Football Outsiders review of the Denver game

Here's Andrew Healey's write up of the game:

http://www.footballoutsiders.com/any-given-sunday/2014/any-given-sunday-patriots-over-broncos

What is DVOA and VOA?

It's FO's proprietary efficiency metrics. "Defense-Adjusted Value Over Average" and "Value Over Average".
They explain it here: http://www.footballoutsiders.com/info/methods

Now I know why I have never been on Football Outsiders site before.

That's good stuff... even though I had to dust off my slide rule.

"but Ninkovich was running to the same spot where he snagged the game-changing interception.
... Manning made a mistake on the play, but the root of that mistake was Bill Belichick playing a defense that he hadn't shown in at least the previous two games against the Broncos."

Doesn't this just warm the ****les of yer heart??

Not a fan of value added stats. Football Outsiders ball washing of the Broncos with DVOA stats are embarrassing.

Rob0729 said:

Not a fan of value added stats. Football Outsiders ball washing of the Broncos with DVOA stats are embarrassing.

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You haven't been following them for very long, right? FO is a quality site that challenges rudimentary group think with insight not found on anywhere else on the web. Or, when they first came out they were the only place. Largely because of them, we've seen significant progress in football analysis, both statistically and breaking down on-field plays.

Rob0729 said:

Not a fan of value added stats. Football Outsiders ball washing of the Broncos with DVOA stats are embarrassing.

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FO is by far the best football analytics site on the net, and DVOA is by far the best metric for evaluating the performance of a unit that's out there in the public sphere. Dunno why anyone would take issue with it. Denver's DVOA is so high because the team played really well against good competition for the first half of the season.

Might as well complain about Manning's passer rating being a form of ball-washing, it would make exactly the same amount of sense. It's a formula and Denver happens to be doing very well by its terms. Which makes sense because the Broncos are a really good football team.

If you're worried about Denver having any balls gratuitously washed, know that the top team in DVOA , all time, for the regular season is the 2007 Patriots. Their data doesn't go back to the 75 Steelers but they were ranked ahead of every great team over the past 25 years or so. They do not have any biases toward any teams.

Because, of course, they are fact based articles. Hard data and statistical models are not really built to play favorites.

We talk too much about balls getting washed around here, I think.

Ross12 said:

We talk too much about balls getting washed around here, I think.

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Not sure where you got that impression.



Can you be more specific?