*S40 Weeks 1-10 Team EPA/play Charts and Stuff

*S40 Weeks 1-10 Team EPA/play Charts and Stuff - Printable Version

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*S40 Weeks 1-10 Team EPA/play Charts and Stuff - aeonsjenni - 03-11-2023

EPA Intro

EPA Follow-Up

EPA Look-Up

Hi everyone! I'm back to give you your charts. Now that season 40 is just about half-way complete, I think it's time to take a fresh look at how efficient each team has been so far in the season. A lot has changed in the last couple weeks and I've already given the whole spiel about what EPA is and all of that, so let's just jump right into it. If you want to see the last post I made about each team's EPA metrics, you can see the results for weeks 1-4 HERE. If you like you can compare and contrast the charts to see how each team is settling in over time.

WEEKS 1-10

(As with other charts to come, the x-axis and y-axis are not to scale.)

I'm not going to lie, I laughed my face off when I saw this chart. What the fuck is Arizona even doing over there. Did they not get the memo? Defense is IN. Offense is OUT. They should really catch up—having both a league leading offense and a league leading defense is a MAJOR faux-pas. There's literally only one other team to have a positive offense—Austin just barely creeps over zero, sitting precariously at just under 0.003 EPA/play. If we remove the hideous fucking outlier that is Arizona, we can see that Yellowknife continues to dominate defensively, but also has a top 3 offense (at least for this year) to boot. Sarasota seems to be firmly better than their record would suggest, as they sit just behind Yellowknife in both metrics. No team truly takes the consensus title for the worst team, with Orange County, Honolulu, and Baltimore all making a decent case for it.

Thankfully the rushing game has managed to balance itself out in the last couple weeks, with six teams on the positive side for offense and eight teams in the negative. Orange County has regressed a little in their offense, and I expect that their Week 2 game against Baltimore is still doing a lot of legwork in keeping their average high. New York has stayed almost exactly where they were last week, maintaining an elite rushing offense, but they nevertheless manage to sit in the doldrums of the record tables. Meanwhile Chicago has taken their top rushing offense straight to a 5-game win-streak. I expect New York to win a few games eventually. Arizona is still great in the run game, but not quite as dominant as they are overall. Baltimore can neither run nor can they stop the run, just the same as in my last article. One important thing to consider is that the scaling of this chart is a little misleading: the offensive axis is much narrower than the defensive axis, so while it looks like Baltimore is just as bad stopping the run as they are in their own rushing offense, they are actually twice as bad at stopping the run as they are in running the ball themselves. Yellowknife is stops the run better than anyone else by a decent margin, and Colorado has a clear strength in the running game.

Arizona clearly really enjoys hanging out all by themselves off in that stratosphere, huh. What losers. True winners clump together in mediocrity like Colorado, New Orleans, and Chicago. But seriously—Arizona cracks the 0.2 mark in both their offensive and defensive passing game, which is outlandish. It should be a crime. I think New York is showing why they aren't winning any games with a offensive passing EPA/play of just under -0.17. If it wasn't for Arizona we'd be talking about how Cape Town has really turned it on in their passing game but Arizona makes them look unimpressive. I'm frankly surprised that San Jose is struggling so much against the pass; their secondary isn't brimming with talent but it looks to be serviceable, so maybe this is just bad sim luck.

***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.***

I think this chart is a good example of how small sample sizes can cause some massive volatility in the data. In my last article, San Jose was dominating in the return game. Now, they're one of only three teams to have a below-average return average. In my last article I talked about how punting effectiveness was way down across the league. This is still true, but at least a few teams have put together a decent punting game, with Colorado and New Orleans having phenomenal punting so far. Baltimore should maybe consider being a bit more aggressive on fourth down. Overall, don't expect these numbers to stay perfectly consistent throughout the season—there are only so many punts that happen in each game, and the possible outcomes of those punts vary wildly, so even one bad punt will keep a team's punting EPA low for a very long time.

I really hope you've enjoyed looking at these charts with me. If there's anything you'd like for me to calculate for future articles please let me know. I think I'm going to put out a final article after the regular season ends, giving us a chance to maybe foresee how the playoffs will go. That will be in about two weeks, so be on the lookout during the weekend of March 25th. I hope you have a lovely day, thanks so much for reading!

~Jenni

RE: S40 Weeks 1-10 Team EPA/play Charts and Stuff - ZootTX - 03-11-2023

Great article. I love reading these!

RE: S40 Weeks 1-10 Team EPA/play Charts and Stuff - nunccoepi - 03-11-2023

This is very well done! Thanks for putting it together!