Team Efficiency Rankings: Week 4

This week's rankings saw fairly significant shifts, as one might expect this early in the season.  At this time last season, only six of the original top 10 remained in the upper third.  However, only two of the bottom 10 moved into the upper half, suggesting that the early cellar-dwellars are likely to flounder all year.

That pattern holds scary implications for a couple teams, something we will touch on later.  Of the bottom 10 teams from this time last year, only San Francisco rebounded to post a winning record.  Still, that does not mean teams at the top will remain in the penthouse, as…

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When Should a Team Begin its Four-Minute Offense?

At four minutes? Maybe not.

With 1:35 left to play, PIT led TB 24-20. Facing a 3rd down and 5 from their own 19, the PIT offense chose to run the ball. They were stopped with a 2-yard loss, but because TB had no timeouts left, the game clock wound down to 50 seconds before PIT had to punt. Unfortunately for PIT, the punt was about 10 yards shorter than normal and TB was then able to strike deep into the red zone, setting up the game-winning TD. Should PIT have thrown rather than run, risking stopping the clock or worse--a turnover?

Everyone is familiar with what a two-minute offense is. It's…

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Welcome to the New Advanced Football Analytics

Welcome to the new home of AFA. Things are a little different, but as you can tell all the features are in their usual places. I tried to keep the changes to a minimum.

As I redesigned the site with a new look and feel I realized there was nothing wrong with the old one, so I'm keeping as much of the old design as I can. I prefer clean, well-organized sites without a lot of clutter. I don't like the way ads clutter things up, so I've removed most of them. 

You probably noticed the Login menu item up there. That's one of the main reasons the site needed to switch platforms. The log ins are for…

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Chip's Challenging Decisions

The Eagles lost to the 49ers on Sunday 26-21 in what essentially came down to two plays by the Eagles on 3rd and 4th-and-Goal from just outside the 1-yard line. There is no denying it was a close game - even though the Eagles offense was unable to move the ball all day. The Eagles made a few interesting decisions - or lack of decisions - in the second half including not challenging a 3rd-down conversion reception and accepting a penalty on 3rd-and-3 after an incompletion. Let's examine each and see how they could have affected the Eagles' win probability, keeping in mind that in close games,…

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