Playoff QBs Who Carry Their Teams – And Teams That Carry Their QBs

by Jim Glass
Just a few playoff game performances can earn a quarterback fame or blame forever. But how well is it deserved?
How often does a "winning" playoff QB actually play so poorly as to deserve to lose, only to be bailed out by his teammates (or good fortune)? How often do "losing" QBs play well enough to deserve to win, only to be done in by their teammates (and bad luck)?
How well do QB reputations for being great clutch winners or choking losers correspond to their actual performance in the playoffs?
To see, I looked at the last 15 years of playoff games, 1995 thru 2009.

Examining QB "Yards after Catch"

by Adam Tarr

One stat that remains frustratingly difficult to find is Yards After the Catch, or YAC. Unless you're reading a gamebook from a Buffalo Bills home game, it's rare that you will find any recorded information about a game that details how much distance each pass travelled through the air, and how much distance was covered by the receiver after the catch. This information is significant, because as Brian has mentioned in the past, the evidence suggests that receivers deserve the lion's share of the credit for YAC.

Season-by-season YAC numbers for receivers can be found for all active receivers on a few sites, but YAC numbers organized by quarterback are even harder to find. The best I've found is stats.com, which lists the top 20 QBs by YAC in each conference for each season from 2006 to 2010.

Total team luck points through week 16

by Bruce D

Team luck points = (bad luck points)-(good luck points), so negative numbers are the luckiest For a more in-depth explanation of what "luck" points are, go to a previous post here. Luck is tracked to better analyze a team's true ability and to help predict results of upcoming games where some may not know what portion of a team's record and points performance was due to just luck.

What portion of “luck” is skill? (Maybe Atlanta IS that good!?)

by Bruce D

There have been some recent discussions at the Advanced NFL Stats main web-site concerning Atlanta and San Diego, with varying theories about how much luck is involved in their current win records. In a nut-shell, its why is San Diego's win record so much lower than their GWP, and why is Atlanta's win record so much better than their GWP. One of the prevailing theories is its due to bad and good luck(turnovers etc.). The other theory is poor or efficient coaching/skill.

Maybe its a combination of both. But what ratio? To try to answer this I looked for consistency with “luck” in each game, for each team this season.

Play by Play Data for the 2010 Season - Week 12

John Candido is compiling play by play data on a weekly basis for all to share. You can download the data from John's site or you can use the links below.

Week 1	Week 7
Week 2	Week 8
Week 3	Week 9
Week 4	Week 10
Week 5	Week 11
Week 6	Week 12

Some random thoughts on overtime

by Ian Simcox

I’ve finally got round to making some use of the play-by-play data Brian’s made available. As a nice simple starter, I thought I’d take a look at win probabilities for teams in overtime. The graph below shows the win probabilities for a team with the ball and a first and 10/goal from various yard lines.

"BigWin%" Looks At the Coming Playoffs

by Jim Glass

First, a bit of explanation of why anyone might care about the charts below.

A little while back I looked at the playoff performance of the 100 teams over the last 15 years with season records of 11-5 or better. The nine teams with the best records in close games (decided by 10 or fewer points) during the regular season, winning nine or more, in the playoffs went only 8-9. That may not be surprising to those who believe close games are determined mostly by luck. But the seven teams with the worst losing records in close games dominated in the playoffs, going 14-4 and winning three Super Bowls. That was a surprise.

Yet on reflection it shouldn't have been -- nothing else seems possible, given a key fact reported on this site: half of all NFL games are decided by luck.

Say a 10-6 record is needed to make the playoffs and two teams do it. In each's 16-game schedule eight games are determined by luck and eight by merit. Team A is a bit lucky and two of its "luck" games switch to wins, so it goes 6-2 in them (instead of 4-4). In its "merit" games it need go only 4-4, 50%, for its 10-6. But Team B is a bit unlucky and two of its "luck" games switch to losses, so it goes 2-6 in them. It has to be powerful enough to go 8-0 in its "merit" games, 100%, to get to 10-6.

Head-to-head, Team B should score 75% against Team A in spite of their equal 10-6 records, because on the merits it is a 100-0 team playing a 50-50 team. (In four games versus A it should go 2-0 on merit and 1-1 on luck.)