One of my favorite sites for statistical information is sportingcharts.com. I highly recommend you check out their content. It's all free and loaded with tons of stats and charts that you may not find elsewhere.
I've selected a few team statistics below that I find incredibly informative and useful and then I gave it color scale to show differentiation. The results paint a picture for how and why teams like New England, Carolina and Arizona are leading the way this season. Enjoy the select stats I picked out, but also check out the site for so much more and be sure to follow @sportingcharts on twitter as well.
Below is how sportingchart.com explains each of the stats that I picked for this piece and how it translates to understanding what these stats show.
Points Off Turnovers
Net turnover points statistic measures the points a team generates off of takeaways including interceptions and fumbles less the points its opponents have generated off of interceptions thrown and fumbles lost.
Teams with high net turnover points are those who take advantage of turnovers by scoring points and preventing opponents from putting up points when turning over the ball.
PPG Differential
Point per game differential is a useful statistic, and advanced versions of PPG that take into account strength of an opponent makes up the "Point Differential Betting System". The differential gives a good indication of how teams perform offensively and defensively throughout the season, and generally speaking teams with a higher differential tend to beat teams with a lower differential. The larger the gap between PPG differential, the more confidence.
Toxic Differential
Toxic Differential is a statistic in football used to measure a team on their ability in creating and preventing both turnovers and explosive plays. Toxic Differential is calculated by adding together a teams turnover differential (takeaways - giveaways) and its big play differential (big plays for - big plays against).
Toxic differential is a combination of three different differential statistics:
1) Turnover differential, which is the difference between the total number of takeaways (opponent turnovers) less the total number of giveaways (team turnovers.
2) Passing Big Play differential, which is the difference between the total number of passing plays of 25+ yards by the team less the total number of passing plays of 25+ yards the team gave up.
3) Rushing Big Play differential, which is the difference between the total number of rushing plays of 10+ yards by the team less the total number of rushing plays of 10+ yards the team gave up.
A higher toxic differential is better.
More about Toxic Differential
The statistic was created by Super Bowl winning coach Brian Billick while he was offensive coordinator with the Minnesota Vikings. He's quoted as saying "It’s not merely good enough to avoid turning the ball over; you need to generate big offensive plays as well."
The holy grail is having a double positive, in other words a team is winning the turnover differential AND the explosive play differential. Over the last 15+ seasons, a majority of teams that have won the Super Bowl finished the regular season in the Top 10 for Toxic Differential.
Team Efficiency Ratios
Team Efficiency Ratios include pass efficiency, run efficiency, offense efficiency and scoring efficiency which compare the rate of production by the offense compared to the offense of its opponents.
Passing Efficiency Ratio: the number of passing yards for each passing yard given up.
Run Efficiency Ratio: the number of rushing yards for each rushing yard given up.
Offense Efficiency Ratio: the number of offensive yards for each offensive yard given up.
Scoring Efficiency Ratio: the number of points for each point given up.
Team Defense Statistics
Team defense statistics includes various measures of defensive effectiveness to evaluate an NFL teams defense. This includes tackles and sacks, the number of passes the team defensed preventing its opponents from completing the pass play, the defensive turnovers in the form of interceptions and fumbles recovered and defensive touchdowns.
Questions, suggestions and comments are always welcome to haseley@footballguys.com
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