NFL 2012 Season Week 6 Picks

I actually fully endorse Jeremy's comments regarding the Packers-Texans game, even in the spirit in which he said it. They can't put together a complete game against pretty much any team they've played so far, so of course playing a 5-0 team on the road would be the appropriate time to put it all together. The big difference between this Packers team and last year's team? They didn't have a running back last year. Now that Benson is likely out for the season, they can drop the "we're a balanced offense" charade and just throw the ball 53 times this week.

Jeremy, what does your penalty tracker say so far this year? Where do the Packers stand in terms of penalties committed?

It says "this project has been abandoned"

Tied for 6th at 20, assuming of course this thing still, or ever, works for shit.

(Which it isn't, because that's just the last 2 games, and other teams have more games. So assuming what it has for the games it has is right, the Packers are in 6th with just 2 games, behind some teams that have 4. Which doesn't bode well. Of course many of the teams behind them with 1-2 games could pass them as well. Maybe I'll revive the project.)

Um...have you seen the offensive line's pass protection? I fail to see how this would be a good thing.

What I want to know is what happened to the short slants? Seems like they've only thrown 1 per game so far, and other than that Rodgers is always looking 20 yards down field and taking 10s to get rid of the ball.

Yeah, I had caught wind of the fact that Rodgers wasn't getting very good protection, but I did a double take the other day when I was looking up Ponder's stats and saw that he has been sacked 9 times, and that Rodgers was at 21.

It's amazing what a difference adding/subtracting a little time can make.

I only ask to verify something from a Milwaukee Journal article this morning. The Packers are 4th for most penalties committed (not counting declined penalties) and 1st in most yardage given up.

That will be a good data point to validate off of, if I bother to revive it.

I'm not sure if my sarcasm came across or not. I wasn't necessarily suggesting that somehow the addition of Benson dragged down the offense. It was more tongue in cheek, since last year they didn't have a running game and were virtually unstoppable, and this year they have a running game and are 2-3. Obviously (sarcasm alert) the balanced running game is the reason they aren't 5-0.

Also, I have no idea what QBR is, but higher is good, and Ponder is soundly beating Rodgers in it, so I declare it the new golden standard of rating quarterbacks.

QBR is similar to WAR (at least in spirit). It has to do with a QB's overall impact on a game. It puts more emphasis on subjective game conditions, like what the score is when that play was made, or what the score was AND how much time was left. It also doesn't just measure the passing aspect of a QB. Any plays involving the QB are considered.

Well, to be fair, your half joking commentary isn't ridiculous. Sometimes teams do things they think they're supposed to do, rather than the things they're best at. People will make comments like "man can you imagine that [awesome passing attack offense] if they had a running game too!" but they forget to factor that, to some extent, one comes at the expense of the other. It's not a zero sum thing, obviously, because a better offense will extend drives, and get more plays for both facets, but there's still some cannibalization going on.

Even if Benson was averaging good numbers, who knows what those numbers come at the expense of.

I think that's fair. I was only half-joking, which means I'm also half-somewhat-serious. The Packers offensive line wasn't amazing last year either. They also have been missing Greg Jennings most of the year so far, and Donald Driver is basically an empty uniform (he plays about 7 snaps per game). So a position that last year was their greatest strength has now been whittled down to Jordy Nelson, James Jones, and Randall Cobb. All three are pretty good receivers, but their value was enhanced by being a part of a receiving corps that was overflowing with talent (and numbers). Now that there are only 3 of them (throw in Jermichael Butterfingers McGee for good measure too, i guess), their value is somewhat diminished.

WAR is situation independent, so really not all that similar. WAR doesn't care if a HR came in a 20-0 blowout or if it was a walk off, it's just a HR. QBR is more like WPA.

As long as we're talking about QBR, Rodgers had -19.0 SACK EPA last year. I don't honestly know exactly what that means but it seems to more or less be a counting stat based on comparing current 2012 numbers to 2011 final numbers. I guess this is the glossary definition: SACK EPA: Clutch-weighted expected points added (lost) on sacks.

So again -19.0 for all of 2011, -17.7 already in 5 games this year. Sacks are killing the offense.

Nelson has as many drops as Finley. http://stats.washingtonpost.com/fb/leaders.asp?type=Receiving&range=NFL&rank=232

Packers only at 52.4% playoff odds.
http://www.footballoutsiders.com/stats/playoffodds

Sarcasm works really well at 50% joking/seriousness.

Packers have compiled the 6th ranked rush offense and are 9th in pass offense.
http://www.footballoutsiders.com/stats/teamoff

31st in pass protection
http://www.footballoutsiders.com/stats/ol

3rd (count) and most (yardage), but they've also benefited the most (both count-wise and yardage-wise) from penalties. So, in other words, your games must be getting stopped by one penalty or another like every 5 seconds.

That seems about right. In the Seattle game, at one point even the commentators pointed out that there was a penalty on something like 5 or 6 consecutive plays (spread out between the 2 teams)

I didn't realize what the numbers actually were for this year. I saw a stat on Finley that since the start of the 2011 season, he leads the entire league with like 17 drops.

28 in that game

Do that count declined or offsetting penalties?

Yes, 2 declined, 2 offsetting, 24 accepted, 245 total yards.

Well, now I just don't know what to believe. Clearly the Vikings are headed to the Super Bowl.

Everyone got last night's game wrong, yet we all get the trophy for being the best. NutCan has a participation trophy! What has this society come to?

We are all in first place.

Edit: Except for Matt and Jon who didn't pick all the games and don't qualify.

Also, I guess consider this the beta release:

NFL Penalty Tracker/Log

Let me know if you spot any issues.

is there a way to sort on total penalties overall to see which players have committed the most penalties overall in a given year?

That would be a pretty huge table. Also holding/false starts are far and away the most called penalties, so even if I did a top 25 or something my guess is they'd mostly be offensive lineman and a couple D-Backs. (Thus be pretty mundane.)

I'll add that page tonight though and see how feasible it is.

what does "unluckiest" mean. Is it teams that have are called for a certain penalty more than they benefit from that penalty?

I think it just means they benefit from the call the least. (Ignoring the teams that haven't benefitted from it at all.) I can look later.

Problem with that table is that it's a catch 22. It can be somewhat misleading if I dont factor in teams with 0 flags for/against but on the other hand like half the table winds up being "16-31 Teams Tied - [Almost Every Team]" if I allow 0s

I believe you mean Sarah and Jon. I picked all the games.

Yea, picking all the games before Saturday night are for suckers who don't believe in waiting for all the information on injuries, etc! (or we're lazy)

http://nfl-penalties.nutcan.com/all-players.php?&year=2012

That does sort of put things into perspective a little bit. For one thing, looking back on past season, the worst offenders are getting called less than once per game. And, I made some comment a while back about Charles Woodson getting called a lot. I'm not sure the exact words that I used, but I implied that while he looks like he should always get called for defensive PI or holding or whatnot, he does get called for a decent amount of penalties. It turns out that in 2010 (which was likely the year I was referring to at the time), he was called for 12 penalties for the year, which amounted to the 4th highest total among all players, so it's not nothing, but it's also not "he's getting called every play" either. So for one of the "worst" offenders, he drew less than 1 flag per game. Very interesting data.

It was 2011, I suspect because of that San Diego game.

It was.

By my rough count he was 6th in 2011 amongst dbacks, though at the time I brought it up I think he had been called 3 times all year.

I think the conversation might have been in 2011, but I'm thinking that I was referencing the prior year, not realizing what the current year was showing. But then again, it might have been me combining both years into my internal data set.

I decided to change this. Silly looking but easier is probably better.

Jeremy's quasi-prediction almost came true. The Packers would have won by 25 if it weren't for a blocked punt with 5 minutes left.

This tool also lacks the ability to count the number of times a penalty WASN'T called when it should have been, like the Packers getting offensive pass interefered about 3 times per game with no calls, and the Packers getting called all the time (like 2 times in 6 games). Add a feature to start tracking the number of times I think a penalty should have been called. Then it will be complete.

Yeah, when will they catch a break on the penalties.

Only two teams in the AFC have winning records after the chargers lose this game in ridiculous fashion.

RK PLAYER PASS EPA RUN EPA SACK EPA PEN EPA TOTAL EPA ACT PLAYS QB PAR QB PAA TOTAL QBR
11 Aaron Rodgers, GB 42.8 8.3 -18.7 5.2 37.6 299 40.5 15.7 66.8
12 Joe Flacco, BAL 40.1 2.4 -10.5 5.6 37.5 268 35.4 13.1 65.7
13 Christian Ponder, MIN 28.6 -1.2 -6.7 3.4 24.0 259 32.9 11.4 64.3

Clearly it's a total Junk stat. You can't see qbr

I've seen qbr.

Qbr is an abbreviation for Qbert, right?