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The pats keep Fin the Fins!

Discussion in 'Miami Dolphins Forum' started by Dorfdad, Jan 20, 2019.

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  1. cbrad

    cbrad .

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    Yes that's correct. A negative correlation between X and Y means that the greater X is the less Y is, and vice versa of course. So that graph is showing that on average the offense affects the defense, and vice versa, in a positive way: the more points you score the (marginally) fewer points your defense allows and vice versa.

    Now, correlations on their own don't have any directionality to them so you can't a priori determine causality, but one way to see which is more likely to be the cause and which the effect is to find the best-fitting line when you assume one of the variables is "independent" (the cause) and the other is "dependent" (the effect). You look at the "noise" in the fit, or how good the fit is in either direction. The smaller it is the more likely you're looking at a tighter relationship and at least statistically more likely to be a cause-effect relation. In the case of points scored and points allowed, the fit is about the same so this seems to be bi-directional as far as one can see based only on this data.
     
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  2. 2socks

    2socks Rebuilding Since 1973

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    I agree which is why I suggested Phillip's, Marone and William's to start. The players buy in in NE because the blueprint has been in place now for 20 yrs. When they come in they dont have a choice. Installing that blueprint and getting these players to adjust and realize to win you come in at 5am instead of 7. To win you watch film until 9pm instead.of leaving at 5. To win................etc. Getting 53 guys you dont know to buy in will be a monumental task.
    I think the biggest thing that will hamper the new coach will be interference from the front office.
    I respectfully disagree that the head coach isn't as important as they used to be. I think they are and always will be the most important person on the field. I will use Belicheck throwing the superbowl against the eagles in retaliation for Kraft forcing him to trade Garopollo instead of Brady
     
  3. Tin Indian

    Tin Indian Rockin' The Bottom End Club Member

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    Belicheck throwing the Super Bowl? Just when you think you've heard everything.

    Belicheck would never throw a game. Period. The Eagles played a great game and kept going all game unlike the Falcons that took their foot off the gas in the 2nd half.

    Give me a break.
     
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  4. invid

    invid Season Ticket Holder Club Member

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    You've basically forfeited anybody's hypothetical indulgence to your personal opinion on Brian Flores with that awful hot take.
     
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  5. 2socks

    2socks Rebuilding Since 1973

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    Indulge away, fantasize if need be. I think my caution is warranted. I mean it seems as if you guys have become so desperate to be relevant again you ignore the obvious staring you straight in the face.
     
  6. invid

    invid Season Ticket Holder Club Member

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    That the Pats threw the Super Bowl against the Eagles? Yeah I'm going to go out on a limb and choose not to believe that.
     
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  7. 2socks

    2socks Rebuilding Since 1973

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  8. danmarino

    danmarino Tua is H1M! Club Member

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  9. cbrad

    cbrad .

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    OMG.. first I missed it when you suggested Belichick threw the game. Thankfully Tin Indian picked up on it. Now you're doubling down??

    Malcolm Butler was benched and so Belichick was trying to throw the game?? OK.. do you realize that Tom Brady threw for 505 yards and 3 TD's and 0 INT's? That's part of Belichick's strategy for deliberately losing??

    Dude.. Philly was just the better team that day. Deal with it.
     
  10. RGF

    RGF THE FINSTER Club Member

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    Its official. 2socks is f'n with us. I actually fell for it until the " throwing the super bowl " nonsense.
     
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  11. Pauly

    Pauly Season Ticket Holder

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    How does the quality of the QB, for example, affect the talent level of the DBs or DEs, or the ability of the defensive co-ordinator to game plan the rushing defense? The talent on one side of the ball does not affect the talent on the other. The coaching skill on one side of the ball does not affect the coaching skill on the other.
    In the salary cap era you also have to factor in that spending resources on one side of the ball (draft picks, salary) reduces the resources spent on the other side. So if you put a lot of resources into building a great unit on one side of the ball the other side will have less resources.

    Why shouldn’t the base assumption be that building up one unit will mak the other unit worse?

    The problem with points scored/allowed in determining the efficiency of an offense or defense is that it includes points scored by the defense and special teams. So while points are a great tool for predicting W/L there is some muddying of the water with respect to measuring the efficiency of different units of a team.

    Here is the thread where I did my original crunching. Actually it was from 2 off-seasons ago
    https://thephins.com/threads/building-a-winning-team.91138/

    When I get some time I”did do some correlations on passer rating made and passer rating allowed. Just for the record I haven’t included rushing efficiency/volume because rushing is used for purposes other than scoring points and gaining yards, such as clock control, keeping defenders close to the LOS to open up the pass game, setting up FG position etc.
     
  12. Fin D

    Fin D Sigh

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    If what you were saying were true, then logically, an offense would perform the same whether there was an NFL defense on the field or a high school defense or no defense at all.
     
  13. Dorfdad

    Dorfdad Well-Known Member

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    He didn’t throw a Super Bowl to get back at Kraft! It’s his legacy on the line
     
  14. cbrad

    cbrad .

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    You can use points per drive if you're worried about contamination with special teams and defense (or offense). The result is almost identical. For example, correlation between win% and points scored in 2018 is 0.7726 while it's 0.7503 with points per drive.

    The reason "contamination" doesn't really matter is because we're talking about useful measures over larger sample size, and stuff starts to average out then. For a specific team over just a few games, however, I think you do need to worry about it and PPD works.
     
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  15. Pauly

    Pauly Season Ticket Holder

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    As far as efficiency yes. However points scored per drive is strongly affected by starting field position, so that will affect overall scoring.

    if you look at passer rating made -v- passer rating allowed as a measure of efficiency. I have numbers in my database from 2002 and I updated them to 2018 today.
    All figures are adjusted to 2018 as a base.
    Correlation of passer rating made to win%: 0.66
    variance explained: 44.2%

    Correlation of passer rating allowed to win%: -0.53
    variance explained 28.3%

    Correlation of difference between passer rating made and passer rating allowed to win%: 0.79
    variance explained: 63.1%

    Correlation of passer rating made to passer rating allowed: -.015
    variance explained: 2.3%

    I adjust passer rating to a common base for correlation to win%. However cbrad can tell me if that is appropriate when comparing offensive passer rating to defensive passer rating. For completeness
    Unadjusted correlation of passer rating made to passer rating allowed:0.014
    variance explained 0.02%
     
    Last edited: Jan 22, 2019
  16. Pauly

    Pauly Season Ticket Holder

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    cbrad, is it possible to get the correlation between PPD made and PPD allowed?
     
  17. cbrad

    cbrad .

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    That averages zero with 0.211 standard deviation, at least from 2011 onwards (haven't added all the data.. PFR has it only from 1998).

    So offense affects about 11% of defense and vice versa when you look at points scored, but points per drive isn't influenced by the other unit. Yet correlation to win% is similar for each. In case that seems weird, it's not because correlations mathematically are really just the cosines of angles between vectors in higher dimensional spaces and you can have 3 vectors (one vector is win%, the other two vectors are either PPD and PPD allowed OR they're points scored and points allowed) and win% could have similar angles to each of the other two while those two have different angles to each other.

    That result is interesting actually.. never looked at it. I'll have to complete the database to see what the overall trends are.
     
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  18. cbrad

    cbrad .

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    OK, so I finished writing the program. The same trend holds.

    In the SB, the SB winner scored on average 4.735 points above that SB winner's average PPG that year, while they gave up 0.261 MORE points in the SB than they did on average during the regular season. So again, even relative to the SB winner's own performance (as opposed to league performance) offense was more important than defense. Here's the graph:
    [​IMG]
    I have the comparable graph for all playoff game winners if you want, but the summary is that playoff game winners on average score 3.314 more points and give up 2.34 fewer points than their own averages. Individual team z-scores (where you look at that team's own standard deviation) also support this general conclusion. So whether you compare to league averages or to that team's own average, the general rule is that offense is more important than defense not just in the regular season but also in the playoffs.
     
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  19. Pauly

    Pauly Season Ticket Holder

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    Just eyeballing that graph there seems to be a pretty hefty change in 1978 with the introduction of the modern style passing rules.
    Hypothesis: pre 1978 when rushing was more important for scoring (at least anecdotally) points scored and allowed were more closely linked because rushing consumes more time than passing. Post 1978 the move to more passing oriented scoring leads to lower correlation because teams there is less consumption of time in the passing game than the running game.
     
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  20. Fin D

    Fin D Sigh

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    I'm sorry, but no.

    An NFL offense would score on almost every play from their own 1 yard line against a high school defense. If there was no defense at all, the offense would score on every play.

    WADR, if your numbers are telling you an offense facing a a NFL defense is no less or more efficient than if t5hey were facing a high school or no defense, then there's a real problem somewhere in your equations....whether that be in how you interpret what you're finding, problem with data collection, or forgot to carry the one....regardless your conclusion flies in the face of logic.
     
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  21. cbrad

    cbrad .

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    Just reading from Pauly's post #91, I think he's just talking about how team X's offense and team X's defense influence each other. I think you're talking about how team X's offense vs. team Y's defense (where X and Y are opponents) influence each other.

    It's pretty obvious the ability of an offense depends on the defense it actually faces. Pauly was just talking about how stuff like field position etc.. that's due to that team's own defense might affect the offense and in general what he's saying about efficiency not being affected (too much) is accurate. The points per drive vs. points per drive against stat I posted earlier (of the same team) as well as the near zero correlation between passer rating and passer rating allowed (it's actually on average -0.2 across NFL history so there's SOME effect) show that efficiency on side of the ball doesn't affect efficiency on the other side (of the same team) that much.

    Anyway.. just saying you guys seem to be talking past each other.
     
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  22. Fin D

    Fin D Sigh

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    Ok, that make more sense if that is what he is talking about. Thank you for clarifying.
     
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  23. danmarino

    danmarino Tua is H1M! Club Member

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    Anyway you could run your program to include just the Pats over the last 18 seasons? To include all playoffs and Super Bowls?

    Thanks for this. It's awesome!
     
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  24. cbrad

    cbrad .

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    Yeah.. even for NE offense is more important.

    NE in their 5 SB wins scored on average 1.79 points more than their regular season average while their defense gave up on average 7.14 points more than their regular season average. For all NE playoff games won since 2001 the offense has on average scored 2.347 points more than their regular season average and their defense has on average given up 0.289 points more than their regular season average. Note: these are only for playoff wins.
     
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  25. danmarino

    danmarino Tua is H1M! Club Member

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    So did you look at their losses in the post season and their Super Bowls wins and losses?
     
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  26. cbrad

    cbrad .

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    Yeah that's easy to do. For the 3 SB losses NE's offense scored on average -11.17 fewer points than their regular season average, while their defense allowed on average 7.33 more points than their regular season average (this SB stat for defense is almost all due to Philly lol). For all playoff losses the numbers are -10.29 for offense and +8.72 for defense. So for the playoff losses offense was also slightly more important.
     
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  27. Pauly

    Pauly Season Ticket Holder

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    Thanks cbrad, that’s a clearer explanation than what I gave. I should have made it clearer I was talking about efficiency, not total points or Yards or W/L record.
     
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  28. Fin D

    Fin D Sigh

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    Hahaha...wait....

    I'm saying Team X's offense is affected by playing against Team Y's defense.

    Cbrad said you're saying Team X's defense has no bearing on their own (Team X) offense.
     
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  29. Galant

    Galant Love - Unity - Sacrifice - Eternity

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    Have you guys factored in the scheduled time of the game, location, and the effect of the moon's gravitational pull accordingly?

    :D
     
  30. Surfs Up 99

    Surfs Up 99 Team Flores & Team Tua

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    I could be wrong, but I think I heard cbrad say he was going to write a program for that. ;-)
     
    Last edited: Jan 24, 2019
  31. cbrad

    cbrad .

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    Yeah why not?

    So, since 1966 there have been a total of 488,744 points scored in 11,820 games that started between 12:00pm and 1:30pm for an average of 41.3489 ppg, a total of 271,230 points scored in 6,404 games that started between 3:00pm and 4:30pm for an average of 42.3532 ppg, and a total of 132,610 points scored in 3,080 games that started at 7:00pm or later for an average of 43.0552 ppg.

    In other words, ppg increases very slightly with scheduled time of game:
    41.3489 ppg for early games
    42.3532 ppg for afternoon games
    43.0552 ppg for late games

    As far as location.. well that's like asking how each team does at home so there's nothing special about that question really, and changes in the moon's gravitational pull are obviously dwarfed by other factors. And you can see that in the data. For example "time of year" has a much bigger effect than "time of month" (which you can see by looking at "game number" in a given season.. there's no monthly cyclical pattern).

    The hard questions are stuff like how to factor in differences in coaching. There's no program I can write for that except one that outputs "Go **** yourself!" each time you ask it for an answer. :smile:
     
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  32. Surfs Up 99

    Surfs Up 99 Team Flores & Team Tua

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    LOL!
     
  33. Pauly

    Pauly Season Ticket Holder

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    Well apparently the old Candlestick Park in SF was below sea level, so tides (caused by the moon’s gravitonal pull) could affect drainage in wet weather games there. Anecdotally wet weather conditions at high tide were more adverse than at low tide. In statistical terms that would probably show up as increased turnovers/fumbles in high tide wet weather games than low tide wet weather games.

    I am sure that if you could track down the individual wet weather games and tide states for each game at Candlestick Park cbrad could tell you how to write a program to test for the effect of the moon’s gravitational pull.
     
  34. Galant

    Galant Love - Unity - Sacrifice - Eternity

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    [​IMG]
     
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  35. The_Dark_Knight

    The_Dark_Knight Defender of the Truth

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    Run this then please...run New England's Super Bowl losses (if you already posted it I apologize). I want to see the same data on the offensive/defensive output during those games...

    Additionally, you posted the data for NE's Super Bowl wins...what about their opponents in those games?
     
  36. cbrad

    cbrad .

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    Yeah, post #106 shows that at least for NE, offense was more important in both SB losses and playoff losses.

    However, there's simply no way that's anything other than a stat specific to certain teams (e.g., NE) or games given the graph in post #98. Why? Because offense for the winning team is defense for the losing team! So the overall trend must show that if (good) offense is more important for winning, then (bad) defense is more important for losing. NE just happens to be an exception.

    Here are the stats for all teams from 1966-2017: on average the SB loser scored -9.81 fewer points than their regular season average while their defense gave up 13.05 points more than their regular season average. Similarly, on average a playoff loser scores -8.53 points fewer than their regular season average but allows 10.05 points more than their regular season average.

    So the answer depends on the question: which is more important (on average) in the playoffs if your goal is to win? Having a good offense. Which is more important if your goal is to lose? Having a bad defense.

    Still, comparing to post #98 these stats do show something interesting: in terms of the final outcome (points scored/allowed) the winning team doesn't overperform as much as the losing team underperforms relative to their normal averages, even in the SB where you'd think teams are more evenly matched. Why that's the case who knows.
     
  37. The_Dark_Knight

    The_Dark_Knight Defender of the Truth

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    We all know that I’m a proponent of the adage defense wins championships. That’s why I asked what I asked and post 106 May validate my point. While NE in those SB losses may have scored 11 points less than their regular season average, by proxy, the opposing defense allowed fewer points scored hence, the defense won the game.
     
  38. cbrad

    cbrad .

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    Yes for 2 of NE's SB losses (the Giants games) defense was more important for the winner while the offense was more important for Philly giving an overall average for those 3 games of defense being more important for the winner. But that's not the general trend.

    The general trend, whether you look at performance of the SB winner to their own averages (post #98) or relative to league average (post #50) is that offense is more important, and the more important statistic is the comparison to league averages because sample size is larger.

    So yes there are many individual playoff games and many individual SB's where defense was more important (just look at post #50 for those cases where the value for defense is higher than for offense.. for example 2015 or a whole bunch of SB's in the early 70's) but there are more cases where offense was more important, and the magnitude of the difference shows offense is on average more important.
     
  39. 2socks

    2socks Rebuilding Since 1973

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    Click the video. Not mine reported by NE investigative reporter. Not Fing with anyone. Are you not going to acknowledge my statement about ignoring the obvious staring you in the face.
    Hmmmmm............
    What did Gase do as soon as he was named HC in NY
    Hired Greg Williams - exactly what I suggested Flores do. Has the man learned something - maybe
     
  40. RGF

    RGF THE FINSTER Club Member

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    Well, Garoppolo is still with the 49ers so maybe Belichick will throw this years super bowl too. You know, just for good measure and really get his point across.:sidelol:
     
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