Should JJ Watt win the MVP award?

by Joe Harris

DPOY? Hands Down…

Followers of ANS are probably likely to agree with the notion that JJ Watt is the run-away DPOY for this season, a large proportion of the mainstream media agree, and there is also a very good chance that he will, in fact, win. His main competitors were Aldon Smith and Von Miller who were both originally competing with Watt for the sacks title, but eventually lost out.

The ‘conventional’ stats bear out the idea of JJ Watt as the DPOY:

Stat	JJ Watt (Hou)		Aldon Smith (SF)		Von Miller (Den)
Sacks	20.5	1st	19.5	2nd	18.5	3rd
Tackles	69		50		55
Passes Defended	16	10th	1		2
Interceptions	0		1		1
Fumbles Forced	4	10th	3	22nd	6	3rd
Yards per Pass Attempt (Team)	6.7	7th	6.1	2nd	6.4	5th
Yards per Rush Attempt (Team)	4.0	9th	3.7	3rd	3.6	2nd

* The rank for each player was left blank if they did not come in the top 40 players

This shows Watt as a viable contender for DPOY, leading the other two in sacks, tackles and passes defended (where he ranks a ridiculous 10^th among all defensive players). However, it is not quite clear cut as the other two both lead slightly better defences and Von Miller has more FF and an interception.

Personally, I think the above table shows Watt as the clear winner when put into the context that he is a DE in a 3-4 scheme whereas the other two are both LBs in schemes designed to give them opportunities to rack up the glamor stats.

The result starts to become clearer cut when we look at the Advanced Stats:

Stat	JJ Watt (Hou)		Aldon Smith (SF)		Von Miller (Den)		% adv
+WPA	2.96	1st	1.04		1.53	22nd	25%
+EPA	122.1	1st	58.5	12th	74.2	2nd	65%
Success Count	109	1st	60		65	32nd	4%
Tackle Factor	1.36	13th	0.67		0.71		-13%
QB Hits	43	1st	24	4th	27	5th	34%
Defensive GWP (Team)		9th		2nd		1st	-

* The rank for each player was left blank if they did not come in the top 40 players

Here Watt completely blows away his competition. I also added a final column which shows Watt’s advantage over the second place in each category. For example, he has 65% more +EPA than the next player (who happens to be Von Miller). That’s insane.  

Wins above average: a statistical nightmare

by Clark Heins

Introduction: Davis Wylie (pen name of researcher Neil Paine), after much complicated math resulting in each QB‘s stats being “adjusted“ to 2006 levels (through a process known as “translation“, i.e., normalization without standard deviation, converted everything into a final stat “Wins Above Replacement Player” totals in his "The 100 Greatest QBs of the Modern Era” opus which he used to rank QBs.

In football, there is no clearly established formula for determining WAR figures, but Football Outsiders originally estimated that a “Replacement Level” QB was some 13.7% less effective (valuable) than an “average” QB. This percentage was later changed to 13.3% and now rests at 12.5%. All these figures were arbitrary and consisted of some educated guesswork and “value judgments” about “players“ who never existed! It would have been much easier if Wylie had simply used the stat “Wins Above Average” which we can all understand instead of an incomprehensible abstract.

The problem for me was converting these WAR totals to WAA so as to compare with Doug Drinen’s figures in his own WAA opus.

Kelly Criterion on 4th down

by Tunesmith
It's 4th and 1 from your opponent's 43-yard line. You're up 3 points, and there is 5:16 remaining in the 1st quarter. Should you go for it?

According to the 4th Down Calculator, the answer appears clear. Based on history, there is an estimated 74% chance of converting a 4th down in that scenario. Success yields 0.68 WPA; punting yields 0.61 WPA, and failure yields 0.55 WPA.

These odds tell you that on average, it is a good decision to go for it - just the same as on average you'll make money if you take a bet with those odds and that probability of winning. The "Expected Value" (EV) in this scenario is 3.62. This means that on average, you will gain .0362 WPA by going for it.

However, average doesn't always cut it. Because if it's not certain, you could still lose.

EV enthusiasts often object to that observation, but let's briefly consider an alternate scenario. Pretend that you come across a certain state lottery. For $1, you have a chance of winning $500,000,000 profit. And your chances of winning are 1 in 350,000,000. (Also pretend, for the sake of argument, that there's a new identical lottery every second, and there can't be multiple winners in a round.) Since 500 > 350, those are good odds. Say you can play only once. Should you buy a ticket? What if you could play multiple times, or buy multiple tickets? Should you spend your $5,000 in hard-earned savings on lottery tickets?

1st Down Game Theory: Equilibrium and Exploitable Strategies

by Mike Sommers

You are faced with a first and 10 on your own 20 yardline, what percentage of the time should you run vs pass? You are on the 40 yardline, what percentage do you run vs pass?

Equilibrium Strategy
This is a problem that is solvable, but it depends upon your objectives. I used average NFL data. The average pass attempt yields about 11.6 yards per catch with a 60.5% completion rate. I rounded this down to 11 yards and 60% completion rate. The average rush attempt yields 4.36 yards (2011 data) I rounded this down to 4 yards. Now if you approach the problem as an “equilibrium” strategy, your goal is actually to reduce the expected effect on the play to no change in score either way. For those familiar with “EP” (expected points), this doesn’t mean that the EP result would be zero, but that over the long run, the EP would not increase or decrease from it’s current levels. That is, no change in expectation of how many points you score, so if your expected points on first and 10 is .34, using an equilibrium strategy, it will remain .34. This is based upon the assumption that in the very long run, the opponents will either adapt or correctly anticipate how to adapt to exploit whatever strategy you come forward with, so the best plan is to just produce “average” results”. I don’t believe this to be true, but the equilibrium strategy is still valid as a “base strategy”.

When to sacrifice yards for situation

by Mike Sommers

In "A Response To Brian Burke’s Washington Post Article", I stated that a team would actually be better served coming up short of the first down on 1st down. They would be better off setting up a 2nd and short than 1st and 10, unless they were able to surpass the threshold of 4 yards beyond the first down marker. All of these stats are based on normal teams who typically punt on 4th down. If they planned to go for it more optimally on 4th down, I suspect they would need even more than 4 yards to justify getting a conversion.
Before I go on about the exceptions, I thought it would be useful to get a bit more specific about the situations in which a 1st down conversion is not better than a 2nd and short.
Here is a graph and table of the expected points given the situation. While any 1st and 10 is more favorable than a 2nd and 3, a 2nd and 1 would still be 5 yards better than a 1st and 10. In other words, a 2nd and 1 on your own 29 yard-line is worth more expected points than a 1st and 10 on the 34.