All About Efficiency

So it was kind of a light football weekend for this RW -- due to my desire to restore sanity and/or fear I missed all the collegiate action on Saturday, and since my Bears had a bye week (along with what felt like half the league -- condolences to all those fantasy football players out there...) I didn't feel so bad about whiling away Halloween ignoring trick or treaters and watching crappy horror movies.

However, sometime between feardotcom (dot com) and Zombie Strippers (rent it, trust me) SG started having visible football withdrawl and lack-of-Tennessee anxiety, so we took a break from bad 1990s CGI to watch the Titans take on the Chargers. During the game, I learned some interesting things: the Titans have a player named Kenny Britt and he doesn't suck which means I don't have to customize my own Titans jersey, this year's Victoria's Secret Fantasy Bra has 142 carets, costs 2 million dollars, and will be worn by Adriana Lima, and the Chargers have the #1 ranked offense as well as the #1 ranked defense, yet somehow have the somewhat abysmal record of 2-5 [Editor's note: at time of publication, their record is the marginally less dismal 3-5].

This last fun fact confuses me. What kind of ass-backward ranking system results in a mediocre team having the best offense and the best defense? SG tried to explain it to me: 'they have great stats.' Ok, so I get that football people are super into stats. They built an entire new game (activity? thought experiment? what do you call fantasy football?) around assigning points based on players' stats. But the prize for 'best offense' shouldn't go to the team that does nothing else but move the ball from point A to point B using a specified method of transportation (to clarify: the Chargers are the #1 passing offense). A team could move the ball a million yards a game, but there's no reason to care if they don't score.

With this in mind, I propose we track a new stat: Offensive Efficiency. I'm decreeing the team that moves the ball the fewest number of yards for the most number of points is the most offensively efficient team, and therefore better than the team that moves the ball 500 yards a game but doesn't score. Last I checked, the team with the most number of points wins, not the team with the highest number of yards gained in a typical play, yes? No? Maybe I'm crazy. But I am curious, so I'm going to take an extended chunk of time and play with some numbers. In a spreadsheet. Because I'm geeky like that.

...

Well folks we have a winner. According to Britt's Super Professional, Informed, and Scientific Method of Dividing Yards by Points [BSPIASMODYBP], I have decided that the most offensively efficient team in the NFL is: the Titans! This season the Titans are averaging 11.09 yards for every point scored. Coming in a close second are the Patriots, with 11.28 yds/pt. Since the entirely of the spreadsheet I made would bore everyone (who cares where the Bills fall, really?) (in the middle, surprisingly), here are some highlights:

- Team #s 3, 4, and 5 most efficient are the Lions, the Cardinals, and the Raiders, in that order. None of whom are good. My formula might need some tweaking...

- The Cardinals, at #4, had the biggest jump up in rankings (from NFL's to mine), as well as the biggest change overall. I don't really know what happened there -- maybe NFL doesn't give them enough credit? Or maybe they just don't get the ball that often. Or only play teams that give them turnovers on the 1 yard line. Who knows.

- The biggest fall went to the Cowboys, who fell from #4 to #26. This makes me happy, because the Cowboys are 1-6 and I like the correlation between my rank (low) and their win percentage (also low).

- The Pats have the highest win percentage and they come in #2 on my list, so that's cool. Correlation in both directions!

- As compared with the NFL offensive rankings, BSPIASMODYBP is 26% more likely to correctly order teams in a way that corresponds to their win percentage. Win!

Overall, I'm pretty pleased with myself. BSPIASMODYBP is oversimplified, to be sure, and I've conveniently ignored two huge parts of the game in running and defense, but so is 'they who pass most are best,' so I don't feel too bad about it. Maybe at some point I'll work in some refinement. Or not. We'll see.

Oh, and worth the risk of being too long: I completely missed the Pats/Vikings game, but I did see a highlight involving Brett Farve being carted away with an ice pack to his face. It's not a fire, but it'll do for now...