OT: Sustainability of yards per point, etc.?
Not Michigan-related, but there are enough good quant types here that hopefully someone can point me the right way.
What research is there to show that non-yardage ways of winning ball games, e.g. net turnovers, special teams, net penalties, etc., are or aren't sustainable?
Phil Steele has published some stuff in his annuals (e.g. 2009, I didn't get the 2010) that strongly suggests that you can't hope to get outgained and win consistently with a low yards-per-point. IIRC the only exception he noted was that you can get good at holding onto the ball, but not reproduceably good at forcing turnovers.
(As an aside, I wish Phil would take an offseason and learn to do simple regression analysis.)
September 19th, 2010 at 6:04 PM ^
It's probably good that people like Phil Steele don't know how to do regressions. As Maslow says: "I suppose it is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail."
September 19th, 2010 at 6:26 PM ^
Ha, well, the hammer/nail quote is a good snapshot of where my knowledge is. At least I hope I'm open-minded about learning better ways to do things.
IIRC Steele's methodology is something like:
- Count up all the teams with positive net turnovers and see how many got worse the following year
- Count up all the teams with negative net turnovers and see how many got better
- Take the teams with the lowest ypp and see how many got worse
- Take the teams with the highest ypp and see how many got better
The results he comes up with are pretty convincing, IMHO. (I also tend to take his opinions pretty seriously because does so well in the Stassen predictions tracking.)
But I know that eyeballing it to call it convincing can be deceiving, whereas conventional statistical methods are a little more objective. I just don't know enough about those methods.
September 19th, 2010 at 7:12 PM ^
My advice to you would be to put a call out to the mathlete. Great analysis of stats and a virtual fountain of information.
September 19th, 2010 at 8:57 PM ^
Good advice. Is there a way to send direct messages on here that I'm just overlooking? Or is it considered polite to just go stalk someone's blog and post a moderately-OT comment?
September 19th, 2010 at 9:38 PM ^
Once you accumulate 1000 points you get access to the VIP board.
Once you accumulate 2000 points you get access to the Direct Message System.