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Team Efficiency Rankings: Week 13

Last week, we took a look at a lot of the NFL's wild card morass, attempting to differentiate between the bevy of realistic contenders for just four combined postseason slots in both conferences. Those races didn't receive any more clarity, as there are still many plausible scenarios in which three- and four-way ties bring obscure tiebreaking procedures into play.

While the AFC races need another week (or four) to ferment, the NFC postseason picture is starting to receive clarity. There are seven realistic contenders for five postseason slots—this excludes the NFC South, which itself managed to mercifully expunge Carolina and Tampa Bay from serious postseason consideration.

Our deeper dives this week will focus on a few of the teams in these races, highlighting a quartet of teams whose stock seemed to shift most drastically during Week 13.

The Dreaded Six-Point Lead

Up 30-27 with 2:27 left in the fourth quarter, the Baltimore Ravens faced a 4th-and-4 from the San Diego Chargers 13-yard line. Both teams had one timeout remaining so a first down would mean the Chargers could get the ball back with 24 seconds left, assuming the Ravens did not score or convert a second new set of downs. With a field goal, the Ravens would be up only six points, meaning a touchdown would all but win the game for the Chargers. Avid football analytics readers know that in some situations, being up four to six points is worse than being up three points. This is because opposing …

Podcast Episode 36 - Kevin Kelley

Kevin Kelley, Head Coach of Pulaski Academy (Little Rock, AR), is on the show this week to discuss his unique strategic philosophy. Known as the “coach who never punts”, Coach Kelley has leveraged his offensive acumen, love of advanced stats and commitment to onside kicking to lead his team to three state championships since 2003. He and Dave break down the data underlying his strategies, dive into the details of how he executes his special teams plays and discuss the differing ways the football world has responded to his success.

If you're interested in learning more about Coach Kelley and the…

Team Efficiency Rankings: Week 12

This week saw the least amount of change we've seen in the rankings all season. Though things should be stabilizing anyways with every team having finished over two-thirds of their schedule, Week 11 was an anomaly nevertheless, with 12 out of the 14 favorites holding serve, based on the AFA game probabilities.

The fortunate byproduct of that chalk (from an entertainment standpoint) is that few postseason races saw big shifts in playoff probabilities for teams on the bubble. However, that figures to change this week, with seven out of 16 games pitting two teams that currently either hold or…

Analyzing Atlanta's Endgame

There's no question Mike Smith made an error calling a timeout with 55 seconds left to play. To recap, ATL was down by 2 and faced a 3rd and 2 on the CLE 35. If Smith needed time to draw up the play, he could either rely on the Browns using a timeout or wait until the play clock wound down to call his own timeout. It would have been suicidal for CLE not to have used a timeout there, so I'll assume the error had the effect of saving CLE a timeout while wasting one of ATL's (which would be inconsequential anyway).

I initially thought I'd do a post on how small a difference that really makes, and…

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Team Efficiency Rankings: Week 13

The Dreaded Six-Point Lead

Podcast Episode 36 - Kevin Kelley

Team Efficiency Rankings: Week 12

Analyzing Atlanta's Endgame

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