Eagles vs Patriots SBLII GDT

[lancerman]

38 minutes ago, RollEagles said:

The Patriots defense in 29th in yards allowed per game. And they are 31st in defensive DVOA. Those are just facts.'

Yeah they are. I stated that they were poor in yards at least twice. You don't win by yards. You win by points. Traditionally a teams performance is tied more to their ppg.

See above.

If you choose to believe the Patriots defense will be as tough of a test for the Eagles as the Vikings were last week, sure, go ahead. In reality, the Vikings defense was 2nd defensive DVOA, 1st in yards allowed per game, and 1st in points allowed per game.

Yeah you're right they are the 2nd best defense in DVOA. And they got blown out. Speaks volumes about DVOA. Here's the problem you aren't just playing the Patriots defense. You're playing the Patriots offense and special teams which are 1st and 3rd in the league. So you'll likely be playing the defense after you got terrible field position, you won't be able to dominate time of possession the way you did against the Vikings and you likely won't have the benefit of playing with a huge lead and forcing an offense that isn't capable of it to be forced to play catch up and force a lot of 3 and outs as a results. See everything intersects. It's football. There's a reason why you don't blow out every team you played like the Vikings.

 

38 minutes ago, RollEagles said:

In contrast, the Patriots defense was 31st in defensive DVOA, 29th in yards allowed per game, and 5th in points allowed per game.

If you want to cherry pick one aspect of one stat (best PPG since week 5), let me present to you 2 other stats that present another part of the picture.

Thats another part of the picture. It's however less significant. Teams records and overall performances align more with ppg than yards or DVOA. Multiple teams have won SB's with yards or DVOA

Then like I said before, again, not sure what the point of this discussion is. The entire basis of this discussion is me saying that the Patriots defense will be the weakest unit on the field for this Super Bowl. Other units matter when you consider the team but I'm just talking about the defenses.

You said this in response to me saying PPG after Week 5 is just one metric. And that's true. The one metric is a fact. See above for DVOA and yards allowed per game. 

And that divisional team that made the playoffs was the Bills. And guess what their offensive PPG ranking was? 22nd. What about their offensive DVOA? 26th. What about their offensive yards per game? 29th.

Here's how the rest of the AFC East did (made up 6 out of the final 11 games):

Bills: 22nd PPG, 26th offensive DVOA, 29th yards per game

Jets: 24th PPG, 24th offensive DVOA, 28th yards per game

Dolphins: 28th PPG, 27th offensive DVOA, 25th yards per game

If you want to play the Patriots had a weak schedule argument.. Again go back to last year when people said the same thing you are saying. "Patriots ppg is misleading, they aren't a good defense, their DVOA is bad, they played a weak schedeule." I would not feel comfortable resting on that argument. And again for the record no teams in the Eagles division made the playoffs and you got to play a terrible Giants team twice which was worse than any team the Patriots played all year. And you got to play the Niner's when they were terrible. So a quarter of your schedule was against literally the worst teams in the NFL outside the Browns. We also beat the two best teams in the AFC. You beat the two best teams in the NFC. It's a dumb argument to make the schedule argument. 

 

38 minutes ago, RollEagles said:

So it's nice that the Bills made the playoffs. But it doesn't change the fact that 6/11 games in that stretch you keep referencing for best PPG since Week 5 came against 3 of the worst offenses in football. 

Again, what they did last year has absolutely no bearing on this game. And it shouldn't even in analyzing this game. There's been so much turnover for them. The Patriots defense looked good against the Titans. Not so much against the Jaguars.

Patriots defense only gave up 20 points against the Jags.

I actually have backed up my arguments with data. See above. Unlike you, I haven't cherry picked one aspect of one stat. You want metrics, you have them above. Read them. 

The first time you ever mentioned a single ranking or stat was in this post. So don't play that game. 

Here's the comparison in metrics between the 2011 Patriots and the 2017 Patriots:

Defensive DVOA: 2011 (30th), 2017 (31st) - Actually, being lower in ranking doesn't indicate "many magnitudes worse".

Yeah those are rankings. Let's look at what actually happened. 

2011 ppg: 21.4  

2017 ppg: 18.5

2011 passing yards per game: 293..9

2017 passing yards per game: 251.3

2011 rushing yards per game: 117.1

2017 rushing yards per game: 114.8 

Wow. despite a lower ranking defense they actually WORSE in EVERY SINGLE CATEGORY. A solid margin of difference in points. A HUGE difference in passing yards. And a slight difference in rushing yards. So yeah many magnitudes worse. They worse in every phase of defense and leagues apart in passing. It's almost like you didn't do anything beyond reading the rankings to make your points.

 

38 minutes ago, RollEagles said:

Yards Allowed Per Game: 2011 (31st), 2017 (29th) - Both defenses pretty bad. 

PPG: 2011 (15th), 2017 (5th) - This is where there's a difference that shows the 2011 defense was worse.

Again, an exaggeration to say 2011 was magnitudes worse. They're similar. (But did you look at 2011 metrics after week 5 though?)

No it's not still an exxageration as demonstrated above. You are blindly looking at rankings. Especially on yards. The 2011 Patriots gave up 411.1 to be 31st in the NFL. The 2017 Patriots gave up 366 yards per game. That's a MASSIVE gulf of difference. Just to give you an idea they would have been ranked 22nd in ppg (jumping 7 spots) with that 2017 yards per game number. So yeah you are wrong. 

And to go a step further. The only team worse than the Patriots in yards per game in 2011 was the Packers. The packers went 15-1 that year and were a 1st seed in the playoffs. Likewise the Patriots went 13-3, also the 1st seed in their conference and were a dropped pass from winning the super Bowl

 

38 minutes ago, RollEagles said:

I've given you facts. The basis of your argument has been an extremely cherry picked statistic: best PPG after week 5. I've tried to explain that all 6 division games came after Week 5 and were against the worst statistical offenses in football this year. And now I've given you DVOA and yards per game. 

This is the first time you actually used any statistics of data in your argument. And I still had to add a ton of context due to how misleading it was. You gave me yards per game and tried to act like they were relatively close for both teams when in fact one team was 45.1 yards per game worse than the other. You also tried to act like those were better indicators than ppg when the two lowest teams in yards per game had the best records in the NFL and one was close to winning the Super Bowl. And like I said DVOA has traditionally had far less of a correlation to how a teams defense will hold up and what they are likely to give up compared to ppg and traditionally a teams overall performance is tied closer to ppg. Those are facts.

 

I think I made my point

[lancerman]

21 minutes ago, BLick12 said:

Well, it's a combination of things, right?  I'm a pretty strong endorser of DVOA, and while it isn't an absolute for predicting games, it does tell you a lot about a team's defense.  For a team like the Pats that has an elite offense that hardly turns the ball over and a good STs unit that doesn't often negatively impact field position, they can still win with a below average DVOA. It's not going to be the ultimate predictor of outcome, because it is only accounting for one side of the ball.  But in my opinion, it is a robust and more accurate statistic for analyzing historical performance than anything else out there or any of the basic stats like PPG.

Someone mentioned the Broncos and DVOA not being a good predictor for them. But you're viewing it as a fortune telling solution, it is not that.  What it tells you is that their defense still performed fairly well and there are likely additional factors that led to them struggling... like for instance, a highly detrimental offense.  @RollEagles basically nailed it.

I was the person who made the Broncos comparison but you kind of just made the same point I've been making all thread though you disagreed with me at the end. 

DVOA is great at isolating a defense or an offense and measuring everything and measuring strengths. If the game of football was literally take a defense and put them on the field without context and give an offense 15 drives starting at the 20 and then doing the same thing with the other team and then at the end measure yards and points and use some combination of that to decide the winner, DVOA would likely be proven correct in it's overall analysis every single time.

That's just not how footballs played. What you said about the Broncos comparison is absolutely correct. And that's my point. Despite having a strong DVOA they still gave up lots of points and their record reflected the ppg more than the DVOA. 

There's a reason for that ppg is just how many points your defense gives up on average. So while it doesn't do as great of a job isolating defenses it does a great job of predicting how likely the overall score will be over the course of the game. Because football is a complimentary game and ppg doesn't isolate the defense from the offense and special teams (like the game doesn't)

That's why in the Broncos instance, even though they had a great DVOA any given game, you would expect their points give up and the likely outcome to line up far more with their ppg ranking.

From there it's hard to really pick apart why their is a discrepancy. For instance in the Patriots case, they usually have one of the best offenses in the league. However, that also usually means they play with a lead a lot. Late in games teams have to start abandoning their strategy and start to pass on them in prevent mode before they tighten up and either force a 3 and out, a turnover, or a team has to settle for a field goal or turnover on downs. That typically leads to alot of yards being given up, which wouldn't happen as much in a tighter game. As a result, the Patriots have for the most for years now had a big difference in yards compared to points. And as a result that reflects on their DVOA and usually gives them lower rankings there. 

So I think it's a useful stat, I think it also is not predicative as much as other stats. And I think in a complimentary game like football, anything that isolates one aspect has to be taken with a grain of salt because everything influences everything. And Belichick's one of the best coaches in the league at recognizing that and using it to his advantage.

[J-ALL-DAY]

Philly 27 NE 20 

[CP3MVP]

12 hours ago, lancerman said:

Yes it was the best in ppg from weak 5 on. From that point they gave up more than 20 ppg twice in the regular season to a dominant Steelers offense and to Miami at Miami in a tough divisional game where they usually struggle. They averaged a flat 14 points per game. The Vikings gave averaged 15.8 for the season. From week 5 on the Vikings gave up 14.6 ppg and broke 20 about 3 times including two instances where they gave up over 30 points. So yeah once the Patriots got their defense figured out they've been incredibly dominant. 

Really think about it, the Patriots were 32nd in ppg after week 4 and were on pace to be one of the worst defenses of all time. That's a quarter of a season in. Then they wound up in the top 5 and at their current 

Also I would like to point you to 2016 when this entire board said the Patriots defensive ranking was misleading because of the quality of opponents. And then they won the Super Bowl. 

My point don't sleep on the Patriots defense. There very likely to be one of the best defenses the Eagles see all year and you have to pair that with one of the best offenses they've seen all year (only offense ahead of them was the Rams who the Eagles allowed 35 points and the Rams were a middle of the pack defense). 

I don’t see how winning the Super Bowl proves the patriots defense last year was great. Especially when they got torched the first 40 mins of that game. I think the falcons were averaging 10 yards a play by halftime. 

[lancerman]

Just now, CP3MVP said:

I don’t see how winning the Super Bowl proves the patriots defense last year was great. Especially when they got torched the first 40 mins of that game. I think the falcons were averaging 10 yards a play by halftime. 

Okay. The Patriots played a historically great offense last year. The defense gave up 4 TD's the entire game. 

One TD was off a pick six. That had nothing to do with the defense. 

So the defense proper gave up 14 points in the first half and 7 points in the second half against a historically great offense.

That's discounting that one of the TD's in the first quarter was off the Blount fumble which didn't help. 

Oh and the Patriots can't win that game without the strip sack from Hightower, pushing the Falcons out of field goal range, and holding the Falcons to 0 while the offense went on a 25 point run. 

It's misleading to say the Patriots defense got "torched". They were only on the field for 21 points. 

If I told you going into that game the defense would give up 2TD's in the fist half and 1TD very early in the 2nd half against that Falcons offense, everyone would have taken it. You just wouldn't have expected that Brady throws a pick 6 and that the offense is held to 3 until very late in the 3rd quarter. The team getting blown out at the start of the game had a lot more to do with the offense than the defense in that case. The offense did nothing for nearly 3 quarters and gave the Falcons more points than they scored. 

[WeaponX]

3 hours ago, lancerman said:

 

 

 

 

I think I made my point

Does any of that address the initial point I made that the Patriots defense will be the weakest unit on the field?

You asked for stats. I gave you stats and metrics. You have one aspect of one metric trying to say the Patriots defense is up there with Minnesota's.

 

It comes down to whether or not you actually would take the Patriots defense over the Viking defense. 

If you do, I think you'd be mistaken but that's on you.

[BAConrad]

2 hours ago, RollEagles said:

Does any of that address the initial point I made that the Patriots defense will be the weakest unit on the field?

You asked for stats. I gave you stats and metrics. You have one aspect of one metric trying to say the Patriots defense is up there with Minnesota's.

 

It comes down to whether or not you actually would take the Patriots defense over the Viking defense. 

If you do, I think you'd be mistaken but that's on you.

Seriously.

How is it so complicated to understand what you, myself, and Blick have all said?

@lancerman you realize that you are the one making a weird argument with little to no "statistical analysis" besides citing the arbitrary PPGA statistic. Which BTW IS NOT JUST HOW MANY POINTS A DEFENSE GIVES UP. They don't exclude scores not given up by the defense. It's how many points the TEAM allows. 

DVOA is a good tool with which to analyze a defensive unit and get an idea of how good or bad it actually is. Because, while yes a defense is absolutely affected by the teams other units in starting field position , TOP, etc, it still matters if that defense can hold it's own when push comes to shove. Because the defenses job is to stop the opponents offense from scoring. So I attempted to discuss the mismatches between our offense and NE's defense earlier but got sucked into this weird nonsensical debate. 

[WeaponX]

7 minutes ago, BAConrad said:

Seriously.

How is it so complicated to understand what you, myself, and Blick have all said?

@lancerman you realize that you are the one making a weird argument with little to no "statistical analysis" besides citing the arbitrary PPGA statistic. Which BTW IS NOT JUST HOW MANY POINTS A DEFENSE GIVES UP. They don't exclude scores not given up by the defense. It's how many points the TEAM allows. 

DVOA is a good tool with which to analyze a defensive unit and get an idea of how good or bad it actually is. Because, while yes a defense is absolutely affected by the teams other units in starting field position , TOP, etc, it still matters if that defense can hold it's own when push comes to shove. Because the defenses job is to stop the opponents offense from scoring. So I attempted to discuss the mismatches between our offense and NE's defense earlier but got sucked into this weird nonsensical debate. 

Our biggest mistake was considering metrics that made the Pats defense look bad. And even if such a statistic were to exist, it doesn't matter because previous Patriot defenses had bad statistics and still won. 

That is the best summary of the last few pages that I could come up with.

[BAConrad]

5 hours ago, lancerman said:

Okay. The Patriots played a historically great offense last year. The defense gave up 4 TD's the entire game. 

One TD was off a pick six. That had nothing to do with the defense. 

So the defense proper gave up 14 points in the first half and 7 points in the second half against a historically great offense.

That's discounting that one of the TD's in the first quarter was off the Blount fumble which didn't help. 

Oh and the Patriots can't win that game without the strip sack from Hightower, pushing the Falcons out of field goal range, and holding the Falcons to 0 while the offense went on a 25 point run. 

It's misleading to say the Patriots defense got "torched". They were only on the field for 21 points. 

If I told you going into that game the defense would give up 2TD's in the fist half and 1TD very early in the 2nd half against that Falcons offense, everyone would have taken it. You just wouldn't have expected that Brady throws a pick 6 and that the offense is held to 3 until very late in the 3rd quarter. The team getting blown out at the start of the game had a lot more to do with the offense than the defense in that case. The offense did nothing for nearly 3 quarters and gave the Falcons more points than they scored. 

Dude, the Falcons offense was absolutely laying waste to the Pats' defense in those 3 quarters. I heard it earlier on a podcast, but IIRC Atlanta was moving the ball just fine on NE for awhile. 

You're seriously putting way too much blame on the wrong unit. An offense can hurt it's own defense, sure, but to a degree. It's still the defenses job to make the stops when it needs to. Youre acting like the Pats offense was out there giving up the yards and points to Atlanta.

You know what great defenses do? They keep their teams close in games when the offense doesn't show up. 

Multiple times this year, the Eagles offense have started out halves of games poorly. Our defense is why the score would remain 10-7 or 10-9 at halftime despite the offense laying an egg. Like against Atlanta 3 weeks ago. And against Dallas in week 9 or whenever that game was. And against Seattle. See what I'm getting at?

You don't seem to recognize what actually makes a defense great. 

[lancerman]

1 minute ago, BAConrad said:

Seriously.

How is it so complicated to understand what you, myself, and Blick have all said?

@lancerman you realize that you are the one making a weird argument with little to no "statistical analysis" besides citing the arbitrary PPGA statistic. Which BTW IS NOT JUST HOW MANY POINTS A DEFENSE GIVES UP. They don't exclude scores not given up by the defense. It's how many points the TEAM allows. 

DVOA is a good tool with which to analyze a defensive unit and get an idea of how good or bad it actually is. Because, while yes a defense is absolutely affected by the teams other units in starting field position , TOP, etc, it still matters if that defense can hold it's own when push comes to shove. Because the defenses job is to stop the opponents offense from scoring. So I attempted to discuss the mismatches between our offense and NE's defense earlier but got sucked into this weird nonsensical debate. 

You got sucked into it because apparently you respond to me several times without reading what I said. 

Did I ever say DVOA was a bad tool? No I actually said it was a very good took for isolating a defense on it's strengths and weaknesses. It is however a poor predicative tool. Especially compared to ppg. 

Now as far as using little to no statistical analysis AT LEAST MY STATS WERE CORRECT. You tried to make the argument that defensive DVOA is a great predictor of performance by reference of allegedly the worst team in that stat to ever win the Super Bowl being the 2012 Ravens who you claimed only ranked as low as 12. You were completely wrong in that. At least 8 Super Bowl winners in the last 17 years had a 12 or lower DVOA. So it's not very predicative at all. So if you were ONLY attempting to discuss mismatches between the defense, you shouldn't have brought that up and been misleading and wrong argument.

That was point. If a team has a top 5 defensive ppg but a below league average defensive DVOA, that team is still most likely going to have a winning record and be one of the more competitive teams in the playoff. If they have a top 5 DVOA, and they have a below league average ppg. They will likely perform poorly. 

That's my point. If a team has a trash DVOA but a ppg of around 18. They are still likely to only give up 18 points on average despite DVOA saying otherwise. Aka it's more predicative.

[lancerman]

7 minutes ago, BAConrad said:

Dude, the Falcons offense was absolutely laying waste to the Pats' defense in those 3 quarters. I heard it earlier on a podcast, but IIRC Atlanta was moving the ball just fine on NE for awhile. 

You're seriously putting way too much blame on the wrong unit. An offense can hurt it's own defense, sure, but to a degree. It's still the defenses job to make the stops when it needs to. Youre acting like the Pats offense was out there giving up the yards and points to Atlanta.

You know what great defenses do? They keep their teams close in games when the offense doesn't show up. 

Multiple times this year, the Eagles offense have started out halves of games poorly. Our defense is why the score would remain 10-7 or 10-9 at halftime despite the offense laying an egg. Like against Atlanta 3 weeks ago. And against Dallas in week 9 or whenever that game was. And against Seattle. See what I'm getting at?

You don't seem to recognize what actually makes a defense great. 

How many points did the Patriots defense give up? 14 in the first half, 7 in the second half. How many points did the Patriots score in the first half 3. How many points did the Patriots score in the 3rd quarter 7. So counting the pick six, until the fourth quarter the Patriots offense was netting 3 points. The defense held statistically the 7th greatest offense of all time to 21 points. 21 points on a team that averaged 33 in the season.

Again.... If I said the Patriots defense would only give up 3TD's all game and no other points against THAT Falcons offense, it would have been viewed as win. If I told you that in addition to that the Patriots defense kept them to 23 minutes time of possession, it would have been viewed as a massive win. If I told you that they also managed to get a critical turn over in the 4th quarter, even better. Which is exactly what happened. 

But your going to say that it's on the defense because one of the top offenses in the league only scored 3 points in the entire first half and only scored 9 points by the end of the third quarter, while giving up a pick six and another fumble that eventually led to a TD?

If you honestly think that then it's not worth discussing this with you. 

[Pats#1]

17 hours ago, lancerman said:

In ppg they have been since week 5. They've actually been far and away the best in the league since week 5. I wouldn't say that makes them the overall best defense, because alot of that is a superior offense that chews up clock and helps with field positioning and a superior special teams. But yeah when you look at the stat that matters the most they are. Like last year the Patriots were number 1 in ppg. They weren't really the best defense. But they were the best in ppg. And that's a better indicator of what you are likely to see in a game. 

Opponents means a lot when looking at that stat though...the Pats didn't shut down top tier offenses all season.

[lancerman]

3 minutes ago, Pats#1 said:

Opponents means a lot when looking at that stat though...the Pats didn't shut down top tier offenses all season.

They didn't shut any of them down but they held the Steelers and Saints to 20 (and in the Saints case that was garbage time). The number 2 and 3 teams in offensive DVOA since everyone loves that stat (Patriots are 1 for reference). Atlanta was also a top 10 in offensive DVOA and they were held to 7. So that's 3 of the top 10 offensives in DVOA. 

[WeaponX]

Quote

For the season, the Patriots rank 31st in defensive DVOA, and that could ultimately be their undoing this week. Our study of Super Bowl winners has shown that no team since at least 1986 has won a Super Bowl with a defense ranked lower than 25th in this metric.

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/sneaky-stats-that-could-decide-the-super-bowl/

@lancerman

[WeaponX]

Quote

 

The main reason for the Patriots’ mediocre start to the season was the defense. New England actually allowed more than 400 yards of offense in each of the first six games but has done that just once in the past 12 games, including the playoffs, and has conceded more than 20 points just twice.

The improvement in defensive coordinator Matt Patricia’s unit has been real, but the Patriots still rank only 22nd in weighted defensive DVOA because they continue to allow a lot of successful plays. The 2017 Patriots have one of the most statistically unique defenses that we have ever studied. They are 32nd in yards per drive allowed but still rank sixth in points per drive allowed. No other defense since the latest league expansion in 2002 has ranked in the top 10 in points per drive allowed while ranking 26th or lower in yards per drive allowed. The Patriots were able to accomplish this with an extreme bend-but-don’t-break style of play. While part of this reflects New England’s red-zone defense that ranks second in points allowed per red-zone appearance, it’s also a matter of real estate. The Patriots’ opponents have the worst starting field position in the league thanks to New England’s strong special teams and ball security on offense — so there are more yards for offenses to gain against this unit. Still, the defense has managed to keep scoring down and is even doing this with just one takeaway in the past six games.

You also can say that the Patriots have had some good fortune on defense this year. Opposing kickers missed nine field goals against the Patriots for a success rate of 71.0 percent, the second lowest against any team in 2017. New England has also controversially benefited from a few touchdowns overturned by replay — against the Jets (Austin Seferian-Jenkins), Steelers (Jesse James) and Bills (Kelvin Benjamin).

 

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/sneaky-stats-that-could-decide-the-super-bowl/

@lancerman