How We Use the PossessionPoints Stat
Now that you have seen the basics on the
Understanding page, we will take you into more details on the stat, the
numbers, the colors and the many ways we use and manipulate the stat.
Hope you are ready because we are jumping right in:
More On The Basics:
The
PossessionPoints stat was initially designed to be an in-game
statistic which would be an early indicator that winning the game was
going to be more difficult than the score might be showing. The goal
was to have a statistical indicator that could be used to guide a
decision such as to go for it on 4th down vs. punting, or other such
"play it safe" or "take a chance" decisions.
The exact formulation of the PossessionPoints stat isn't important;
the net result is what is important. The easiest corollary to a
popular stat is the QB rating. The QB rating is a numerical rating
that is derived from multiple QB statistics. The result is a number
that ranges from about 30 to 160. The higher the number
the better, but other than that there is little or no significance.
PossessionPoints has significance.
The PossessionPoints stat is a number derived from other in-game
statistics that occur during scoring drives. The value of a scoring
drive ranges from zero. There is no upper limit, but in all
practicality, it is rare that any one drive exceeds 100. However, we
have seen a few 100+ PossPts drives.
Offensive number:
The offensive PossessionPoints total is simply the addition of all
the teams PossessionPoints earned on each drive. If a team has two
offensive scoring drives and the first on was worth 60 PossPts and
the second one was worth 40 PossPts, they would have 100 PossPts for
the game. This is a key number and we will be back to that. A point
to note is that this offensive number can only go up during the game, so
as it reaches key points you can gauge where your team stands.
Defensive number:
The defensive number is even easier. It is simply the opponent's
offensive number. The team playing against the team in the above
offensive scenario would have allowed 100 defensive PossPts.
Net number:
The net (or overall) number is simply a team's offensive number minus the defensive
number. This number has a very good correlation to winning (91% as
you saw on the Understanding page) and is
the basis for our "Performance Rankings" and other
measures that we
will discuss further later.
Example:
Let's use the same numbers we used above for one team, and we will call
them Team A. As we said above, they had two scoring drives that totaled
100 PossPts, and let's assume they were touchdown drives. If you would
look at one of our single game stat lines, you would know the
following information:
|
Team |
Points |
Offense |
Net |
Defense |
|
Team A |
14 |
100 |
? |
? |
|
Team B |
? |
? |
? |
100 |
Note - Team B's defensive number is
the same as Team A's offensive number. The green and red colors have
significance also. We will get to that in a bit.
Next, lets say Team B has two field goal
scoring drives, one worth 20 PossPts and one worth 40 PossPts. We now
know Team B's offensive number is 60, and we have enough information
to complete the game table:
|
Team |
Points |
Offense |
Net |
Defense |
|
Team A |
14 |
100 |
40 |
60 |
|
Team B |
6 |
60 |
-40 |
100 |
The Colors:
In the example, above you notice the green and red colors,
but there
is one other color we use, yellow. When a team exceeds 100 offensive
PossPts, we color the offensive block green for that team. At 60 or
below, we color it red. The in between color is yellow. The defensive
colors are just the opposite: green for 60 and below, yellow in the
middle and red at 100 or above.
The net colors are a little different, they turn green at +40 and
red at -40, in between they are yellow. So in the example above, all
of the colors were right on the edge of yellow and the color they
attained.
Again, how
these numbers correlate to winning was shown on the opening
Understanding page.
Any questions?
You may want to check our FAQ page, or feel
free to send us a question from our "Contact"
page.
Still want more
info? Ok, it is going to get a little deeper now.
Working with PossessionPoints beyond the basics -
Performance Rankings
One of the interesting things we have found
is that PossessionPoints
can be extended to multiple games
because at their foundation they are composed of stats added together
from individual drives. We can
work with per game averages and compare all teams.
If a team has
two, 100-PossPts Offensive performances, we can add
them together and have 200. So that we can look at team's
performance in the same "color" groupings that we use in individual
games we divide by games played and compare teams on a per game
average. This per game average approach also helps during "bye"
weeks when not all teams have played the same number of games. So
the two-game average would be 100 PossPts.
While this is
good for offense and defense what really gets interesting is the
"overall" or net number. Since these numbers can be both positive
and negative, they produce a very interesting spread between the
teams. When we total the per game net numbers, we call those our
Relative Performance Measure(RPM). Below is the chart of our RPM
numbers after the 2008 Regular season.
|