Stats in the Fassel v. Billick after Week 10 article

[Dont Know]

I really enjoy the number stuff, but some of the numbers in the article (http://profootball24x7.com/column_view.php?cid=36&id=816&view=archive) dont make sense to me. Perhaps someone could explain.


Penalties 31 (12th) 63 (T-17th) - 15.6%

I dont get the penalty stat. Is it the total number of penalties in the season so far? If so, why is there a decrease indicated in the % difference column?

To me a more sensible stat would be the number of penalties per game. In which case they have gone up from 5.17 (31 / 6) to 6.3 ( 63 / 10), an increase of 22 %.


Sacks allowed 12 (14th) 16 (T-6th) + 25.0%

The same argument applies here as well. The season total doesnt make much sense to me. Of course the number of sacks in a season is going to go up, they are cumulative. By the same token, the % difference of sacks will decline by law of diminshing return as the total goes up.

To me this seems like a pretty useless stat. Sacks per game would make more sense to me, but perhaps I am just not getting it.

Sacks per game have declined from 2.0 ( 12 / 6) to 1.6 (16 / 10), - 20 %.


Turnover margin + 7 (3rd) + 12 (1st) + 6.3%

How is that % difference calculated?

As with previous stats, I dont think stats for season totals are particulary useful when comparing progress. A per game based stat would seem better to me.

Rush yards per game
Yards per game have increased, the '-' seems like a typo,
Rush yards per game 94.3 (24th) 98.5 (26th) - 4.5%

[Merlin]

Clearly the per game stat woul allow for an easier comparison

My bet is that those numbers are difficult to get without doing a lot of number crunching on your own ,hence the year to date comparison, which is not as clean

[sailorsam]

2 of the Fassel games were against the Raiders and the Bucs, which are both awful this year (not to mention the Browns, but that was a tough game). the D got tons of turnovers those games. The Billick games were against the Saints, Bengals, Titans (underrated) and Falcons--pretty tough competition.
numbers aside, the Offense just LOOKS a lot more efficient.

[darb72]

The percentages, I believe, are where we rank in the NFL.

Sacks allowed 12 (14th) 16 (T-6th) + 25.0%
There are 32 teams in the league, and we went from 14th to 6th, which is 8 spots. 1/4 of 32 or 25%.

It would also explain the negative mark on the rushing yards.

I can't offer you any reason why they decided to put those percentages in there, because I've always felt that comparing two teams that never play the same opponent is a waste of time.

The Rams play the Cardinals twice a year.
We play the Steelers twice a year.
Who do you expect to have the higher ranked offense?

(No, I'm not saying our offense is as good as the Rams. I'm juxtaposing two vastly dissimilar teams to better illustrate a point.)