7 ms·
plays per fumble is not a very good metric - as fumbles go down it increases exponentially. If you look at the total fumbles, the patriots are #1 but only 7 ah
by itsdrewmiller 12y ago
plays per fumble is not a very good metric - as fumbles go down it increases exponentially. If you look at the total fumbles, the patriots are #1 but only 7 ahead of #2. The two worst teams are 10 behind the next two teams. I didn't run the numbers, but eyeballing it, it seems like the Patriots are pretty easily within a couple standard deviations there.
- donchipotle 12y agoI think Brian Burke did a more thorough take on it. http://advancednflstats.com/index.php/home/research/general/224-the-patriots-have-great-ball-security http://advancednflstats.com/index.php/home/research/general/... It's not as damning for the Patriots. But very interesting that it suddenly started in 2007, the same year the NFL changed the rules to allow visiting teams to use their own balls.
- chockablock 12y agoThanks this is a much more mathematically reasonable analysis. I especially like the idea of using the #fumbles made by Pats' opponents as a control for the weather (although that confounds the Pats' defense's ability to generate fumbles). The OP gets credit for noticing an unusual trend in the data, but does all kinds of weird seat-of-the-pants analysis that I found pretty hard to even look at. E.g. Sorting the teams by fumble frequency, and then running a regression on the ranked list (!!?); using plays/fumble instead of fumbles/play; reporting stats with the null hypothesis that the Pats fumble rate is drawn randomly from other teams (instead of asking what the likelihood is of an extreme value at least that high).