Illinois Hokie's Recent Comments

Kendrick Holland is the third receiver we're missing right now, IMO. For all the good that Zohn Burden's hire has done (and I now think we're in better shape than were were with AMo, personally) losing Holland was the one big hit of the coaching turnover there. Holland and Bradshaw were the two big WR gets of that class. Holland is gone and Bradshaw has been injured basically since he arrived. So yeah, I agree, were a year behind where we should be, but it wasn't recruiting whiffs that caused it. It was injury and attrition.

Glad to see you sticking around!

Jake Anderson is a cool mofo. Whoever writes the summaries for the UVA hockey websites is a whiny little bitch.

Mama Edmunds is on line one.

OMG that field looks like crap! That's embarrassing, even if this was taken in the dead of the offseason. The turf managers should never allow the playing surface to get that bad.

Also, the map is in St Louis Hokie's post

Does anybody know what the visitors section is at Ross-Ade Stadium?

Just imagine how much better Wyatt would be if he hadn't missed all those practice snaps with the first team. /s

I think all your concerns are valid. Let me explain my rationale.

I'm certain that the statistical value of a touchdown is seven points. Among all touchdowns scored, the mean, median and mode are all 7. In all practical regards, by settling for a field goal in the red zone, a team is leaving four points on the field. So I'm deriving the 3/7 value from the real-world effect on the scoreboard. However, your concern to neither penalize nor reward the offense for the performance of special teams is warranted. That's why I pointed out that assigning field goals a fixed proportionate value in relation to touchdowns is preferable to the "percentage of all possible points" model. That model would lower the offense's red zone efficiency if Slye misses a PAT. By assuming PATs as a given, we reflect the actual real-world effect of settling for a field goal without having to account for abberations like missed PATs and 2-point conversions.

There's a part of me that's sympathetic to the notion that missed field goal attempts shouldn't adversely affect red zone efficiency in the sense that it isn't the offense's fault if the kicker misses the field goal. But it IS the offense's fault that the kicker is attempting a field goal in the first place, instead of a PAT. Also, I don't have research to back me up on this, but I would bet you a not insignificant percentage of red zone drives ending in no points are the result of something other than a missed field goal. Turnovers and failed fourth down conversions have to be somewhat common amongst the failures, considering how high the success rate is for field goal attempts of 37 yards or fewer. A significant amount of the time, failure to put any ponts on the board whatsoever in the red zone will be directly attributable to something the offense did. (Or failed to do.)

Long story short, I feel pretty good about a fixed value for field goals equal to 3/7 of a touchdown. I think it captures the real-world effect of settling for three without having to fret over the specifics of each individual touchdown scored.

Thanks for your feedback. I really appreciate it.

These are really interesting stats. Is there anywhere to track them week by week over the course of last season instead of just the final rankings of the season?

For the last several years, the coaches put together a package of questionable calls or non-calls and submit it to the conference after every game. The conference then evaluates the claims, makes a judgement call, and then meets with the officiating crew to go over the calls and educate them on what might have made it a bad call. It's an ongoing process throughout the season, and is one reason why you might see a lot of a particular call at the start of the season that diminishes as the season progresses, or vice versa.

As for its effectiveness, that's basically the process through which GT finally got called to task for CPJ's chopblockalypse. So the process can be effective. Unfortunately it's an inherently reactive process. Nothing can be done to correct the errors of the previous game, just attempt to prevent the same errors being made going forward.

Good point, and another reason it's "cleaner" to just assign a field goal a fixed proportionate value to touchdowns. What special teams do after a touchdown should have no statistical impact on red zone efficiency.

Yup, exactly. So right now since we're at 85.7% red zone td% and also red zone scoring percentage, our red zone efficiency is 85.7%.

But let's say RZTD% was 75% and RZS% was 85%. You can tell at a glance in the red zone we scored TDs 75% of the time, FGs 10% of the time, and came away empty 15% of the time. If you weight a field goal as 3/7 of a touchdown you get:

.75+[.1x(3/7)]=0.792

I really like the concept of red zone efficiency. I'm giving the data needed for it, but not actually calculating it. I probably could cut out the middle man with a simple formula in Excel, since I'm already tracking red zone TDs and scoring. Let me tinker. Then that's only one stat to present instead of two. I'm up to ten tracked stats so far, so anything I can do to streamline is a net plus IMO.

Also, the statistics nerd in me has to point out that you'd want to calculate this stat by valuing field goals at 3/7 of a touchdown rather than scored points/potential points, otherwise you risk missed PATs skewing the data. That's a special teams issue rather than an offense issue, so for our purposes you just treat the PAT as a given.