Nfl Situation Spotlight - #107: Rushing and Passing Ratings by Down

When it comes to handicapping the NFL point-spread, there are many different team statistics from past games that one can consider.



There are of course, a multitude of stats that cover a team's rushing and passing game, special teams unit and defense. Stats related to turnovers, penalties, and how teams perform in certain areas, such as the Red-zone, are also readily available. To take things even further: game play-by-plays also reveal strategic tendencies that each team will have as far as which players on the field are typically catching passes and which defenders are making tackles--do these stats help to forecast who will cover the spread in an upcoming game?



With the expansion and proliferation of many 'situational' style team stats for the NFL in recent years, the sport of Pro-Football seems to have firmly entrenched itself in the number 2 spot behind Major League Baseball in terms of the variety and breadth of statistics available from box scores, game books, and other 3rd party sources.



Bettors now have the ability to find out how effective their favourite team is at rushing the ball between their own 20 and 40 yard-line with 4-6 yards-to-go, for instance, along with hundreds of other statistical splits and situations. Does this constitute 'numbers-overkill' or is there any value to such specialized stats?



It's important for the spread handicapper to remember that, at the end of the day, the majority of stats generated on the field during an NFL game come from one of two basic plays: a rush or a pass. Before we can begin to effectively sort out which situations are important and which ones are not, the question of how we should quantify these 2 fundamental play-calls requires further consideration.



There are a few different schools of thought on this topic which essentially boil down to 2 main choices: to either look at things in terms of the yards-per-play generated, or, assign a value to a play depending on whether or not it was deemed to be a 'success' or not.



Yards-per-play stats are fairly self explanatory: a team that throws 10 passes that net 120 yards will have a 12.0 yards-per-pass play average. Teams that run the ball 5 times for 30 yards will have a yards-per-rush average of 6.0.



Successful play 'point systems' are slightly more complicated and involve looking at the 'context' of the play, namely the down a team is facing along with the yards-to-go and even the score and time left in the game. Rather than simply tabulating the yards gained, plays that meet 'success criteria' get 1 or more points while those that don't get 0.



Analyzing plays in this way is nothing new: the idea was first advanced almost 20 years ago in a 1988 book titled 'The Hidden Game of Football.



The authors of this ground-breaking work calculated that teams generally succeed in eventually achieving a first down when at least 40% of yards-to-go are gained on 1st down and 60% of yards-to-go are gained on 2nd down. It goes with-out saying that in order for a play to be deemed a success in 3rd and 4th down situations, 100% of yards-to-go will need to be obtained.



So, in this context, a 3-yard gain on 1st and 10 cannot really be classed as a successful play (30% of YTG) nor would a 4 yard gain on 2nd and 8 lead a team down the field more often than not, according to the research in 'Hidden Game'.



While looking at past plays in terms of whether they succeeded or not sounds good on paper, when it comes to their overall effectiveness as a tool for predicting future point-spread winners, they lose hands-down to the more simplistic yards-per-play statistics.



It may seem to be a surprising result, but, my research has consistently shown that while straight-forward yards-per-play measurements may seem crude in the face of more innovative ways of looking at the results of rushing and passing plays, they have consistently revealed more significant trends against the point spread over the past 15 years when they are adjusted for the strength of opponents faced (more on this below).



This is not to say that looking at plays from the perspective of whether they 'succeeded' or not is completely pointless. As you will see later in this article, I do still keep track of how often teams succeed in passing and rushing situations in conjunction with YPP (yards-per-play) and these measurements do find their way into a few of my trends--including the one covered in this article.



And to answer my earlier question regarding situational stats and the relative merits of the many splits now available: there are actually not a whole lot of categories that are meaningful in terms of handicapping the spread. I have found that rushing and passing YPP stats usually reveal the most interesting trends when they are analyzed in the following categories (both on offense and defense):



--By down (1st, 2nd or 3rd + 4th).

--In the Red-zone

--In the 1st Quarter

--Passes by Receiver (i.e., to Wide Receivers, Tight-Ends and Running Backs)

--When the game is 'Late and Close' (i.e., 4th quarter in a tight game)

--When games enter 'Passing' or 'Rushing' situations (i.e, substantial leads)



There are other situations that I look at as well but, next to a team's overall ability at rushing and passing the ball (both on offense and defense), these are the next most useful ones.



Things brings us to the situation I would like to explore in this article concerning teams with a below average 1st down pass rating for (1DPF) and a 2nd down rush rating for (2DRF) advantage of < -1.



As I mentioned above, it's important to adjust yards-per-play stats according to the strength of the different opponents faced season-to-date, in the same situation. The resulting 'YPP rating' reveals whether a team has been performing at a level that is above, or below average, in the category we are looking at.



As an example: a team that averages 3.6 yards-per-play on 1st down rushes, that achieved this total while facing a group of opponents that on average, give up 4.0 yards-per-play in the same situation, will have a 1DRF (1st down rush for) rating of -0.40 (4.0 - 3.6).



In this particular case, teams that have a 1DPF rating < 0 and a 2DRF advantage of < -1, are a dismal 141-195 (42.0%) ATS since 2001.



You may be puzzled as to what I mean by the term 'advantage'. This basically describes the comparison of one teams skill level in a certain situation or area versus how they match up with their current opponent across the line of scrimmage.



As far as this particular trend goes, we are actually talking more about a 'disadvantage' as this situation looks at teams that have a 2DRF rating that is at least 1 point worse than their current opponents 2DRA rating--which is the rating of how well they defend against runs on 2nd down.



Teams that have a 2DRF rating of -0.50 that are facing a team that has a 2DRA of +1, would fall into this category as would a team with a 2DRF rating of +1 that is facing an opponent with a 2DRA rating of +2. Positive values always indicate a better-than-average skill level while negative--worse-than-average. This is true regardless of whether or not I am analyzing a team's offense (F) or defense (A).



So, teams which are not Sthat effective at passing the ball in 1st down situations AND have a distinct disadvantage versus their current opponent when rushing the ball on 2nd down, have been a lousy bet to cover over the past 7 years.



While this trend has shown a considerable profit since 2001 based on these 2 primary conditions alone ($3,990.00 when betting $110.00 to win back $100.00 on each game), when we add a 3rd primary condition involving a key stat from their previous game, things begin to get even more interesting.



This 3rd and final primary condition specifies that the team in question must also be coming off a game in which they had 11 or more successful rushing plays--which I calculate using the benchmarks laid out in the 'Hidden Game of Football' in addition to a few other 'tweaks'.



The number 11 does have a fair amount of significance here: it just happens to be the typical league average for successful rushing plays in a game.



After adding this condition into the mix, the record for teams involved in this trend plummets to 54-114 (32.1%) ATS over the past 7 years for a tidy profit of $5,460.00.



In addition to the 3 primary conditions, there are 3 other secondary conditions that serve to tighten the record of this trend even futher.



The most important of these ensures the exclusion of teams who are facing an opponent coming off a straight-up dog win which can lead to a let-down situation for this opponent, and an increased chance that our focus team will cover (this is a negative trend, after all).



Teams that are an underdog of >= 12 points are also removed as are teams coming off an opponent that averages more than 70 big-rushing yards per-game--an above average amount.



Oh, and the record shown for the 2005 season is not a misprint: this trend was, in fact, 2-21 ATS.



As always, here are all the details:



(Notes: ASMR stands for Average Spread Margin Rating. A positive rating indicates a trend that is stronger than average versus the line, negative--weaker than average. TDIS% is the percentage of teams in the league that have been involved in this situation at one time or another. WT% is the percentage of teams that are .500 or better and SPR is the average spread for teams in this situation. For more details, please consult Page 13 of my 2007 NFL Game Sheets Guide.)



Situational Trend #107 Summary



Primary Conditions (Building Blocks)

1) Below Average 1st Down Pass Rating For (BAVG 1DPF).

2) 2nd Down Rush Rating Advantage (2DRF AD) 10 in Last Game.



Secondary Conditions (Tighteners)

1) Exclude current Spread of >= 12 points.

2) Opponent not coming off a SU DOG WIN.

3) Last Opponent's Big Rush Yardage For (BRYF) per-game average