*Week 1-4 Team EPA/play - Printable Version +- International Simulation Football League (https://forums.sim-football.com) +-- Forum: Community (https://forums.sim-football.com/forumdisplay.php?fid=5) +--- Forum: Media (https://forums.sim-football.com/forumdisplay.php?fid=37) +---- Forum: Graded Articles (https://forums.sim-football.com/forumdisplay.php?fid=38) +---- Thread: *Week 1-4 Team EPA/play (/showthread.php?tid=43932)

*Week 1-4 Team EPA/play - aeonsjenni - 02-26-2023 EPA Intro EPA Follow-Up EPA Look-Up Hi everyone! Now that the first (irl) week of S40 is over, and the first four (sim) weeks are in the books, I am very excited to go through some of our new EPA data for the new season! I am hoping that we can find something interesting in this early data, and that we can maybe discern how each team is doing, and maybe discern which teams might be due for some regression. I think I will want to make an article similar to this one maybe three times in an ISFL season, once for a preliminary look after the first week of games (i.e. this one), another at mid-season, and a final article after the regular season is over. I hope that I would not be cluttering the forums with articles at that rate, but still give everyone some charts to look at over the course of the season, where we can see how each team is progressing. Anyways, let's get into it!  ***Please remember that a positive EPA/play is good for an offense, and bad for a defense. Conversely, a negative EPA/play is good for a defense, and bad for an offense. Additionally, a punt counts as an offensive play, so a good punting unit should have a positive EPA/play, whereas a punt return counts a defensive play, so a good return game should give a negative EPA/play.*** WEEKS 1-4 (As with other charts to come, the x-axis and y-axis are not to scale.) Okay, so this is it! This particular chart is what I was setting out to create when I first started this project, and I'm very happy with how it turned out! The code to plot this with team logos was made by @jeffie43, which I am very appreciative of. Thank you! Anyways, we can see a few things, even though so far our sample size is fairly small. Yellowknife's defense is still proving to be elite, which matches up with their best-in-the-league Points Against metric. Meanwhile, Colorado is showing a fantastic defense, but a league-worst offense. This doesn't quite match up with their point totals, which may suggest that their defense was given a number of short fields to work with but managed to overperform nonetheless. Overall, only four teams (BER, CTC, AUS, and AZ) are showing a positive offensive EPA/play, so offensive performance seems to be down across the league so far, despite a fairly normal league-wide ~25.8 points per game. Perhaps an abnormal amount of points scored this season have come from defenses giving their offenses great field positions? I was surprised to see that New Orleans is performing so poorly, as a cursory look at their roster in the pre-season suggested that they may be a top contender for S40. Hopefully they can turn things around as the season continues. Horrible, awful things were done by OCO QB Kaguya Shinomiya to Baltimore in Week 2, and it shows on this chart. Baltimore can at least take solace in that OCO at least shares much of their suffering in regards their egregious rush defenses. However, Orange County and New York boast far and away the two most efficient rush offenses, which lines up well with their YPC's of 5.9 and 5.2, respectively. Yellowknife and Austin are both proving to have great rushing defenses so far in the early season, but overall rushing offense is down across the league. Meanwhile, passing offenses are more balanced, with a good number of teams showing both positive and negative EPA/pass numbers, offensively and defensively. Offensively, Arizona, Cape Town, and Austin are all showing a great strength in their passing offenses, and Colorado condemns passing of any kind. Yellowknife manages to be only a touch in the red, despite starting their former DT at quarterback, and poor Honolulu has only a marginally positive passing offense to make up for their non-existent passing defense. Adrian St. Christmas is clearly struggling on his new team, which I am sad to see, as one of the league's top St. Christmas fans. I was unsure whether I even wanted to publish the punting numbers for the first few weeks, as they only exacerbate the issues we already face with low sample sizes. These numbers will be very volatile throughout the year, so we should see a very different chart next time. Regardless, This year's punting is fucking god-awful. I mean just look at these numbers. Only one team is actually benefitting from their punting game, Yellowknife. Chicago is not happy to see any punter step onto the field, and San Jose is being gifted nearly half a point on average any time they return a punt. Whether this league-wide futility is due to bad punting or great returning is something someone could maybe look into, but either way I hope to see things balance themselves out in the future. Anyways, that's all I've got for now. I am hoping to put out another article in two weeks, around March 12th or so. Please let me know if there's any EPA information in particular you'd like to see, as I'd love to look into it. I really hope you enjoy looking at this information as much as I do and I hope you have a lovely day. ~Jenni RE: Week 1-4 Team EPA/play - CptGoosar - 02-26-2023 Great work. Keep this up RE: Week 1-4 Team EPA/play - Mooty99 - 02-26-2023 I love this well done RE: Week 1-4 Team EPA/play - WildfireMicro - 02-26-2023 Good stuff RE: Week 1-4 Team EPA/play - Twenty6 - 02-26-2023 Wish I had half the brain to fully understand these charts, but at least I can tell you did awesome work!  Keep it up, jenni! RE: Week 1-4 Team EPA/play - ZootTX - 02-26-2023 Not surprised we have the best punter!