Statistical heaping, 20 yards, first down
November 4, 2015 2:53 PM Subscribe
What I've got: A spreadsheet containing every single play run in the NFL from 2000-2014 (500,000 in all)
What I'm going to do with it: Show that the referees subconsciously change the outcome of a play based on where the painted lines are on a field, and subsequently show that it doesn't matter.
What I'm going to do with it: Show that the referees subconsciously change the outcome of a play based on where the painted lines are on a field, and subsequently show that it doesn't matter.
There's an interesting explanation in the /r/nfl discussion that says, in part:
"There is a very simple explanation for this and its because thats how its supposed to happen. Officials are told that if the spot is close to a line the ball should be spotted on the line if it doesn't affect the result of the play.
Basically if its a first down after a punt or kickoff return you are told to spot the ball exactly on a yard line and most preferably on one that is the 5 10 15 etc. The reason for this is because it makes measurements more accurate to make sure teams need exactly 10 yards for a first down."
Makes sense to me. Really takes the fun out of the analysis though.
posted by paulcole at 3:57 PM on November 4, 2015 [2 favorites]
"There is a very simple explanation for this and its because thats how its supposed to happen. Officials are told that if the spot is close to a line the ball should be spotted on the line if it doesn't affect the result of the play.
Basically if its a first down after a punt or kickoff return you are told to spot the ball exactly on a yard line and most preferably on one that is the 5 10 15 etc. The reason for this is because it makes measurements more accurate to make sure teams need exactly 10 yards for a first down."
Makes sense to me. Really takes the fun out of the analysis though.
posted by paulcole at 3:57 PM on November 4, 2015 [2 favorites]
Basically if its a first down after a punt or kickoff return you are told to spot the ball exactly on a yard line and most preferably on one that is the 5 10 15 etc. The reason for this is because it makes measurements more accurate to make sure teams need exactly 10 yards for a first down.
I'm not sure how that explanation turns into spotting on multiples of 5, though. The 23rd yard line is just as easy to measure 10 yards from as the 20, no?
posted by wemayfreeze at 4:35 PM on November 4, 2015
I'm not sure how that explanation turns into spotting on multiples of 5, though. The 23rd yard line is just as easy to measure 10 yards from as the 20, no?
posted by wemayfreeze at 4:35 PM on November 4, 2015
I'm not sure how that explanation turns into spotting on multiples of 5, though. The 23rd yard line is just as easy to measure 10 yards from as the 20, no?
There are lines across the field every 5 yards instead of just short lines at the hashes and sidelines. Maybe it's to help the players identify the first down lines on at least the first drive as often as possible. This could also be a benefit for the referees.
posted by paulcole at 4:43 PM on November 4, 2015
There are lines across the field every 5 yards instead of just short lines at the hashes and sidelines. Maybe it's to help the players identify the first down lines on at least the first drive as often as possible. This could also be a benefit for the referees.
posted by paulcole at 4:43 PM on November 4, 2015
dammit, MeFi, you made me care about handegg by appealing to my statistics inner nerd for a good 20 minutes.
posted by numaner at 4:50 PM on November 4, 2015 [5 favorites]
posted by numaner at 4:50 PM on November 4, 2015 [5 favorites]
damn it, MeFi, you made me care about brainmath by appealing to my football inner nerd for a good 20 minutes.
posted by Drinky Die at 5:01 PM on November 4, 2015 [15 favorites]
posted by Drinky Die at 5:01 PM on November 4, 2015 [15 favorites]
I still learned something today.
That I know less about football than a British person.
posted by swift at 5:17 PM on November 4, 2015 [5 favorites]
That I know less about football than a British person.
posted by swift at 5:17 PM on November 4, 2015 [5 favorites]
Chuffy.... you're right. Armchairanalsysis is kind of amazing. I'm not even an nfl fan, but the dataset they offer is pretty remarkable. I bet there's all kinds of interesting stuff that can be done with it.
posted by ph00dz at 7:35 PM on November 4, 2015
posted by ph00dz at 7:35 PM on November 4, 2015
what a wonderful description of watching football: "oh damn this is a mess, there are seven separate six foot tall millionaires all piled up on top of the ball and I have 100 rules to try and remember, where did that ball stop?”
posted by rebent at 8:04 PM on November 4, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by rebent at 8:04 PM on November 4, 2015 [1 favorite]
Not to self-plug, but if you like the Armchair Analysis data there is a Play Finder at pro-football-reference.com that has play-by-play data back to 1994 (that was a pain to parse, let me tell you) that you can do.. a whole lot with. If you read this bit, I did the same to parse a bigger dataset (and in Perl instead of VBA). There are definitely some discrepancies the further back you go but it's surprisingly accurate in figuring out what's going on in even the weirdest plays, like multi-lateral end of game plays & whatnot.
posted by zempf at 7:10 AM on November 5, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by zempf at 7:10 AM on November 5, 2015 [1 favorite]
Wow, zempf, you're behind Play Finder?
It's an amazing site, and one of the reasons my interest in American Football has weirdly blossomed this year after being really on and off for the last twenty ( I'm not in the US, and old enough to recall having to wait for results to come up on teletext, I only realised recently just how much information and quality analysis was available online ). I'm really impressed at this level of detail, and making it so accessible, so conversations that should be "our player needs to sport harder" become "well actually, if you look at the first seven games of the season you can see that our Tight End is targeted the most out of all the receivers, but we're not using him as often on Third Down as we should".
Unfortunately neither data set can answer two questions I'd really like to answer this year...
Can it be shown, statistically, that Richard Sherman has covered opposing wide receivers out of games significantly.
Is the propensity of the referees to call penalties against a team affected by their proximity to that team's bench? Although maybe I could at least figure out if penalties being called or not called is part of home field advantage...
It doesn't look like Armchair Analysis has that level of detail either ;)
posted by DancingYear at 2:10 PM on November 5, 2015
It's an amazing site, and one of the reasons my interest in American Football has weirdly blossomed this year after being really on and off for the last twenty ( I'm not in the US, and old enough to recall having to wait for results to come up on teletext, I only realised recently just how much information and quality analysis was available online ). I'm really impressed at this level of detail, and making it so accessible, so conversations that should be "our player needs to sport harder" become "well actually, if you look at the first seven games of the season you can see that our Tight End is targeted the most out of all the receivers, but we're not using him as often on Third Down as we should".
Unfortunately neither data set can answer two questions I'd really like to answer this year...
Can it be shown, statistically, that Richard Sherman has covered opposing wide receivers out of games significantly.
Is the propensity of the referees to call penalties against a team affected by their proximity to that team's bench? Although maybe I could at least figure out if penalties being called or not called is part of home field advantage...
It doesn't look like Armchair Analysis has that level of detail either ;)
posted by DancingYear at 2:10 PM on November 5, 2015
I just learned, during the Raiders-Jets game, that every single NFL player this year is wearing motion sensors in their shoulder pads. I am so hopeful for some really neat stuff to come from that. An I'm curious why I only heard of it 8 weeks into the season.
posted by clorox at 6:59 PM on November 5, 2015
posted by clorox at 6:59 PM on November 5, 2015
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posted by Chuffy at 3:14 PM on November 4, 2015 [2 favorites]