PossessionPoints^SM was designed to quantify how a team’s Offense plays a role in the success of their team’s Defense on both a physical and emotional level. As every coach, player and fan will testify, a team’s Defense needs both rest and confidence. When the Offense scores on a long drive, they provide their Defense much needed physical rest and mental confidence. PossessionPoints^SM captures this fact with a simple equation that multiplies the Time of Posession of a scoring drive by the points scored. We call these points Raw PossessionPoints^SM.

The Raw PossessionPoints^SM is only part the picture. The next step is to capture numerically that all too elusive emotional quality – momentum. We found stunning results when we added the quarter in which the points were put on the board to the actual points themselves and factored in the possession time of the scoring drive. We called these “Quarter-Weighted PossessionPoints^SM” which are for our discussion the only PossessionPoints^SM we will really talk about, analyze or otherwise work with on this website or in the newsletter. So when you hear us refer to PossessionPoints^SM – we are talking about the quarter-weighted number that includes all the physical and emotional factors – rest, confidence and momentum.

The PossessionPoints indicators were developed to give a graphical representation when a significant value is attained. You will hear us talk about the “Offense Effect”, “Net Effect” and “Defense Effect”. These are listed in order of significance, if you see these in a color graphic they will be top to bottom Offense, Net and Defense. So you may see graphics like these below:

Offense Effect:

The top value is the “Offense Effect” which is the PossessionPoints scored by a teams Offense during a game. When a team reaches 60 PossessionPoints, the indicator turns “yellow”, when they reach 100 it turns “green”. This indicator starts Red (with 0 PosessionPoints ) and can only change to Yellow and Green and does not change back during a game. In 2006 during the regular season, there were 256 games, and 253 times a team’s possession points put them in the green indicator zone which led to a victory 200 times or 74.5% of the time. That is why this is the top indicator.

Net Effect:

The middle indicator is the “Net Effect”. This is simply the Offense Effect minus the Defense Effect (the other teams Offense Effect). This indicator’s color range is:

• Green when the value is greater than 40

• Yellow when the value is between 40 and -40 (which is where it starts at the beginning of the game)

• Red when the value is less than -40

This indicator can change multiple times during a game, and although it is rare, it can go from red to green and back to red again. We found during the 2006 season that the Net Effect was Green for a team 154 times. A team with a Green Net Effect won 90% of the time.

The bottom value is the “Defense Effect” which is the PossessionPoints scored by the other team during a game. The indicator colors are the opposite of the Offense Effect. At the onset of the game, this indicator is green and stays Green until the other team reaches 60 PossessionPoints. When this happens, the indicator turns Yellow. If the opposing team reaches 100 PossessionPoints, the indicator turns “Red”. As with the “Offense Effect” it can only change in the one direction during a game. Obviously, since this is the opposite of the Offense Effect, we know that a team will lose 74.5% of the time when their indicator is Red.

The more PossessionPoints an Offense scores, the easier it should be for a Defense to hold the opposing team and keep their Defense Effect indicator Green. During the 2006 season, there were 79 instances when teams ended with all 3 indicators Green, 92% of the time these teams won. In only seven games out of the 256 total games played, did teams with all three indicators in the Red win. We refer to these games as anomalies.