See below for a quick explanation of this visual.
Quick explanation
The football team pages show all the key statistics for a team on a single page. The college football pages evaluate offense and defense by yards per play adjusted for schedule and further break this down into passing and rushing.
For the NFL, the team pages uses success rate adjusted for schedule. For the offense, a play is a success if they gain this fraction of necessary yards for a first down:
- 50% of the necessary yards on 1st down
- 70% of the necessary yards on 2nd down
- 100% of the necessary yards on 3rd, 4th down
A few features to note:
- the larger grey dots are other teams in the conference or division, which facilitates comparisons
- during the preseason, the win probabilities in the schedule are based on preseason rankings in college football and the NFL. The preseason college football rankings have predicted 70.5% of game winners during the season (the other numbers, such as yards per pass attempt on offense, are from the end of last season)
- to convert this win probability into a predicted margin of victory, click on the team to make the prediction appear above the team rankings.
- hover over the grey dots in the visual to identify that team
When I prep for radio and podcast appearances, I pull up these visuals to get an instant snapshot of both the predictions and match ups.
However, the most useful aspect of the team visual are the match up stats. To understand how this works, consider this visual for rushing in the 2012 national title game between Alabama and Notre Dame.
Match up visual for Notre Dame and Alabama before the 2012 title game.
Better defenses that allow fewer yards appear further to the right. This facilitates comparisons when the defense is shown next to the offense. The better unit appears further to the right, such as Alabama’s offense.
In the new visual, the defense appears on the same line as the offense. To see this, click on an opponent in the schedule above. You’re really looking at how a unit’s statistics deviate from average, so it makes sense to put both units on the same line.
The team pages let you instantly evaluate a football game.
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