me an example of the NBA "always want my best player to take the last shot" fallacy).
There is an interesting case where it's clearly right to go for two, but noone ever seems to do it: trailing by 14 later in the 4th quarter, you should always go for two if you score a touchdown.

[blackshoe]

Fluffy, on 2013-October-19, 05:07, said:

America is different of course, but this would be unthinkable in my country.

Why? because televisions want over times!, and they have the power, Tevisions control the Federation who controls the referee, as soon as some idiot starting decreasing their rates for some silly reason their team would start suffering from extraneous referee's decisions, none of them very obvious, but all of them on the same side.

My soccer team was 'sent' to second division just after the president started to have too many political aspirations 10 years ago.

I'm not sure I understand this at all. How did the television industry come to control the national soccer federation? Also I'm not sure I understand what you mean by "some idiot starting decreasing their rates". What rates?

[mike777]

blackshoe, on 2013-October-19, 09:44, said:

I'm not sure I understand this at all. How did the television industry come to control the national soccer federation? Also I'm not sure I understand what you mean by "some idiot starting decreasing their rates". What rates?

?Clearly tv and media rights control the money in usa sports... I assume this is true in worldwide soccer.


decreasing rates?


I guess these might mean they have a rooting interest in large cities, population? tv gives huge money to LA...tiny money to KC?

[billw55]

cherdano, on 2013-October-18, 07:31, said:

If you consider going for it on 4th down at the 10-yard line, you are comparing an (essentially) 100% field goal with a an uncertain outcome of sometimes turning the ball over on downs, sometimes kicking a field goal, and sometimes a touchdown. So in the latter case, you only have to subtract the value of "opp's possession after kickoff" weighted by some probability.

So the two mistakes don't cancel out. Isn't that obvious?

Obviously the opponents gain possession after all of these results, not just one of them. In two cases, the value of that possession is identical, and in the third case slightly less. Field position will matter of course: a field goal after going for it is only possible if there is a first down to be had, and the value of loss of possession on downs varies with position as well. I suppose if a 1st down is possible, then other drive outcomes become possible also (turnovers, etc).

[cherdano]

billw55, on 2013-October-21, 06:39, said:

Obviously the opponents gain possession after all of these results, not just one of them. In two cases, the value of that possession is identical, and in the third case slightly less. Field position will matter of course: a field goal after going for it is only possible if there is a first down to be had, and the value of loss of possession on downs varies with position as well. I suppose if a 1st down is possible, then other drive outcomes become possible also (turnovers, etc).

It really sounds like you think I am dumb. Well, that may well be right, but I am not (yet?) quite as dumb as to make the mistakes you think I am making.
This "study" subtracted the value of the opponent's field position after turning the ball over on downs; it did not subtract the value of the opponent's field position after scoring.