Friday, February 24, 2012

Spygate: The Effectiveness of Cheating


by Paul Benjamin

Enough time has passed to evaluate the effect of Bill Belichick's cheating. The cheating took place from 2000-2006, and was ended early in 2007, giving 5 years of data since.

The known cheating consisted of two components, as revealed by Eric Mangini. First, the Patriots would tape opponents defensive hand signals. This permitted coaches to correlate the signals with the defensive alignments and figure out what each signal meant. Second, the Patriots used unregistered radio frequencies, so that the second time they played that team the offensive coordinator could watch the defensive signals and choose the perfect play to tell the quarterback. Normally, the referee cuts the registered radio frequency 15 seconds before the snap, so the offensive coordinator cannot communicate with the quarterback after the defense makes its substitutions, but the Patriots were the only team in the league that had radio equipment that could broadcast on multiple frequencies simultaneously. After the referee would cut the registered frequency, the quarterback could still hear the coordinator on the other frequency, so he could be told the defensive alignment he was facing and what play to call.

So the plays and blocking schemes were always perfect ones to exploit each defensive alignment.

Monday, February 6, 2012

Ring Probability Added


by Joe Harris
When arguing a QB's "greatness" people often quote the number of rings a player has as a definitive conclusion to a debate. For example, Dilfer is obviously greater than Marino because he has a ring. And there is nothing else to it. That statement takes the logic a bit further than most people would, but that is essentially how a lot of fans view the world. Whilst I am not a fan of this form of logic, I thought that it would be interesting to look at this concept through the lens of WPA or, more specically, RPA - Ring Probability Added.

Ring Probability Added
The basic idea is to take Brian's WPA stats and weight it depending on the magnitude of the game. For example, in 2004 when New England beat Carolina, Tom Brady essentially did enough to win the game single-handedly with +0.97 WPA. This corresponds to +0.49 RPA - he increased New England's chances of winning the Superbowl by 49%.