*S40 Regular Season Team EPA/play Charts + WC preview

[aeonsjenni]

EPA Intro

EPA Follow-Up

EPA Look-Up

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Hi everyone! I'm back to give you your charts. Season 40 has finished up its regular season, and the playoffs are starting tomorrow. Good luck to the teams that made it, and for the teams that didn't, good luck in the draft. I don't want to waste your time, I've already gone over EPA stuff, there are links above if you want to find out more, and so on, so let's just jump right into it. The S40 Week 4 article is HERE. The S40 Week 10 article is HERE. Please enjoy!

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Season 40

(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. 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 result is very reflective of the imbalance between the two conferences. Orange County sits comfortably with the likes of Berlin and New York, who hold some of the worst records in the league, while poor Sarasota actually compares favorably to even Cape Town, not to mention its comparison to Orange County, who it outclasses considerably. Such is life, I suppose. No one team stands as the definitive worst team in the league, and for the most part the league itself is fairly balanced with every team not named Arizona or Yellowknife sitting comfortably within ±0.1 EPA/play, both offensively or defensively. If I was going to make a playoff prediction bracket based entirely off of this chart, it would be:

ASFC:

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 -- |              |
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NSFC:

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 -- |              |
                -- |
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With Arizona taking the championship against Yellowknife in a S39 Ultimus revenge game; which is so boring! It's exactly what you'd predict if you just went by standings. Either way, it's clear that Arizona is easily the class of the league and it'd be silly to predict against them. I think the game to watch out for here is Cape Town @ Chicago, where I'm giving the edge to Chicago because they have a bigger advantage on defense than Cape Town has on offense.

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If we focus on the Chicago - Cape Town game, which is the hardest playoff game to predict, we see that the Butchers have a clear advantage in their run game, with the Crash sporting a league average run game in both offense and defense. Meanwhile the Silverbacks look like the class of the whole league, going by their running game. Tune in for the next chart to see why they have the worst record in the league. Just like in the Week 10 article Arizona looks fairly pedestrian here.

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In the last article, Arizona cracked the 0.2 mark in both their passing defense and passing offense. They actually haven't regressed so much from that absurdity, though their passing offense is just slightly below +0.2 EPA/play. Meanwhile this chart shows where the Crash might have a significant advantage against the Butchers, though unlike with the rushing game, Chicago has the passing defense to hopefully nullify Cape Town's offense. RIP New York.

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Look at the sorry state of the league's punting. Congratulations @Bunny for being the only punter to put together an above-average performance for S40. Meanwhile New Orleans and Honolulu should consider Ray Baker as a solid second-round pick option. It's possible that the introduction of the Return Specialist archetype means that punting will take a hit compared to the days before dedicated returners, but I don't think there are enough Return Specialists to explain why punting has been so broadly miserable this season.

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Thanks so much for reading! I'm going to try to continue this series into future seasons, and I'd really appreciate feedback on when I should be releasing these articles. For now I am releasing an article after Week 4, Week 10, and Week 16, but I'd be happy to reconsider that timeline. Actually, I'd love to see feedback on anything anyone can think of, so please let me know. See you next season!

~Jenni

[Weaves]

Awesome, as always. Will be fun to actually be on a team that is in these soon enough.

[wizard_literal]

I knew I should've waited for this article to come out before predicting OCO as Ultimus XL champs. Great work as always!

[slothfacekilla]

Nice work here even if it makes me sad!