*S41 EPA - Printable Version

*S41 EPA - 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: *S41 EPA (/showthread.php?tid=45519)

Pages: 1 2

*S41 EPA - aeonsjenni - 05-21-2023

EPA Intro

EPA Follow-Up

S27-S40 Charts

Hi everyone! It's the end of the regular season, so it's as good a time as any to take a look at how EPA rates each team. in case you haven't seen it, I recently released an article detailing my new methods for generating all my EPA stuff, which you can find here. As a result of some improved methods, I can much more easily share some individual EPA metrics for offensive skill players! However, during a lot of the work I had put in, I realized that trying to make any sense of punting EPA was becoming increasingly fraught, so I've cut it out entirely. I have a few ideas of how to re-introduce punting EPA, but for now it will be absent. I'm truly sorry to all of our lovely league punters.

Season 41

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

Let's pretend for a moment that there is no ISFL team in New Orleans. That purple logo you see in the bottom-left corner is merely a visual hallucination. The Baltimore Hawks have the worst defense in the league, followed by the Yeti Sad

. The Fire Salamanders have the worst offense in the league, just as everyone expected. Firmly unlike expectations, however, is that Austin is not so much better. Cape Town certainly looks to me like the most complete team in the league, with a leading defense coupled with a solid offense. Bear in mind that while Cape Town's defense is certainly impressive, it doesn't quite compare EPA-wise to the leading defenses of S40 and S39. Honolulu has firmly the best offense in the league, sitting comfortably above the +0.1 EPA/play mark. New York improves from last year to achieve perfect mediocrity. They deserve applause.

Once again I implore you to disregard the bizarre purple fleck in the bottom-left corner. It is a graphical bug that I cannot eliminate despite my best efforts. I think it's very likely that the rushing game plays a huge role in the playoffs this season, especially in the ASFC. Orange County has an awful rushing defense but a very good rushing offense, and Honolulu is an amped-up version of Orange County in this regard. The third ASFC playoff team, however, has both an excellent rushing offense as well as a league-leading rushing defense, so I think it would be reasonable to favor Arizona in both matchups. In the NSFC, the odd team out is Sarasota, who are well below average in both rushing offense and defense. Yellowknife and Cape Town are much more similar but ultimately Yellowknife holds a keen advantage in the running game. Overall, it looks like teams struggled to stop the run across the board, with only 5 teams sporting a negative (remember that negative is good for defenses) EPA/play against the run. Additionally, to my great surprise, Austin managed to lead the league in rushing EPA/play despite starting a rookie running back, Howard Coward. I was told they'd be a pass-first team this season!

You'll notice that the Passing chart lines up much more closely with the Overall chart than the Rushing chart does. I think this is a good reflection of how much more significant the passing game is to a team's overall performance than the running game. In this respect we see three true winners: Sarasota, Cape Town, and Honolulu. In the playoffs, Yellowknife might have the defense to slow down Sarasota's passing offense, but would ultimately rely on their running game to score points. Meanwhile, both Orange County and Arizona will struggle to slow down Honolulu. As I mentioned previously, though, the Otters have a bad running defense to match up against Honolulu, while Arizona might be able to pull through with their running game. Finally, there is absolutely nothing to see in that bottom-left corner. The purple you see is actually the result of a strange quirk in your eye's anatomy, and can be safely disregarded.

Playoff Predictions

In the playoffs, I think the Sarasota @ Yellowknife game is a good example of a run-first team vs. a pass-first team. While Yellowknife is at less of a disadvantage against the pass as Sarasota is against the run, we established earlier that the passing game is a better indicator of overall performance than the running game. Speaking of overall performance, it looks like the two teams are evenly matched in their offense, but Yellowknife has a significant defensive advantage. While I think it's possible for Sarasota to pull through, I'd expect Yellowknife to win this one.

Orange County @ Arizona looks a bit more balanced at first glance, but as I mentioned previously I think Arizona's advantage in the running game is significant enough to put them at a firm advantage in the matchup.

Overall, I think Arizona @ Honolulu would be a good deal closer than the charts might indicate, were it to happen. Arizona's advantage in the running game is so concrete that I'd almost be willing to give them the edge in the matchup. However, the fact of the matter is that Arizona's not even guaranteed to be playing in the Championship game, so as normal it's better to predict the home team to win.

In the hypothetical Cape Town @ Yellowknife matchup, I don't think you can realistically bet against Cape Town this season, unless you think the Philly curse has carried over to Cape Town. They firmly look like the most complete team in the league, similar (though not to the same extent) to Arizona last season. The same would go for the Ultimus, putting the predictions like this:

ARI

>>>>>

>>>>>

>>>>>

Thank you so much for reading! I hope the playoffs go well for everyone involved, and I will see you all with more charts next season. Bye!

~Jenni

...wait a minute, I totally forgot to add the individual charts! Let me amend that.

There are a couple things I should mention before we start with the charts. Firstly, a player is only included in the chart if they meet some threshold for usage in the index. For the passing chart, a QB needs at least 100 passes (this is irrelevant because teams almost always have only 1 QB on their roster who will easily clear that threshold), a rusher (which includes players at every position to accommodate QBs, RBs, and FBs), needs at least 70 rushing attempts, and for receivers at any position, a player needs 30 completions (... I think. In the index it's listed as "No.", which I'm pretty certain is the number of completions a player has on a season. I don't think the index lists the targets for a player even though it's something the game records. More Wolverine Studios headscratchers). However, in some cases, a player is traded midseason, so the index will list them as crossing that threshold to put them on the chart, but in reality they may have very few plays with the team the index lists them on. I don't think it's relevant this season but it's something to keep in mind.

The QB chart has pretty much the exact same information as the overall Team Passing chart, but instead of attributing passing success or failures to teams it refers to players. So it's no surprise that the same three teams with the best passing offense EPA/play would also have the QBs with the highest passing EPA/play. Nevertheless, I applaud Willier Miller on being one of the most efficient QBs in the league as a rookie. Hopefully he can see only success in the future.
Additionally: St. Christmas lives on the edge.

I feel like this chart is a decent indicator of the value of having a second running back to take a hefty chunk of carries, even if not a complete RBBC. Notice that each of the top 4 RBs in rushing EPA/play appear alongside a backfield partner on the same team who would have carried the ball significantly as well. Many of the backs who appear alone, Pete Zuh, Ceti Pyxis, and Armor Queen, all underperformed their TPE significantly. Only Bean Delphine Jr. managed to have an efficient season without someone else to lighten the load.

So uhh... QBs are pretty fucking efficient when they target wide receivers in this league, huh. I've gone over this before but please notice that only three WRs are in the negative, and one of them is Louis Blondin, who was one of the most efficient WRs in the league last year. The sim is fickle. Please also note that Austin had two of the most efficient wide receivers in the league to target, including a surprise performance from S41 rookie and former BBB teammate of mine Oliver Tolliver, yet Queen Elizabeth II came away as the least efficient QB who didn't play for NOLA. Once again the sim is fickle. Rockbo didn't have a huge number of targets this season, but it was enough to clear the threshold comfortably, and they absolutely made it count.

This is a requiem to the former receiving Tight End gods Lucius Salem and Mister Hogmally. May they rest in peace (or bounce back next year). I guess they didn't do too poorly—they both have positive EPA/play numbers, but at this point I'm used to them having a monopoly on the top of this particular chart so I'm sad to see things changing.

I've noticed a problem here. It looks like Baltimore has two different players named Tolliver on their roster, and each of them individually crossed the 30-reception threshold to appear on the chart. However, I have no way of differentiating between Penger Tolliver and Money Tolliver, so all we can say is that they combined to be a pretty good receiver, actually. I'm used to the Yellowknife duo being at the top of the RB receiving chart but I guess that's not the case for this season. Finally, Nedelko topping the list as both the most efficient rusher as well as the most efficient receiving RB is super impressive! Well done!

Okay! Once again thanks for reading! Bye for real this time!
~Jenni

RE: S41 EPA - baz - 05-21-2023

nola best team the charts are fake

RE: S41 EPA - ztarwarz - 05-21-2023

Pay no attention to the Purple behind the Curtain

RE: S41 EPA - wizard_literal - 05-21-2023

I wonder if Arizona's use of their Runningbacks at Tight End helped Nedelko's receiving EPA.

RE: S41 EPA - ZootTX - 05-21-2023

Gonna point out that Crashmore is a blocking TE archetype. Have we unlocked the new meta?

RE: S41 EPA - aeonsjenni - 05-21-2023

(05-21-2023, 03:02 PM)ZootTX Wrote: Gonna point out that Crashmore is a blocking TE archetype. Have we unlocked the new meta?

My best guess is that it's possible that a tight end that's assigned to block will be targeted much more selectively and therefore could possibly have an advantage in that respect.

Well, actually, my best guess is that it's totally fucking random and I have no idea. But that's my second-best guess

RE: S41 EPA - Starboy - 05-21-2023

Quote:Armor Queen, all underperformed their TPE significantly.

You could insert the name of any of my players and this would fit honestly. Interesting that I was the dead center for rushing

RE: S41 EPA - Kotasa - 05-22-2023

Crunk 4 first team all-pro

RE: *S41 EPA - Tayjay - 05-24-2023

I'm the epitome of average

RE: *S41 EPA - Purpl3Spartan - 06-11-2023

never change Nola