*ISFL Pass Defense (First Half)

[AW13]

Hello again ISFL!

AW back again with some more team defense stuff that I thought would be pretty interesting!

If you have not, you can check out the first half rushing team defense here: ISFL Rush Defense (First Half)

What we did last time was check out each team's run defense in the first half and we included the spreadsheet and a bunch of data from those spreadsheets to show how well or not well teams defended the run and we could filter it by wins or losses, home or away, versus opponents and much more. The goal of it, like many of my stats related articles I have done in the past is trying to go beyond what the index can show you and in general, go beyond the stats spreadsheet that is usually available at the end of the season. The defensive stats or team defense is pretty limited in what we can get in general in the index as we see main counting stats like tackles, sacks, interceptions and such or we can go into each team's page and see how they rank in terms of points allowed and yards allowed (and separated by run and pass yards allowed as well). That unfortunately does not tell the whole story and as we touched on last time, the amount of times a team is run or now thrown on can influence those rankings. A team could pass 50 times against you for 400 yards but only complete 50% of their passes and throw 1 touchdown to 4 interceptions and all the index will tell you is that your defense gave up 400 yards. We can also, as we touched upon a little, use this potentially when considering the best performances of the season. If a QB throws for a near perfect passer rating against a top tier defense or at least a top half defense, it may look a little more impressive than one against a bottom tier defense who gives up big passing games to most QBs. You can also even look at certain individuals and say, hey, this QB took advantage of some bad opponents but really were not that great against middle to upper tier defenses and it could be a solid way to separate the top QBs, WRs, TEs, or with last week's RBs in the ISFL. 

This week, we focus again on the first half of the season but we look at the passing defense of each team. We collected each game's completions, attempts, yards, touchdowns, interceptions, and times sacked and included those along with some calculations for yards per completion and attempt, passer rating, touchdown and interception percentage, and yards, touchdowns, interceptions, and sacks per game. What we can look at especially is those calculated stats across the first half of the season and in certain situations such as road or home, wins or losses, against different opponents and such just as we did last week with the running game. Most importantly, I am probably looking at things like passer rating, yards per attempt, and the touchdown/interception percentages as they could tell us more than just amount of yards or touchdowns given up. I included sacks here because they do affect the passing game and it is interesting to look at whether sacks can influence a passing game and generally, I think for the reader it is best to interpret it how they'd like. If you get a lot of sacks but give up a lot of yards per attempt or completion, which matters more? I'd say it depends for sure because a sack means the next play has to be a bigger play but if you get a sack and then give up a big play for a first down, then you still have a poor pass defense. I want to see team that give up a bad passer rating, bad completion percentage, and other bad rate stats for opposing QBs.

Let's start with the overall data:


As we can see, I ordered it by passer rating against and we have teams ranging from 73.3 rating allowed to 101.5 rating allowed with a bunch of other numbers surrounding the defensive stats.

Similar to rushing defense where only 2 defenses gave up less than 3.5 yards per carry, we also have just 2 defenses who give up a passer rating of under 80 which is Cape Town and Baltimore, the kings of the NSFC. 

Again, we can see the difference between this data and the index, or at least what is available in the index, since Cape Town gives up the 4th least amount of yardage, but has the best pass defense against, best interception percentage, 2nd best yards per attempt and touchdown percentage allowed, and the best completion percentage against. Objectively, I would say that Cape Town has the best passing defense in the ISFL in the 1st half of the season, even though the index value would say they had the 4th best (by yardage totals). Even then, you can make some arguments there and certainly can make them based on what your favorite stat may be. If you want a defense that maybe has less yards per completion and some more sacks, then maybe you look at Baltimore who is pretty close in other metrics but sacrifices a little higher completion percentage for a little better sack percentage and perhaps tackles better to prevent a little bit longer completions. I still think I would take Cape Town but you could at least argue for Baltimore here and maybe you can use a case of opponents and quality of their passing games to decipher.

So who is really better? Cape Town or Baltimore?

Using Opponent Analyis in the Passing Game

So our question is Cape Town or Baltimore because they are very close in terms of a lot of their passing rate defensive team stats. We can look perhaps at the games against the top passing offenses of the first half (which is a bit difficult now with now 11 games played so we will use the best passing offenses of 11 games since I guess more data would show a little better on whose passing game is better, maybe? We will use the top 7 teams by passer rating and omit both Cape Town and Baltimore in these so it will be the next 7 teams even though only Baltimore has a passing attack in the top 7 as Cape Town is not statistically a good passing offense.

Against Arizona, New York, Sarasota, Orange County, Austin, Colorado, and Yellowknife we can compare the two teams



Again, other than sacks and yards per completion, Cape Town reigns supreme in this comparison but we see possibly a bigger separation between the two with Cape Town having better metrics in completion percentage, interception percentage, and passer rating against versus top opponents compared to their overall season. Cape Town passing defense shows up against the top passing teams. Baltimore, while still really solid against top passing offenses, does a bit worse as the opponent gets better by nearly every metric included in our analysis.

Winner: Cape Town

Now, Cape Town has the best passing defense statisically, but what I would really love to see next is the omitted Baltimore passing offense against the league. Baltimore quarterback Preston Beatz has been objectively the best QB this season with 31 touchdowns and just 8 interceptions and a league leading passer rating through 11 games. What did he do against each defense he played and did he perform well against better defenses in the first half of the season?

QB Analysis per Defense played



Preston Beatz has been, like we said, the best QB this season so far and the first half, he showed he was with 23 touchdowns to 6 interceptions and a passer rating of 102.9. While we do see Beatz as being solid in general with just one game under an 80 rating and just 3 games with yards per attempt at 6.5 or less, it is interesting to see how he fared versus each opponent he played in the first half of the season. Beatz performed at his worst against Cape Town, Yellowknife, and Arizona who were statistically 3 of the top 5 defenses in the ISFL in the first half against the pass. Against those 3 teams he threw 7 touchdowns to 3 interceptions whereas his other 5 opponents he combined for 16 touchdowns to just 3 interceptions. He had under his average yards per game in each of the games and was under his average touchdowns over the 3 games and over his average interceptions in them as well. The top defenses could stop the league's best QB enough which should be interesting to see moving forward. Against bottom tier pass defense teams like Sarasota, Chicago, and Colorado, he fared very well. His best game against a quality opponent was likely against Berlin who does have a mid to top tier pass defense at least in terms of passer rating allowed though they give up a big completion percentage (2nd worse to Colorado). It will be really interesting to see how the Hawks QB performs against presumably some top defenses in the playoffs but with Baltimore losing just once (to Arizona) and tying once (to Austin) which were two of his bottom 4 performances, they can still win games.

Home Cooking?

Next thing I wanted to look at was the overall performance of pass defenses when they play at home versus the road!

Home:


Road:


Overall, I thought this was a bit interesting because in general, the numbers are all really close. Pass defenses seem to travel okay but you can certainly see overall that road pass defenses are slightly worse in nearly each passing category. The sack percentage is the only different that favors the road team in the first half with a percentage point higher sack percentage in road games. Pass rushers travel well!

Another interesting difference is to look at the teams and we can see a team like Baltimore is much much better at home versus on the road, being the best home pass defense but the 8th in terms of passer rating against on the road. Another thing that shows perhaps Cape Town is the better defense with their top 2 both at home and on the road.

What about in wins and losses?

Now I wanted to look at overall defenses in terms of wins and losses and how they perform there.

In Wins:


In Losses:


As we can see and probably could have inferred before seeing the data, pass defense is certainly a lot better in wins. Completion percentage is better by about 6.5 points, yards per completion and attempt are 1 to 1.5 better, passer rating is a whopping 25 points better in wins and just everything is a lot better in wins as we could have predicted but we can see pass defense and the inverse pass offense is key to winning in the league.

Win Totals Compared to Top Pass Defenses

Wins:
1) Baltimore
2) New York
3) Cape Town
4) Arizona
5) Austin
6) Berlin
7) Yellowknife
8) Orange County
9) Sarasota
10) Colorado
11) Orange County
12) San Jose
13) Chicago
14) New Orleans


Top Pass Defense (By Passer Rating):
1) Cape Town
2) Baltimore
3) Arizona
4) Orange County
5) Yellowknife
6) New York
7) Berlin
8) Honolulu
9) New Orleans
10) Colorado
11) Chicago
12) San Jose
13) Sarasota
14) Austin

We generally see a lot of the top pass defenses in the top half of teams in the first half. Austin is a bit weird especially since they are technically the worst pass defense in this rating but they have a top half winning percentage. They also get a lot of sacks (Most in the league) so we can maybe say sacks are important to have especially if your pass defense is poor. If you get to the QB, you can win games and give up big plays, a pretty boom or bust approach.

I will really be interested in seeing how this looks at the end of the season and how the top teams and top passing defenses look when compared with each other. We might look at more lists like yards per attempt or others to see if we can get an even better correlation between the two.

Speadsheet:

I have added to the spreadsheet and have split passing and rushing defenses. I am also working on a total defense table for a more complete article so you may see that also. To use the filters, make sure to make a copy and you can see filters by team, week, opponent, home or away, and win or lose. Feel free to use as you must and hope you enjoyed this analysis!

ISFL Team Defense Spreadsheet

[UptownCord]

Bruh we rank fourth and didn't even get a mention. Most underrated pass defense unit in the league.

[AW13]

Bruh we rank fourth and didn't even get a mention. Most underrated pass defense unit in the league.

Very true. Orange County has looked very good but also no one even tries to pass on them! Least amount of attempts against in the league which is pretty interesting which also helps to explain the least amount of yards given up. It is possible to see Orange County as one of the best with a strong 2nd half. That seems to be the case in two of the latest games so we shall see!