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Who decided that DVOA matters?


DontTazeMeBro

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10 minutes ago, ThatJaxxenGuy said:

Advanced stats are cool but have you tried seeing a play and immediately barfing out a terrible take to fulfill the void of an endlessly growing appetite for immediate gratification ? 

*Team hires a new coordinator*
*Fan watches one press conference*
"I don't like this guy, something seems off about him"
*One play goes wrong*
"See! This guy sucks! Fire him immediately!"

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Years ago I through it into Excel toward forecasting the playoffs. It was moderate but other foundational angles were superior, namely YPPA Differential. And once again YPPA Differential dominated today. The 49ers were #1 in the league. The two fraud playoff teams were the Titans and Steelers, both at net negative of -0.5. I mentioned that here a couple of weeks ago.

The only problem with YPPA Differential is that the league itself is so congested toward good but not great. The 49ers +1.9 is first this season but would have been well down the list in other years. It's like an Grade 2 horse favored to win the Kentucky Derby. You're going to get somewhat arbitrary results. I'm not sure if DVOA is reporting the same thing but I would be very skeptical of any numbers-based approach that wasn't revealing lower caliber teams overall.

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6 hours ago, Nzd07 said:

Of course. Nothing is going to accurately predict a 16-game season with a one-and-done playoff format. But to say that it "doesn't matter" as the OP stated is kind of silly. It'd be different if it had a really bad track record (multiple teams in the bottom half of DVOA winning the SB, for example).

This is indeed the issue.  Note the following:

https://jaydpauley.medium.com/why-your-favorite-nfl-team-might-win-or-lose-five-more-games-next-year-ff9749145d22

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4 hours ago, Awsi Dooger said:

Years ago I through it into Excel toward forecasting the playoffs. It was moderate but other foundational angles were superior, namely YPPA Differential. And once again YPPA Differential dominated today. The 49ers were #1 in the league. The two fraud playoff teams were the Titans and Steelers, both at net negative of -0.5. I mentioned that here a couple of weeks ago.

The only problem with YPPA Differential is that the league itself is so congested toward good but not great. The 49ers +1.9 is first this season but would have been well down the list in other years. It's like an Grade 2 horse favored to win the Kentucky Derby. You're going to get somewhat arbitrary results. I'm not sure if DVOA is reporting the same thing but I would be very skeptical of any numbers-based approach that wasn't revealing lower caliber teams overall.

DVOA accurately recognized Tennessee this year as the worst #1 seed in NFL history, for example.

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6 hours ago, SkippyX said:

I have no problem with DVOA. I like everything about Football Outsiders.

I don't think any stat has strong predictive value. Its one of the reasons the NFL is so great.

Plus the football isn't round so it bounces in an unpredictable way. 

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DVOA is a fantastic stat at isolating different units on their quality. 

It's issue is that it cannot account for symbiotic a football game is and how different units effect others. An amazing DVOA defense can be let down by it's offense. That's why I always so that DVOA is fantastic at telling you if a unit is good, it's mediocre at being a predicative stat

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DVOA was much higher on the Bucs last year than their record, seeding and most fans and pundits.

Having said that, I don't view it as predictive. I do view it as a bigger piece to the resume (how good a team is based on what they've done) than their W/L record.

Winning and losing games is fluky. Always has been. The Niners needed two pretty rare special teams plays to win yesterday. The Packers beat them in SF this year, had a better record and have a more talented team (opinion there). I do not think the Niners are a better football team than the Packers this morning. 

And ironically, DVOA is higher on the Niners than I am.

 

The reason that I like DVOA and PFF is because they at least came up with a formula of sorts. This at least puts players and teams on a fairly level playing field and (in theory) removes biases. Fans are wholly incapable of that. So using the "eye test" is going to be heavily tainted in most cases for that reason.

So it's easy to trust a combination of stats/record/PFF/DVOA- and then toss in SRS from Pro Football Reference as well - along with the eye test - as opposed to just the eye test.

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