2020 Divisional: #6 Cleveland Browns vs. #1 KC Chiefs

[incognito_man]

2 minutes ago, Chiefer said:

1 hour ago, incognito_man said:

DVOA isn't predictive, it simply is a snapshot of what happened.

Week 17 happened, and they said "hey, this is what actually happened but obviously there's a caveat here." They are literally telling the reader what the Chiefs rank would be if you ignore that game...What more do you want lol

Through a tweet from some random FO guy. Because that’s where I get my statistical information.

imma just quote everything here because your response makes zero sense as a reply, so maybe we can try again

[diamondbull424]

1 hour ago, Jakuvious said:

Fewer YPA, fewer yards allowed.

I'm going to be honest, I'm getting tired of people acting like DVOA is a default, universally accepted best stat for everything. When someone says a run D got worse, I'm not thinking DVOA. I'm thinking oh, we must have allowed more yards or more yards per play or more touchdowns or something.

Got you.

1 hour ago, onejayhawk said:

Cleveland's two headed rushing attack is potent, but its 50 yards per game shy of Baltimore, who the Chiefs played. The Ravens had 158 yards, 33 short of their average, and 97 yards were by Lamar Jackson. Don't kid yourself that Chubb is on Henry's level. He's good but not that good. The Chiefs defense improved six positions in Y/G rankings compared to last season. It's hard to make the case that it is similar to last year, much less that it is worse. I see that you argue DVOA, but that's weak. 

The bottom line is that the Chiefs defense and the Browns offense are both right in the middle of the league. it will be interesting how things go when Cleveland has the ball. The Browns defense very comparable to their offense, but the Chiefs offense is a bit better. 

Okay. Well if my cherry picking the DVOA is week, then certainly using KC run defense against early season Baltimore is far weaker. We were predominantly read option at the early portion of the season running out of 22 personnel groupings and Ingram was our primary back. Yet even then our RBs (not including Lamar) accounted for a 7.1 YPC average. Looking at the game script we were running just as well BEFORE the game got away (before someone plays the, “we were up and didn’t care about the run” card). We played the Bengals a few weeks later and averaged 6.1 YPC with our RBs. EOS Bengals gave up 7.8 YPC to the RBs.

What’s more at the time when the Ravens played the Chiefs- the Browns, prior to Chubb’s injury, were easily the superior rushing attack in YPG and DVOA numbers. I don’t know if the Cleveland OL will all by healthy/available, but scaling the Browns rushing attack to the Ravens, just falls flat for multiple reasons. Far more weak than questioning DVOA... especially when you just throw out the YPG numbers.

Bottom line the Chiefs defense was 22nd overall and the Browns offense was 9th IN DVOA. This considering Covid-19 really hit them the last few weeks of the season and Chubb was down 4 games in the season. Now I’m not sure what to expect from the Browns because of the OL injuries in that game yesterday and all the clear covid outbreak they have, that the NFL has largely chosen to ignore.
——

But again, the point of my post was referring to how the Titans and Browns don’t have the same exact type of rushing attack. The Browns have more versatility and different rushing styles that they can utilize to their advantage.

In terms of Chubb vs Henry, the only thing Henry has on Chubb is volume usage. Not even saying Chubb is better, but they’re absolutely on the same tier. In past seasons when both were getting the same type of volume numbers, they were largely interchangeable. If Chubb has over 375 rushing attempts, he’s getting 2000 yards rushing as well. Fortunately for Chubb, he’s not being run into the ground and has another guy to share the load with; could potentially allow him to last longer and find a way to get two decently lucrative RB deals in his career (the first and then another mid-level type deal).

[onejayhawk]

If measuring against the #1 unit in the league is cherry picking, you have strange definitions. We will know soon enough. 

J

[Chiefer]

38 minutes ago, incognito_man said:

imma just quote everything here because your response makes zero sense as a reply, so maybe we can try again

Your defense of Statistics makes no sense, certainly isn’t making dollars either 

[diamondbull424]

45 minutes ago, onejayhawk said:

If measuring against the #1 unit in the league is cherry picking, you have strange definitions. We will know soon enough. 

J

It’s cherry picking because you simply said, “x team is the #1 rushing unit.. the Chiefs held that unit to 158 yards... x amount less than the Ravens seasonal YPC.” Which completely ignores the fact that the Ravens YPG during the 1st half of the season was 156 YPG, while over the last 8 games was 227.5 YPG. The Chiefs gave up comparable YPG to their averages to that point in the season, while giving up far more YPC in comparison to a few of their other opponents at that time in the season. Let’s look at the YPA for the Ravens RBs during the 1st half to compare it to the Chiefs numbers: CLE- 3.2 YPA, HOU- 8.4 YPA (thanks to Dobbins), KC- 7.1 YPA, WFT- 4.0 YPA, CIN- 6.1 YPA, PHI- 2.6 YPA, PIT- 6.5 YPA (first game where Ingram was benched).

So yes, you point to YPG numbers for Baltimore and comparing it to their seasonal average built on the back of the second half of the season’s historic efforts- after Ingram was benched, is absolutely the definition of cherry picking. Especially when if you simply look at the YPG numbers, one might ASSUME that the Chiefs played better run defense than the Eagles. Heck one could assume that the Eagles were one of the worst run defensive units we saw in the season, whereas in reality they were one of the best.
——

So theres nothing wrong with comparing the Browns to the Ravens, however in the way you’ve done... leaves a lot to be desired. It was flawed in multiple ways.

Now had your point been that if the Chiefs jump up on the Browns, they can keep the rushing attack from being a strong factor in the game... and using that as the goal of the comparison, then that would’ve held far stronger than comparing the Chiefs run defense from last years playoff game for this seasons team or comparing this seasons run defense to a data set that is outdated. Which makes it cherry picking.

EDIT: @Jakuvious This is why I prefer using DVOA, I can’t watch every game to know what teams averaged what and such. They do a good enough job accounting for those things in their statistics. The fact that the Ravens RBs had the above YPA averages against opposing defensive units, yet had a far higher number against the Chiefs (this is not including Lamar nor WR rushing numbers), that I think paints a solid enough picture as to the Chiefs run defense.

Is it worse than last season? Perhaps not. I cherry picked the run DVOA. However, the early season returns I looked at above, don’t paint a great picture. This isn’t to say that coming off of a bye week they might not play lights out, just that, in response to the other guys point about you guys slowing down Henry... I don’t think its a proper 1:1 comparison considering the Browns have greater versatility to what they do and thus pose IMO a more difficult challenge to gameplan against. Especially when considering the level of play Baker has been on dealing with some incredible adversity. Missing his entire WR core for a game, missing key OL members, missing his HC, etc. If he’s able to overcome those types of things and continue to truck through... I won’t doubt his ability to find a way to make enough plays against the Chiefs defense to keep them from completely keying in on the Browns rushing attack.

Edited January 12, 2021 by diamondbull424

[JAF-N72EX]

1 hour ago, Jakuvious said:

Fewer YPA, fewer yards allowed.

I'm going to be honest, I'm getting tired of people acting like DVOA is a default, universally accepted best stat for everything. When someone says a run D got worse, I'm not thinking DVOA. I'm thinking oh, we must have allowed more yards or more yards per play or more touchdowns or something.

YPA and yards allowed are included in DVOA and much more. 

DVOA is a good advanced metric to measure a team/player when used correctly but, like all stats/metrics, context is important.  

This is not to say DVOA doesn't have it's flaws either because it certainly does. (i.e OL DVOA should never be used to gauge how good or bad a teams OL is because even by their own admission it's largely based on the RB (s) performance). 

The biggest problem I see is that a lot people tend to use it the wrong way simply because they don't understand it and/or don't wanna take the time to learn how it works-- which admittedly can seem a bit daunting at first. 

(I.e  Listing the rankings and not the most significant part of the methodology which is the percentage above average.  For example, X person says the Chiefs offense in 2018 was #1 in the league and so was the Ravens in 2019--basically placing each team on even ground. 

The part they're [inadvertently] leaving out is that KCs offense was 35% above the expected league average offense and was over 10% better than the 2nd best offense that year and they were nearly 8% better than the Ravens offense in 2018 (which was 28%). <-- That's a big difference. 

DVOA is also not only about where a team/player is ranked but more-so about the why and how, which is shown in-depth (albeit a --now expensive--paid sub). 

34 minutes ago, incognito_man said:

It should be. It accounts for every stat you can possibly bring and then adjusts for quality of opponent and normalized relative to every other team.

Sadly it doesn't.  Not yet, anyways.  It's still being looked at.  They're still trying to find a fair way to put less weight on plays whenever a game reaches a certain win % probability without it skewing the DVOA. This can be tough because whatever changes are made to account for this has to be applied across the board and so what do you do with the games where X team has a 99.7% win probability and Y team comes back and wins?  You can't exactly put less weight on one team and not the other. 

 

29 minutes ago, Blackstar12 said:

It has tons of flaws lol.

That's weighted DVOA (a measurement used to see how a team is playing late in the season as opposed to earlier (which can often answer some questions and help fill in some blanks regarding a number of things;  player personnel, coaching changes, injuries, schedule, weather, etc.).  Meaning weeks 1-4 are no longer added to the formula,  weeks 5-11 carry little weight,  and weeks 12-17 carry the most wieght. 

KC's DVOA is ranked #5 for a number of reasons;
A) These are the rankings heading into the divisional round of the playoffs (during a unique season to the least) and KC/GB get credit for having HFA. 

B) They did not play in the wild card round. Therefore the Chiefs and GB were both treated the same as having a bye week (FYI, a team gets a 0.0% DVOA during a bye week---it's a zero sum game, hence the negative and positive percentages). 

C) KC rested their starters in week 17 and so that game was also redacted. KC has basically missed out on a chance to raise or lower their rankings for 2 weeks straight and DVOA can only look at weeks 12-16 where 3 of those 5 games were road games (DVOA takes this into account). 

If you're upset about Indy's ranking then blame it on your team for having it's 2nd worst outing of the year in week 12 against the Titans(-22.8% DVOA), and for the offense not showing up until late in the season against the Texans defense twice, JAX, Raiders, and then the defense having it's 2nd worst outing of the year in week 16 (+20.3%) against their own real competition (PIT) where the pass defense completely fell apart (+33.0%).

The sporadic and inconsistency on offense have been Indy's undoing, and DVOA reflects this. Indy's offense finished the regular season with a DVOA of 12th (+2.8%), pass game finished 16th (+14.3%), run game finished 12th (-5.4%) despite playing the easiest offensive schedule in the league (+6.2%) and also #1 in variance (which measures consistency). All of this means the Colts offense were consistently pretty average all season long.  

[Jakuvious]

43 minutes ago, JAF-N72EX said:

YPA and yards allowed are included in DVOA and much more. 

DVOA is a good advanced metric to measure a team/player when used correctly but, like all stats/metrics, context is important.  

This is not to say DVOA doesn't have it's flaws either because it certainly does. (i.e OL DVOA should never be used to gauge how good or bad a teams OL is because even by their own admission it's largely based on the RB (s) performance). 

The biggest problem I see is that a lot people tend to use it the wrong way simply because they don't understand it and/or don't wanna take the time to learn how it works-- which admittedly can seem a bit daunting at first. 

(I.e  Listing the rankings and not the most significant part of the methodology which is the percentage above average.  For example, X person says the Chiefs offense in 2018 was #1 in the league and so was the Ravens in 2019--basically placing each team on even ground. 

The part they're [inadvertently] leaving out is that KCs offense was 35% above the expected league average offense and was over 10% better than the 2nd best offense that year and they were nearly 8% better than the Ravens offense in 2018 (which was 28%). <-- That's a big difference. 

DVOA is also not only about where a team/player is ranked but more-so about the why and how, which is shown in-depth (albeit a --now expensive--paid sub). 

Just for clarity, I'm not inherently complaining about DVOA itself. I rather like DVOA. It is an interesting piece to the puzzle when trying to rank and compare and evaluate teams and units and players. It isn't the end all be all, but it's useful.

I'm more complaining about the recent trend from a few posters to use DVOA as the final answer in and of itself, and as the default when posting information. Like, in a vacuum, when someone says X is the #1 ranked offense in football, my immediate assumption is they're talking either points or yards. Those have been the standards for years. When someone says, X team is better at passing the ball in 2020 than in 2019, I'm thinking they threw for more yards, or maybe had a higher passer rating, or possibly that poster is just speaking subjectively, they believe from watching them that they're better at passing the ball. What I've increasingly seen, is people throwing out DVOA rankings as fact of quality, without specifying that they're referencing DVOA, and that just creates a lack of clarity.

So when diamondbull posts that the Chiefs run defense is worse than it was last year, I'm immediately confused. Because by the eye test, to any Chiefs fan, it's better than it was last year. It's better in yards, it's better than yards per attempt. Any kind of stat one would typically default to in a statement like that, we've improved. I just want him to specify he's talking about DVOA, if that's what he's talking about.

Incognitoman is admittedly the worst offender in doing this, but I've seen it spreading and it's just incredibly confusing to use a non-standard metric as if it is fact without clarity around what you're using. He was talking about how lucky the Chiefs were playing the 18th ranked team in the league next week, as if it's pure, inarguable fact, without saying the 18th ranked team in DVOA. It'd be like referring to players by their PFF ranking.

Especially when the stat is now paywalled.

[Matts4313]

I blame JuJu for all the Steelers WR's being idiots. But a lil extra for the Browns:

 

[BayRaider]

14 minutes ago, Matts4313 said:

I blame JuJu for all the Steelers WR's being idiots. But a lil extra for the Browns:

 

 

Yikes, do the Steelers make sure their WR's are divas before drafting them?

[JAF-N72EX]

1 hour ago, Jakuvious said:

Just for clarity, I'm not inherently complaining about DVOA itself. I rather like DVOA. It is an interesting piece to the puzzle when trying to rank and compare and evaluate teams and units and players. It isn't the end all be all, but it's useful.

I'm more complaining about the recent trend from a few posters to use DVOA as the final answer in and of itself, and as the default when posting information. Like, in a vacuum, when someone says X is the #1 ranked offense in football, my immediate assumption is they're talking either points or yards. Those have been the standards for years. When someone says, X team is better at passing the ball in 2020 than in 2019, I'm thinking they threw for more yards, or maybe had a higher passer rating, or possibly that poster is just speaking subjectively, they believe from watching them that they're better at passing the ball. What I've increasingly seen, is people throwing out DVOA rankings as fact of quality, without specifying that they're referencing DVOA, and that just creates a lack of clarity.

So when diamondbull posts that the Chiefs run defense is worse than it was last year, I'm immediately confused. Because by the eye test, to any Chiefs fan, it's better than it was last year. It's better in yards, it's better than yards per attempt. Any kind of stat one would typically default to in a statement like that, we've improved. I just want him to specify he's talking about DVOA, if that's what he's talking about.

Incognitoman is admittedly the worst offender in doing this, but I've seen it spreading and it's just incredibly confusing to use a non-standard metric as if it is fact without clarity around what you're using. He was talking about how lucky the Chiefs were playing the 18th ranked team in the league next week, as if it's pure, inarguable fact, without saying the 18th ranked team in DVOA. It'd be like referring to players by their PFF ranking.

Especially when the stat is now paywalled.

I get what you're saying and I agree 100%.  Context is important and all stats and metrics need context behind them (regardless of where it's from). Believe me, I get it, it's very annoying. 

As I alluded to earlier, too many people tend to throw out whatever ranking, or raw stats, or third-party tweets that fit whatever their narrative is at the time and they take it as gospel without ever really explaining how or why said metric, stat, or tweet matches their opinion in the first place, and some people are using these guides in the wrong way and are relying on them too heavily in order to support whatever they wanna believe at the time without offering any sort of substance behind it.  And worst of all not actually fact-checking it beforehand (something else I see a alot).  Rankings are all that seem to matter anymore. 

 IMO, it's just laziness. It's easier to take someone else's work than it is to form your opinion and give your own reasons as to why.  JMO. 

I'd hate to sound like an old head here (*starts sounding like one*) but this is what was so great about this forum 10-12 years ago when we used to have those well-organized members vs member debates about certain topics where each member would present their argument to a neutral member, privately, and a delegated group of members would then vote on which member who won. 

This was well before social media when you didn't have those easy outs (myspace don;'t count). You had to bring your A game and do your own research to actually back up what you said. Man I miss that. 

[diamondbull424]

2 hours ago, Jakuvious said:

Just for clarity, I'm not inherently complaining about DVOA itself. I rather like DVOA. It is an interesting piece to the puzzle when trying to rank and compare and evaluate teams and units and players. It isn't the end all be all, but it's useful.

I'm more complaining about the recent trend from a few posters to use DVOA as the final answer in and of itself, and as the default when posting information. Like, in a vacuum, when someone says X is the #1 ranked offense in football, my immediate assumption is they're talking either points or yards. Those have been the standards for years. When someone says, X team is better at passing the ball in 2020 than in 2019, I'm thinking they threw for more yards, or maybe had a higher passer rating, or possibly that poster is just speaking subjectively, they believe from watching them that they're better at passing the ball. What I've increasingly seen, is people throwing out DVOA rankings as fact of quality, without specifying that they're referencing DVOA, and that just creates a lack of clarity.

So when diamondbull posts that the Chiefs run defense is worse than it was last year, I'm immediately confused. Because by the eye test, to any Chiefs fan, it's better than it was last year. It's better in yards, it's better than yards per attempt. Any kind of stat one would typically default to in a statement like that, we've improved. I just want him to specify he's talking about DVOA, if that's what he's talking about.

Incognitoman is admittedly the worst offender in doing this, but I've seen it spreading and it's just incredibly confusing to use a non-standard metric as if it is fact without clarity around what you're using. He was talking about how lucky the Chiefs were playing the 18th ranked team in the league next week, as if it's pure, inarguable fact, without saying the 18th ranked team in DVOA. It'd be like referring to players by their PFF ranking.

Especially when the stat is now paywalled.

To be fair, and I’m not saying you do this to be clear, but whenever I thoroughly explain each point I make and put ample amounts of effort into why I feel a particular way... not only do my posts become incredibly bloated, but they also get ignored completely. How do I know? Because posters literally say they ignore it and laugh and such follow up posts get 7 likes attached to it. So what’s the point?

So when you challenged my inclusion, I went and supported where I got that from. What’s more, I was going based on the games I’ve watched in comparison to what I saw from last season’s run. The DVOA seemed to support to me, what I had seen. But I don’t watch every Chiefs game, just as you don’t watch every game to see how the Chiefs compare defensively to every other defense across the league. I don’t either.

So is it lazy to include one line? Probably. But that’s because it wasn’t the point of my post. The point of that post was to explain how the Browns rushing attack differed in how it attacks a defense than the Titans- that and not assuming that stopping one means one can stop the other (because of those different challenges). The inclusion of the DVOA was a throwaway mention within that.
——

In terms of the paywalled part, they do allow you to get some of their stats for free as long as you’re a member of the website. When I thought they went entirely paywalled, I got completely annoyed... especially since a few of them have gone that route; Pro Football Reference being the other. Wish they just treated the sites like Wikipedia and asked for donations once a year. I’m sure enough people would probably donate $1-20 bucks here and there and it could support itself from there. Though with how lucrative sports analytics is, I suppose I can’t blame them either.

Edited January 12, 2021 by diamondbull424

[candyman93]

2 hours ago, Matts4313 said:

I blame JuJu for all the Steelers WR's being idiots. But a lil extra for the Browns:

 

There’s a cultural problem in Pittsburgh 

[BigTrav]

6 hours ago, incognito_man said:

If you accept the caveat (as every reasonable person would), the Chiefs are behind 3 such teams: TB, NO and BUF. They were all close games, it's not unreasonable that all those teams are on the same tier, separated by very little. DVOA isn't predictive, it simply is a snapshot of what happened. All those teams are capable of beating each other any day. 

Beat them...

Beat them...

and beat them...

 

But they were in KC though, so fair point 

 

Oh. No, they were not.

[Jakuvious]

13 minutes ago, diamondbull424 said:

To be fair, and I’m not saying you do this to be clear, but whenever I thoroughly explain each point I make and put ample amounts of effort into why I feel a particular way... not only do my posts become incredibly bloated, but they also get ignored completely. How do I know? Because posters literally say they ignore it and laugh and such follow up posts get 7 likes attached to it. So what’s the point?

So when you challenged my inclusion, I went and supported where I got that from. What’s more, I was going based on the games I’ve watched in comparison to what I saw from last season’s run. The DVOA seemed to support to me, what I had seen. But I don’t watch every Chiefs game, just as you don’t watch every game to see how the Chiefs compare defensively to every other defense across the league. I don’t either.

So is it lazy to include one line? Probably. But that’s because it wasn’t the point of my post. The point of that post was to explain how the Browns rushing attack differed in how it attacks a defense than the Titans- that and not assuming that stopping one means one can stop the other (because of those different challenges). The inclusion of the DVOA was a throwaway mention within that.
——

In terms of the paywalled part, they do allow you to get some of their stats for free as long as you’re a member of the website. When I thought they went entirely paywalled, I got completely annoyed... especially since a few of them have gone that route; Pro Football Reference being the other. Wish they just treated the sites like Wikipedia and asked for donations once a year. I’m sure enough people would probably donate $1-20 bucks here and there and it could support itself from there. Though with how lucrative sports analytics is, I suppose I can’t blame them either.

This is all fair, especially the bold. I will note, part of why I only quoted the small fraction of your post, was because it was the only bit I substantially disagreed with. I agree with the greater point, that stopping Cleveland this year is very different from stopping Tennessee last year. To me, Cleveland is scarier, not because of the backs so much as because I think you can't really scheme against a great OL, while you can scheme to stop a great RB. As good as Cleveland's RBs are, to me, they are an OL driven offense. Tennessee's OL is not that great, Henry just doesn't need that great of an OL to punish teams. And that's easier to stop than an OL that just wins the 1v1s. I remember some of the 2000s Chiefs teams, where the back didn't matter, if the OL was on point, you just lost the LOS every play, and that's what Cleveland is capable of.

Honestly, I just don't like misinformation, I felt like that's what that line was, so I replied to it. *shrug*

I will be honest, too, there is some fatigue on the KC side around the whole run game subject. I'm fine with anyone thinking Cleveland's run game will succeed against us. They likely will. They're an elite running team. But that argument always feels like it's a short step away from "The key to beating the Chiefs is to keep Mahomes on the sideline" which is just so many levels of John Madden style NFL cliche unproven non-sense.

[BigTrav]

If DVOA is gospel, can we also see it from the other side?

We  have beaten the #1, 2, 4 and 7 teams in final DVOA, a stronger resume than anyone else.  OL and D injuries have taken a toll, but you can't argue with results over (apparently) higher ranked teams

 

That said, I am worried about Clevelands run game, of course I am. Especially down in low. We need to bring shock and awe and force them to catch up by passing

Edited January 12, 2021 by BigTrav