Football Outsiders: New England Offense on record pace

[Kasmir]

The Week 12 stats are out from FO. Patriots are number #2 in total team DVOA to Pit, but the offense DVOA has now equaled that of the previous best team in their database, the 2007 Patriots:

Now let us turn to the team ranked second overall, the New England Patriots. Not learning my lesson from the first paragraph above, I will now damn my personal favorite team by saying nice things about them. This week, the Patriots move ahead of the 2004 Colts as the second-best offense in DVOA history through Week 12. More astonishing is the fact that New England's current DVOA of 45.2% matches the 45.2% offensive DVOA that the record-setting 2007 Patriots put up over the entire season. Remember, the 2007 Patriots faded from otherworldly to merely very good over the second half of the season. If the current Patriots don't have a similar fade, they have a shot to rank as the greatest offense in DVOA history, despite trading a Hall of Fame receiver in midseason

FOOTBALL OUTSIDERS: Innovative Statistics, Intelligent Analysis | Week 12 DVOA Ratings

Brady is leading the league in both DYAR and DVOA by a wide margin now:

Tom Brady is now almost 300 DYAR -- and 15 percentage points of DVOA -- ahead of any other quarterback. Once again, as in 2009, Brady is playing even better than his standard stats would otherwise indicate because he's put up big numbers against a tough slate of defenses. The issue is not as much that the Patriots have played the best defenses in the league -- they've only played four games against top 10 defenses -- and more that their schedule is missing games where Brady could roll up big stats on bad defenses. Only one of the Patriots' 2010 opponents, Buffalo, ranks among the worst dozen pass defenses according to DVOA. And it is about to get worse -- the Pats' final five games include interconference matchups with the number two (Green Bay) and number four (Chicago) pass defenses in the league, plus this week's rematch with a Jets defense that a lot of people (including me) think is probably better than its current DVOA ranking of 15th.

Quite a contrast to Pro Football Focus, which doesn't even list Brady as a top 10 QB...

In the RB ratings, Benny continues to be #3 in both DYAR and DVOA, and is #1 in success rate. Woodhead leads the league in RB receiving DVOA, and would be lead in running DVOA as well if he had 22 more carries. As it is, Woodhead is #9 in the league in DYAR despite not having enough carries to qualify, and would appear to be #4 or #5 back in the league in combined DYAR.

FOOTBALL OUTSIDERS: Innovative Statistics, Intelligent Analysis | RUNNING BACKS 2010

Gronkowski is now #2 in DYAR and #4 in DVOA, and Hernandez is #4 in DYAR and #10 in DVOA. Incredible production and efficiency from the TE's for New England this year:

http://www.footballoutsiders.com/stats/te

 

[Kontradiction]

If that happens, I suppose that we'll all be hearing from DaedalusX...

http://www.patsfans.com/new-england...tion-team-will-more-dominant-than-2007-a.html

 

[TheGreatestEVER]

Dominant like the 2007 Offense, lets hope it doesn't end like the 2007 Superbowl, idiot refs and fluke plays

 

[asfpnepRefugee]

I like these Football Outsider guys. They're always telling me that the Pats are the greatest

 

[Rob0729]

Quite a contrast to Pro Football Focus, which doesn't even list Brady as a top 10 QB...

Just even more proof that their stats are bogus. I hate when people use their statistically rankings to prove anything. They are clearly a joke. I check out their site because they can have a good nugget or two, but their own stats are crap.

 

[Kasmir]

Just even more proof that their stats are bogus. I hate when people use their statistically rankings to prove anything. They are clearly a joke. I check out their site because they can have a good nugget or two, but their own stats are crap.

I had a little dialogue with those guys about Brady here:

Re-Focused: Week 12, Patriots at Lions | ProFootballFocus.com

They basically are claiming that Brady is a system QB making easy throws. That raises the obvious question about why don't the 24+ other teams in the league with much worse offenses pick up their own "system QB", to which they mumble something about how great the Patriots' system is. "All hail Belichick", I guess -- not that they have a stat for that.

 

[Haley]

I'm not sure I'm down with ranking BJGE over all these other RBs (Peterson, Rice, etc) but maybe I'm just not used to seeing media fanning any of our players.

 

[Kasmir]

I'm not sure I'm down with ranking BJGE over all these other RBs (Peterson, Rice, etc) but maybe I'm just not used to seeing media fanning any of our players.

Peterson is just behind BJGE in their system. And to be fair, the Pats now have the top run blocking OL in their system:

FOOTBALL OUTSIDERS: Innovative Statistics, Intelligent Analysis | 2010 OFFENSIVE LINES

Minnesota is 12th. They make no claims to be able to separate RB performance from OLINE performance, so it' seasy to imagine that Peterson would be incredible running in the NE offense and BJGE would struggle with Minnesota...

 

[Rob0729]

I had a little dialogue with those guys about Brady here:

Re-Focused: Week 12, Patriots at Lions | ProFootballFocus.com

They basically are claiming that Brady is a system QB making easy throws. That raises the obvious question about why don't the 24+ other teams in the league with much worse offenses pick up their own "system QB", to which they mumble something about how great the Patriots' system is. "All hail Belichick", I guess -- not that they have a stat for that.

The whole system QB argument is so friggin weak. I agree that if Brady was just a system QB, there would be half the league with that system. The fact that they think that just shows how idiotic it is that the people running their analysis are.

 

[TB=TD]

The whole system QB argument is so friggin weak. I agree that if Brady was just a system QB, there would be half the league with that system. The fact that they think that just shows how idiotic it is that the people running their analysis are.

Is Brady the greatest system QB of all time?

 

[ALP]

If that happens, I suppose that we'll all be hearing from DaedalusX...

http://www.patsfans.com/new-england...tion-team-will-more-dominant-than-2007-a.html

that thread is in the PS, LMAO

 

[Oswlek]

I had a little dialogue with those guys about Brady here:

Re-Focused: Week 12, Patriots at Lions | ProFootballFocus.com

They basically are claiming that Brady is a system QB making easy throws. That raises the obvious question about why don't the 24+ other teams in the league with much worse offenses pick up their own "system QB", to which they mumble something about how great the Patriots' system is. "All hail Belichick", I guess -- not that they have a stat for that.

They left a door open that you should consider entering. Many "easy" throws are only easy because the QB was able to look off the safety and/or made a great read. Brady made a throw to Welker this past week that is a perfect example. Welker was running along the right sideline and the CB had perfect inside position. The deep route was covered as was the incut, and the sideline stopped cutting outside, of course.

So, what did Brady do? He tossed the ball behind Welker. If you only watch the end of the play, it looks like Welker was wide open, but it was a great throw that made it so. I think Simms even said something along the lines of "QBs throw the receiver open".

The long and short of it is, their system devalues the mental aspects, arguably the biggest piece of the puzzle.

 

[WinstonSmith]

They left a door open that you should consider entering. Many "easy" throws are only easy because the QB was able to look off the safety and/or made a great read. Brady made a throw to Welker this past week that is a perfect example. Welker was running along the right sideline and the CB had perfect inside position. The deep route was covered as was the incut, and the sideline stopped cutting outside, of course.

So, what did Brady do? He tossed the ball behind Welker. If you only watch the end of the play, it looks like Welker was wide open, but it was a great throw that made it so. I think Simms even said something along the lines of "QBs throw the receiver open".

The long and short of it is, their system devalues the mental aspects, arguably the biggest piece of the puzzle.

Agreed, they did a poor job in describing their secrete sauce or their sauce is crap. Decision making is a huge part of the position, and it’s discounted by their grading method. This style of grading is better suited for non skill position players.

 

[Kasmir]

The whole system QB argument is so friggin weak. I agree that if Brady was just a system QB, there would be half the league with that system. The fact that they think that just shows how idiotic it is that the people running their analysis are.

You could say that Orton and Cassel's success this year are successful experiments at copying the Patriots' system with different QBs. Both are actually doing fairly well according to FO -- Orton is #2 in DYAR and #5 in DVOA, and Cassell is #11/#12 (and improving).

But arguments about system vs player apply to every QB in every system, and its really hard to isolate system cause from special (player) cause without doing careful quantitative analysis. The PFF guys are asserting that they are doing that, but don't do anything quantitative to make their case. The rating judgments they are making are enormously subjective, and just a predisposition to believe that Brady is system QB could bias their ratings sufficiently to get that result: the "Russian judge" problem plagues all "style points" based system.

FO's system, by marked contrast, is apparently based entirely on objective measurable criteria: did you get the first down, etc. You can argue the weighting of the criteria -- they mention they perhaps underweight long plays in their system -- but you don't need to worry that someone is scoring down a player because they don't like their style.

One of the reasons I persist with PFF, is that for non-skill positions, it's very difficult to score performance objectively, so I've been assuming that PFF's style-points-based approach is better than nothing. But if when calibrating it against other systems for skilled-position players it generates nonsense, perhaps abandonment is in order after all...

 

[WelshPat]

Is it the same DVOA that on pro football reference says that Drew Bledsoe is a better QB than Tom Brady and Troy Aikman?

Does any NFL team use DVOA? I just don't get why people like it so much, i never go on those websites because as someone posted, one site lists them as the best ever and one doesn't have Brady in the top 10. Just goes to show how you can manipulate stats to prove any point you want to make.

 

[BradyManny]

ProFootballFocus is a site where people who know no more about football than you or I sit down and subjectively review TV copies of the game and try to make conclusions from it, and submit it to a site where their amateur analysis is disguised as "expert". It might be the biggest rip-off out there now that it is a pay-site.

It's a joke. The site isn't even worth referencing.

 

[Kasmir]

Is it the same DVOA that on pro football reference says that Drew Bledsoe is a better QB than Tom Brady and Troy Aikman?

No. Pro Football Reference is entirely distinct from Football Outsiders. Their "AV" ("Approximate Value") is in no way related to FO's "DVOA" (Defense-adjusted Value Over Average) other than both containing an "A" and a "V".

 

[sbpatfan]

You see, when you take the double integral of (X^4 / exp(y))^xy from attempts to completions and interceptions to touchdowns, you'll get a number that we call QORACSA. Or, "Quarterback Overall Rating Adjusted for Complete Statistical Analysis." Upon crunching the numbers we found the best QBs in the league came down to a three way tie between Brett Farve, Antwaan Randle El, and Ja'Walrus Russel. Considering all factors, Brett Farve is actually on pace for his best season yet. The scary thing is our DOMGO schedule formula actually predicts Farve has a solid chance to surpass his current output and put up one of the most legendary seasons known to man.

- Pro Stat Whatever

 

[PatsFanInVa]

No, you have to still call Joe Montana the greatest system QB of all time... but another ring or two and Tommy's right there

 

[DaedalusX]

If that happens, I suppose that we'll all be hearing from DaedalusX...

http://www.patsfans.com/new-england...tion-team-will-more-dominant-than-2007-a.html

I actually picked up the Pats D in my fantasy team -- they've gotten me more points than the Jets D has.