The Everything NFL Punter Thread - 2014/2015 Season

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I am kinda curious, how does it work if you live in a state without a NFL team? I know some teams have "territorial" rights in states based on locations if there's more than 1 team, but if you live in like Montana, do you just get whatever the slate of games are for the week? Or do certain teams have priority on states they're not in for broadcasting?
I don't know any official rules on that kind of stuff, but here's a site that links to a map for each week, that shows which game is shown where each week, which you might find interesting.

For example, Montana got these games so far this season (I excluded the ones that got shown in like 90% of the country):
Week 1: Tennessee @ Kansas City, Minnesota @ St. Louis
Week 2: New England @ Minnesota, Kansas City @ Denver, Seattle @ San Diego
Week 3: Houston @ NY Giants, Green Bay @ Detroit
Week 4: Carolina @ Baltimore, Philadelphia @ San Francisco (west montana)/Atlanta @ Minnesota (east montana)

So it seems Montana gets the most preference to KC and Minnesota.
 
I don't know any official rules on that kind of stuff, but here's a site that links to a map for each week, that shows which game is shown where each week, which you might find interesting.

For example, Montana got these games so far this season (I excluded the ones that got shown in like 90% of the country):
Week 1: Tennessee @ Kansas City, Minnesota @ St. Louis
Week 2: New England @ Minnesota, Kansas City @ Denver, Seattle @ San Diego
Week 3: Houston @ NY Giants, Green Bay @ Detroit
Week 4: Carolina @ Baltimore, Philadelphia @ San Francisco (west montana)/Atlanta @ Minnesota (east montana)

So it seems Montana gets the most preference to KC and Minnesota.
That is pretty interesting, thanks for the link!
 

Stallion

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On the note of that stat I quoted above where Flacco and Smith Snr lead their respective positions (win probability added), it's really interesting to see that the leaders in other positions are guys who pass the eye test and are generally regarded as the best players in football.

The number one linebacker is Lavonte David
The number one defensive end is JJ Watt (by a ridiculous margin - http://live.advancednflstats.com/afa/index.php/home/stats/defensive-players)
The number one DT is Kyle Williams
The number one safety is Malcolm Jenkins
The number one CB is Kyle Fuller - although 3 intercepts this early in the season probably skew this one more.

The number one RB is Matt Forte (receiver prowess probably doesn't hurt)
The number one TE is Zach Ertz (with Jimmy Graham, Kelce and Julius Thomas right behind him).

I'm sure it's not a perfect stat but it's a very interesting one. This stat works in terms of evaluating a player's direct contribution to his team's chances of winning the game, by measuring the impact of a single play on the game's outcome and awarding that as a percentage to the players directly responsible for the shift in probability.
 

DM

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The only problem I have with that statistic is that it includes DBs. I find any advanced statistic on DBs dubious at best, because how do you accurately quantify a play where the QB might have wanted to pass to one option but he looked a little covered? Or maybe he saw a safety drifting to that side? Or maybe HE LOOKED the safety off to that side? There's just no way.
 

DetroitLolcat

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I've been following AFA (previously known as Advanced NFL Stats) for a while now and I haven't loved how they calculate WR stats. If I'm not mistaken, the WPA model subtracts the WPA an incomplete pass would have generated if it was incomplete from both the QB and WR, making deep-threat WRs and throwaway targets lose a lot of WPA. It also unfairly benefits WRs who are not targeted as often and have a high catch rate.

It also is extremely harsh (and rightfully so) on RBs. For an RB to have a high WPA they need to either be a goal-line back or an RB that catches a lot of passes. Adrian Peterson did not lead RBs in WPA during his 2012 season (third behind Rice and Spiller, both of whom had over twice as many receiving yards and counting regular season only), and was 34th in WPA amongst RBs, WRs, and TEs. The reason WPA is so hard on RBs is that it treats all yards equally. 5 yards per carry is nothing compared to a QB with 7 yards per attempt or a WR with 8 yards per target. Whether that's fair or not, it makes RBs look really insignificant and more likely to hurt a team than help it.
 

WaterBomb

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I would find any source dubious that listed Joe Flacco as the top QB in the league lol. He's not doing badly this year, but his numbers are still quite pedestrian. Not sure how AFA calculates these lists, but it seems flawed.
 

DetroitLolcat

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How WPA works is that it uses empirical data to calculate the probability of each team winning at each play of the game. For example, in the Ravens-Panthers game there was a point where the Ravens had 1st and 10 at the Carolina 21-yard line, up 7 points, with 2:00 left in the first half. Teams in this situation, based on historical data, win 84% ( win probability = .84) of the time. On the next play, Joe Flacco threw a 21 yard TD pass to Steve Smith, so the team was up by 13 points, extra point pending with a little less time in the half. Teams in that situation end up winning 90% of the time (WP = 0.90). Joe Flacco and Steve Smith are both credited with 0.06 WPA (win probability added) for the play. Joe Flacco's net WPA for the game is the sum of all of the plays that generated (positive or negative) WPA. Flacco's total WPA for the season is the sum of the WPA for all of his games.

I don't think the QB with the most WPA is necessarily the "best" QB in the NFL because WPA is extremely conditional. Some games have more WPA to be earned than others. A QB can complete 90% of his passes and throw 6 TDs and could end the game with a monstrous > 1.0 WPA if the game is close throughout or end up with a still-impressive 0.3 WPA if it's a blowout. Joe Flacco leading the league in WPA means that the plays Joe Flacco has made have helped his team win more than any other player's.

I wouldn't say WPA is a "flawed" stat because the mathematics behind it are sound; I don't think it really tries to say who the best QB is. It's sort of a measure of "clutchness" more so than performance. A QB who plays a great game but throws a horrible interception to lose the game could have a very poor (possibly negative!) WPA even though they lead their team to 40+ points or hundreds of yards.

xJownage said:
Where has tony romo been on that list the past few years? Why do people say that he is a bad qb.
Counting regular seasons only, Romo has been 5th, 5th, and 10th in the NFL out of QBs in WPA the past 3 seasons. He's 10th through four weeks this season. People hate on him because he always shits the bed in Week 17.
 
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xJownage

Even pendulums swing both ways
Where has tony romo been on that list the past few years? Why do people say that he is a bad qb.
 
That seems like a terribly flawed system. I can imagine Flacco's numbers are heavily influenced by the Cincinnati game. Down 15-10 with 5:46 left, Flacco connected with Smith for an 80 yard touchdown. According to this calculator, the Ravens' win percentage jumped from 0.19 to 0.56 (assuming I'm using it correctly), which would give Flacco a WPA added of ~0.4. A quarter of Flacco's total of 1.54 WPA, just from one play! This game probably gave him a big chunk of his WPA for the year, in a game where he went 35/62 for 345 yards (5.6 per) with 1 interception to go with that 1 touchdown. In common sense statistics, that's not a net positive for helping your team win.

That one play probably also led to Steve Smith leading the WRs, but he's actually been really good this season. The pair also hooked up a couple times at the end of the comeback win against the Browns, which probably inflated their WPA a bit.

The system focuses too heavily on "comeback" wins/win probability changes, because they more heavily change the win probability. Maybe on the scale of entire seasons or more it's fine, but with four games the sample size is simply much too small... not that anyone was actually implying that Joe Flacco or Steve Smith were the best at their positions in the NFL. JJ Watt, however, most definitely is.
 
Is it just me or are the Thursday night games always the most lopsided...how do they suck so much at picking match ups for nationally televised games
 
The NFL has a deal where every team in the league has to have one primetime game a year. The Bucs, Vikings, Browns, Bills, Raiders, and Jags aren't good enough (or, more specifically, weren't good or popular enough last year) to play on Sunday/Monday night, so they're stuck playing in Thursday night games. Add to that the quick turnaround teams have to face, there's generally a pretty clear divide between teams that are well prepared that can adapt to Thursday games and teams that can't.
 

WaterBomb

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So Cordarelle Patterson adds more evidence that he is the reincarnation of Percy Harvin by sustaining a hip injury. Now all we need are some migraines.
 

xJownage

Even pendulums swing both ways
Fuck that, lets end shitty thursday night matchups. Its not like decent teams are blowing each other out, its like half of the matchups are the 2007 patriots vs the 2008 lions.
 

WaterBomb

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To be fair, the Steelers Ravens game was the first one that wasn't close in like a million years, so you can't blame the schedulers for it.

Also:
 
It's not Thursday night games that are so much the problem as it is the matchups that they choose to showcase, with the Steelers/Ravens being the oddball matchup that happened to be a blowout. Though I would actually agree there's too many now with whatever channel showing half of the season and the crappy NFL Network showing the other, at the same time the problem back then is if you didn't have that stupid NFL Network channel or if it wasn't Thanksgiving, you never got to see them at all.
 
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I hope everyone is prepared for tomorrows coronation of Peyton as the greatest ever when he breaks 500 touchdowns a mere TWO seasons after breaking 400. That is stupid and the magnitude of this achievement is tremendous.

Also want to point out how qbs may not be dropping 300 yard games left and right but this has been the most efficient I've seen the position being played since ever by pretty much everyone. Even lol Flacco has efficient stats. I for one don't like it. I want a 6000 yard passer dammit.
 

Mr.E

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Nobody except the NFL wants Thursday night games. Not only are they a total pain for the players, they're a pain in the ass for every fantasy football player. >:[
 
idk I love mid week football as long as it's a quality game, six days from Monday to Sunday (or five from Monday to Saturday) is too long without football.

of course when they're shitty games it just makes the wait for Sunday even worse...
 
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