Revisiting Bend Don't Break and Time of Possession

[ausbacker]

Bend But Don't Break sucks. I want a Don't Bend defense.

I'd like to be present at the conversation where you tell Bill Belichick everything that's wrong with his football philosophy then offer to fix it for him with instantaneous results.

 

[ThatllMoveTheChains!!!]

Yikes! Is that including the Giants last drive in the first half which lasted 4 seconds,after our TD, which would make that number even more staggering? Regardless, that pretty much confirms what myself and others have been saying about the SB. I'm not taking the blame completely off our offense for that game, but the defense definitely needs to do a better job of getting off the field!

Nope it doesn't, and the Pats' TOP is absent their miscues as well. BM isn't above cherry picking to prove his points, but none of us really are. He and I went over this somewhere else (about the SB) and his points are very valid even without the cherry picking.

Nice thread BM, you're one of the few I'll bother to read a wall of text for. As a "defender" of the defense I think this re-affirms my thoughts about what was happening last season: the offense was amongst the best in football and the defense was mediocre (maybe less...). The defense was made to look worse in certain categories and better in others because of how the offenses were forced to attack them because of the Pats' offense. The Pats' offense most likely could've been a top performing offense in every category including TOP if they truly wanted, but they focused on countering the lousy TOP by the defense. I think it's clear BB felt that the skewed TOP wasn't as important as the resulting point differential, but it's likely that this strategy bit him in the ass in the SB.

Hopefully this season the defense and the offense won't be forced to cover up for the overall lack of playmaking by the defense.

 

[ThatllMoveTheChains!!!]

I'd like to be present at the conversation where you tell Bill Belichick everything that's wrong with his football philosophy then offer to fix it for him with instantaneous results.

I'm pretty sure he's semi-joking as he was amongst the defense "defenders".

 

[ausbacker]

I'm pretty sure he's semi-joking as he was amongst the defense "defenders".

That's highly unlikely as it would require a sense of humor on JJDChe's behalf.

 

[patsfaninpittsburgh]

You're really stating the obvious here. Of course there's a huge chance that you score more points when you have more possessions. Of course you get more possessions when your defense isn't getting systematically driven on. Of course the offense has more opportunities when the opposing offense has less T.O.P. Sadly, some folks (and most of these "folks" think that the defense was just fine last year), don't understand the obvious. I suspect that this obvious fact that was spewed over and over and over again last year by those of us who had actually seen the mid-2000's New England Patriots dynasty era defenses play and know what a quality Pats defense actually is was also seen by Bill Belichick, hence some of the wholsale changes on the defensive side of the ball over the offseason.

"You are what you measure"- Robert Bartley

"You play to win the game"- Herm baby

Hey, BradyManny

At the least, you have a fan in TweedleDumber.

Bet that helps.

Your TOP arguement is really a cover for the defense question.

This might be hard to grasp (it's a certainty numbnuts never will) but patsfaninpittsburgh never said the defense was "fine". pfip has a general methodology for evaluation but it's not complete

What patsfaninpittsburgh points out is the obvious. The general methodology to "evaluate" defenses is rather clueless.

If this wasn't true, how can the two teams with the "worst" defenses get to be #1 seeds in each conference? The SB winner was 28th.

Average time of per drive?

Look at points scored. So what if avg time per possession was within a few seconds?

Who and when exactly do these teams score points?

In Washinton, the Patriots scored 34 points, had well over 400 yards of offense,....and held the ball for 22 minutes......

Has anyone developed a way to have a 10 play, 7 minute special teams drive?

Naturally, you would rather hold the ball than score? Let's generate stats?

If Patriots score very quickly...who has to have the ball?

Do you realize that week one in Miami, the Patriots held the ball for 27-28 minutes?

Based on your rationale, should Welker have scored on that 99 yard TD pass?

I guess not, hurts TOP.

Let's look at some specifics

pfip continually bangs the drum that turnovers and turnover differential are the two most important stats. The scant evidence for this is 100 years a detailed statistical analysis and.......the fact that every week, every football related show always sites ball security and the most important factor for success.

Last year, teams with top three records....were 1/2/3 in turnovers.

Is pfip the only one with Captain Obvious underwear?

Do turnovers affect drives? and TOP?

Last year, the top two teams gave up the most yards and one won the most games.....and pfip should fixate on that?

The patsfans.com low point last year was most likely the game in Oakland.

Yet the week before the Jets brought an elite defense to the Bay Area and got blown out after surrendering a double digit lead and gave up 34 points?

The next week the disaster defense shows up...gives up hundreds more yards and TOP minutes....and somehow after 59+ minutes played....surrendered 13 points...

How can your evaluation methods even begin to explain this?

pfip explains this with the obvious observation. Your methodology is not exactly good.

 

[BradyManny]

Yikes! Is that including the Giants last drive in the first half which lasted 4 seconds,after our TD, which would make that number even more staggering? Regardless, that pretty much confirms what myself and others have been saying about the SB. I'm not taking the blame completely off our offense for that game, but the defense definitely needs to do a better job of getting off the field!

No, it does not include that drive - like Football Outsiders, I exclude kneeldowns from the equation altogether.

So those numbers are worst case scenario, but also accurate, I would argue. I don't see why one would want to include a kneeldown into the equation, it should be thrown out if we want to see what's really going on.

 

[Kontradiction]

I'd like to be present at the conversation where you tell Bill Belichick everything that's wrong with his football philosophy then offer to fix it for him with instantaneous results.

He was joking, I'm sure. But Belichick knew what he had wasn't working. Enter Steve Gregory, Chandler Jones, Donte Hightower, Tavan Wilson, Jake Bequette, Alfonzo Dennard, Trevor Scott...

 

[ausbacker]

He was joking, I'm sure. But Belichick knew what he had wasn't working. Enter Steve Gregory, Chandler Jones, Donte Hightower, Tavan Wilson, Jake Bequette, Alfonzo Dennard, Trevor Scott...

Good to see my initial comment has gone straight over the top of another head...

 

[BradyManny]

Nope it doesn't, and the Pats' TOP is absent their miscues as well. BM isn't above cherry picking to prove his points, but none of us really are. He and I went over this somewhere else (about the SB) and his points are very valid even without the cherry picking.

Nice thread BM, you're one of the few I'll bother to read a wall of text for. As a "defender" of the defense I think this re-affirms my thoughts about what was happening last season: the offense was amongst the best in football and the defense was mediocre (maybe less...). The defense was made to look worse in certain categories and better in others because of how the offenses were forced to attack them because of the Pats' offense. The Pats' offense most likely could've been a top performing offense in every category including TOP if they truly wanted, but they focused on countering the lousy TOP by the defense. I think it's clear BB felt that the skewed TOP wasn't as important as the resulting point differential, but it's likely that this strategy bit him in the ass in the SB.

Hopefully this season the defense and the offense won't be forced to cover up for the overall lack of playmaking by the defense.

Thanks ThatllMovetheChains, and likewise I look forward to your contributions to any thread.

While I'll admit I'm not above cherry picking, in this specific instance, my cherry-pick was appropriate. Kneeldowns are always excluded from the Drive Stats I'm pulling from (Football Outsiders).

I agree TOP doesn't really tell us much in a vacuum. It is interesting to note the following things from the data:

- I would argue TOP is not a cause of success, just a correlation. The bottom third in TOP includes a lot of bottom-dwellers; and the top third includes a lot of good teams. You can see that the Patriots are easily the best of the poor TOP teams.

- PFIP is right to some account that the offense factors into TOP (slightly, obviously defense factors in more), but it doesn't harm the team's performance. The Patriots were the fastest scorers of all the high-octane offenses. Their average offensive drive length was more along the lines of a team that scores about 1.9 points per drive; they scored about 2.8 per drive.

- We can argue about how well the defense performed, I do think it ultimately comes down to a philosophical football question. Are you okay with your defense being on the field for a huge chunk of the game? Are you okay with shortening the game? If the Patriots had a defense like the Texans, they might average nearly another drive per game, which is another 2-3 points per game. Which is a pretty big boost.

 

[BradyManny]

pfip continually bangs the drum that turnovers and turnover differential are the two most important stats. The scant evidence for this is 100 years a detailed statistical analysis and.......the fact that every week, every football related show always sites ball security and the most important factor for success.

I'm not going to argue with the importance of ball control. Obviously that plays a huge role in dictating who wins and loses.

The problem is with relying on turnovers on defense to win is a dangerous game.

The Patriots were third in the league in causing TOs per drive. It's this fact that bridges the gap between their awful efficiency and their ultimately average to slightly above average overall defensive production.

But there's a catch - if you need turnovers to succeed defensively, and you allow long drives and shorten the games, games in which you force zero turnovers are particularly problematic (see SB46).

The Patriots forced a turnover every 5.6 drives last year, third best. In the SB, the Giants had 8 real possessions (excluding one kneeldown). Had the defense forced that one turnover, maybe they win the game. And had their been more drives in the game, there's a higher chance that stat approaches norm, and one of those fumbles bounces to a Patriot.

Basically - for a team that is as statistically efficient as the Patriots, I can't see how anyone could possibly argue that a defense that gets off the field faster improves their chances of winning.

 

[BradyManny]

Questions about points per minute: Is that points per minute in which the team possessed the ball? And is there a comparative chart of points per minute that basically says a potent offense trumps a stingy defense?

Fundamentally, time of possession is meaningless unless you do little or nothing with the time you have the ball. Right?

If the Patriots opponents have an edge in time of possession, but their points per minute sucks, the bend don't break is an efficient way to rest your offense while the other team beats its head against the wall and comes away with few points.

Points per minute, in a vacuum, is maybe a useless stat I came up with only because it was easy once I plugged in the formula for drive time. I wanted to see if we could read anything into it. I'm still not sure. Like I said, a skilled statistician could probably cull all this together into a truly interesting metric.

You do see a huge gap between the Patriots average defensive drive time (30th) and their points yielded per minute (13th) - and part of that is bend don't break, but a bigger part is that they were 3rd in the league in causing turnovers per drive.

I just think the model of making the other team grind out points is something that worked for us when in the early part of the dynasty when it complemented our offense, and when we were facing offenses that were more explosive than ours. Now, there is nobody more explosive than us on offense: our offense scores points faster than any other team. Statistically speaking, it seems to me we're better off getting into track meets now, driving up the possession total, and probably blowing teams out of the water.

And like Kontra says, maybe Belichick is on board now. We'll see - I take preseason and TC with a grain of salt, but piling up on edge rushers suggests to me Belichick is putting a premium on getting off the field on 3rd down.

 

[Funktopus]

How can your evaluation methods even begin to explain this?

pfip explains this with the obvious observation. Your methodology is not exactly good.

I'd guess that depending on the score, the defense would be willing to adopt a strategy that cedes yards while milking the clock.

I'd be curious to see if the efficiency measures were roughly the same in the first and 4th quarters. My guess is they wont be and the defensive measure would be less efficient in the 4th quarter because that's when the Pats were typically leading.

It's been a while but I think in a statistical sense, offensive and defensive efficiency measures are not independent (within each game or at least part of the game). The method to test this, I think (and it's been a while), is called Analysis of Variance.

 

[Kontradiction]

Good to see my initial comment has gone straight over the top of another head...

No need to be a snobby little putz about it. I'm sure it will go over most people's heads. That's what happens when you're working with the internet instead of having a conversation in real life. Perhaps next time you might want to include some smilies...

 

[unoriginal]

Time of Possssion is not a good stat. It is a conveinent stat, I understand, as every box score notes it. But it doesn't measure anything important. Perhaps, over a large enough set of data, it could point to which team is most likely to execute a clock-killing drive in the 4th quarter, which is situationally useful. Everywhere else it is just a lazy equivilent of the things that do matter: number of possessions, and number of plays.

The old theory behind Time of Possession is that it was a good summation of which team was more successfully executing offense plays. Not only was that a good general sum of offensive success, it was also an in-game predictor, as the team running more offensive plays would be facing a more tired defense as the game went along, leading to increasing offensive succcess.

But as we have seen with the rise of the hurry-up, no-huddle, check-with-me offense, an even better way to gas a defense into oblivion is to run as many offensive plays as possible in as short a time as possible. If you go back and look at some boxscores, I think you'll see teams in general are running about 5-10 more plays per game these days then they were 10 years ago. And my memory is that the Pats have been towards the top in offensive plays run the last few years.

So don't use Time of Possesion. Use number of plays. If the Giants ran more plays than the Patriots did, that is a better predictor of success than how much time each ran off the clock.

 

[everlong]

Time of possession is a weapon used to limit the plays by the other teams offense. The Giants in both cases wanted to have a low total play count for the game vs the Bills and Patriots. The more plays for the Patriots and Bills the lower the probability they would win.

Agreed it's not about who has the higher TOP and that in general it's about play count but TOP vs a better offense is a tool to be used.

 

[AzPatsFan]

There is a hidden Truth in the statistic about turnovers. Of all the stats the highest correlation with team records lie0 sin turnover rate and differential. It is a measure of Team speed. Older defenses that are good, decay in team speed and this manifests itself in lack of turnovers. A huge decline is going to occur with further slowing.

Bill Belichick decided he had to tear down the Super bowl clubs in 2008-9 offseason because the turnover differential had declined precipitously. For the past two years, despite only a partially complete rebuild, the turnovers resulted in near top of the league numbers. Talented but error prone youth was manifesting itself.

This offseason there is enough talented depth for the Defense to bloom into a league leader. Probably not at the beginning of the season, but by the end, which is where Belichick prefers it to manifest itself.

 

[ATippett56]

You do see a huge gap between the Patriots average defensive drive time (30th) and their points yielded per minute (13th) - and part of that is bend don't break, but a bigger part is that they were 3rd in the league in causing turnovers per drive.

I seriously doubt the New England Patriots defense will have the luxury of playing as many backup stiff quarterbacks this season:

Jason Campbell
Vince Young
Tyler Palko
Dan Orlovsky
Rex Grossman
Tim Tebow
Matt Moore

 

[unoriginal]

Time of possession is a weapon used to limit the plays by the other teams offense. The Giants in both cases wanted to have a low total play count for the game vs the Bills and Patriots. The more plays for the Patriots and Bills the lower the probability they would win.

That's true, but still in that situation, the best stat is number of plays, compared both to the other team, and to team and league-wide season averages.

 

[Deus Irae]

Time of possession, like pretty much every stat for football, is an incomplete stat. Also, like pretty much every stat, it has much more applicability for some teams than to others.

 

[neuronet]

Yikes! Is that including the Giants last drive in the first half which lasted 4 seconds,after our TD, which would make that number even more staggering? Regardless, that pretty much confirms what myself and others have been saying about the SB. I'm not taking the blame completely off our offense for that game, but the defense definitely needs to do a better job of getting off the field!

Doesn't the bend/don't break inherently let the opposing offense have the ball longer than a more aggressive defensive style?