First of all, I want to credit u/NBC7x for coming up with the name. I made a post last week about this concept, but I'm reintroducing it here from a different point of view.

Have you ever watched a game where a team seems to purposefully run a "bad" play on 3rd down that leaves them just short of getting a 1st down? Well sometimes, it's simply poor play calling or poor execution. But more often now than ever, teams call 3rd down like they do 2nd down, knowing they'll go for it on 4th if they are close enough.

So what I came up with is called the Drive Continuation Rate (DCR). I've just added a team's successful 4th down conversions to their 3rd down conversions, the divided by their 3rd down attempts. Here's where every team ranks:

So if a team failed on 3rd down, but then was successful on 4th, I'm counting that as a successful drive continuation attempt. However, if a team failed on 3rd down, then failed on their 4th down attempt (or didn't go for it all), I'm counting that as a failed drive continuation attempt.

I know this doesn't account for every situation. For example, a team down 1 point with 20 seconds left and the ball on their opponents 10 yard line will likely "fail" on 3rd down by simply running to the preferred hashmark of their kicker and then make a game winning kick as time expires. In this specific scenario, I've counted that as a failed drive continuation attempt for a team that executed a game winning play.

For the most part though, this gives you a good overall look at how good/bad teams are at keeping drives alive on the final play of a set of downs where they plan on turning the ball over to the other team if their play is not successful.

Let me preface this by saying a.) this should probably be an off season type post, and b.) I know very little about the cap structure in the NFL.

We have all heard in the last few years about the Saints being in “cap hell” because they keep “kicking the can down the road.” Looking at Spotrac, NO has negative $87 million in cap space for next year, basically double the next closest team (LAC). I know teams can create cap space by either restructuring a contract (backloading a contract to create cap space in short term by reducing cap space in long term) or trading/releasing/waiving a player (and eating any dead cap). Haven’t they extensively restructured players’ contracts already? Do they have any ability to “kick the can down the road” anymore? And regarding trading/waiving/releasing players, this seems unlikely with any big contract players because of their dead cap hit, correct?

Can someone give me a rundown on what next year will look like for them? Either specific players’ contracts or in gerneral. Thanks.

At the beginning of the season, the map is divided into 32 regions, each controlled by a team in the NFL. When a team defeats another team, if the defeated team controls any land, that land is taken by the winner.

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Week 11

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Territory Changes

No territory was taken this week

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Album of all maps

GIF through Week 11

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Leaderboard

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The Browns have held the most territory this season (47).

The Bears, Panthers, Patriots, Titans, and Vikings are tied for least territory held (1).

To get these scores, I gave each team a point for each territory they held per week (so if a team held 4 territories for 5 weeks, they would get 20 points)

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Upcoming Battles

The 49ers are battling the Seahawks

The Lions are battling the Packers

The Texans are battling the Jaguars

The Broncos and the Browns are battling for control of the largest swath of land

https://x.com/rapsheet/status/1727035812284399739?s=46&t=Y_iF95oz2xHElTcE_rZE6A

They’ve won 4 in a row which is tied for the most with the Eagles. Before this the jaguars had the longest win streak with 5 which was snapped 2 weeks ago. Imagine telling this to someone last year

Brock Purdy is #1 in NFL QB efficiency by a huge margin playing behind a 49ers' offensive line that ranks #28 in pass-blocking grade.

@benbbaldwin 's graph shows just how much of an outlier Purdy is:

[Schatz] I've run some "best team ever" and "best defense ever" DVOA lists in recent weeks. Here's an update on "best offense ever by DVOA." Hello, 2023 49ers. Remember that DVOA is normalized to each year, which is how you end up with the 1984 Dolphins on here with modern teams.

In light of the Matt Canada firing, which coach or coordinator needs to kick rocks? What was the play or game that made you say, "lemme grab my pitch fork"?

Will the Greatest player of all-time convince you it’s a bad product or is it all just a religion for y’all at this point?

"I think the coaching isn't as good as it was..I don't think the development of young players is as good as it was. I don't think the schemes are as good as they were.” Tom Brady

https://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/38951659/tom-brady-bemoans-nfl-play-says-there-lot-mediocrity

...until it wasn't.

Imagine a Browns team with a healthy offensive line (missing 3 starters: Conklin, Wills, Forbes), a healthy Nick Chubb, a healthy former top 5 young QB prospect, a serviceable backup qb (Brissett, Doubs), and a tight end who can catch the ball. I get it... all teams have injuries... and miss signings...

Blew the game against the Steelers after Chubb went down with the Watson fumble TD with 7 mins to go, lost by 4.

Blew the game against the Seahawks with a 3rd string qb due to a pick at midfield with 2 minutes left, up 3, give up a TD in 1 minute.

Blew the Ravens game by starting DTR against a good D his first game on short notice (would've happened either way).

...and the Browns are still 7-3. Easily could be 9-1 without the collapses and healthy. We could seriously be considering Browns vs. Chiefs in the AFC Championship and Browns vs Lions in the Superbowl (not a serious ambition anymore).

But the Browns is the Browns.

With the season presumably lost with the Brown's losses and the remnants vying to keep the dream alive, we can imagine what a Browns run to the Superbowl would have looked like; having Jim Schwartz come in first year leading the best Defense in the league with Myles and Ward causing havoc, best complimentary offense with the best running back Chubby and Watson coming into his own in the 2nd half of the season, and a fucking really big dick kicker (our only hope). Now we can never do more than imagine a glorious 2nd round exit.

It was the Brown's year... until it wasn't. Until next year!

-Browns fans

Hypothetical stats:

• His current completion percentage is 67.1%. If every dropped ball had been caught, his completion percentage would be 74% which would be 4% better than any other starting QB (Brock Purdy at 70%) in the league.

• If the Chiefs had the average amount of dropped balls (11) instead of the most (26), Mahomes completion percentage would be 71% for best in the league.

Just a hypothetical obviously, but after his Stephen A segment talking about the mediocre play happening right now in the league (which, I mean, he isn't wrong) do you think Tom Brady as a former player would make a good NFL Commissioner?

With Tom Brady clutching at ownership, and with his "GOAT" mentality, would he serve as a benefit to the game if he focused on a higher position within the NFL management Assuming he would even be interested in that to begin with.

What do you guys think?

Discuss

ptdotme's NFL Elo Power Rankings After Week 11

(By popular demand, see the rankings without the influence of last year's season-ending ratings in my comment below, or here.)

For this week, the model has been tweaked to slightly increase the value of wins and slightly decrease the importance of margin of victory. As always, this change was only implemented because it increased the accuracy of the model. Again, this was only a slight change so you won't see a big change in the power rankings -- teams went up or down a few Elo rating points and a few pairs of similarly-rated teams swapped rankings.

This is OC. I’ve written code to calculate NFL team Elo ratings^1 on a week to week basis. The goal is to use simple Elo ratings to create power rankings without the influence of human bias and emotion. The ratings are based on each team's rating from the previous week, with a "parity reset" applied every offseason. The model has been tested for accuracy against game outcomes since week 1 of the 2012^2 season. The ratings are derived only from each game's score, venue, and date. There are a number of variables/weights in my secret sauce but otherwise they're fairly conservative, basic, Elo ratings.

This is all a work in progress and feedback is appreciated! See more stats and info on my 2023 NFL Elo Power Rankings page.

Note: You may feel teams are ranked too high or low based on recent games, and you may be right. However, the model has been tested and is more accurate when it doesn't overreact to individual games. The goal is model accuracy, not rankings that "look right." ^(2)  

The top 4 teams won handily. The Ravens' Elo rating got a boost from a big win after Burrow went down, and the Bengals have nearly fallen out of the top 10. The Eagles were slight Elo underdogs at the Chiefs, and picked up a couple Elo points from their win last night. The Browns beat a weaker Steelers team by a smaller than expected margin, and thus lost an Elo rating point and didn't return to the top 10. The Jaguars had a nice win and skipped over a few closely bunched teams to get back into the top 10.

The Buccs, Steelers, Broncos, and Texans are all rated nearly the same, so their ordering from 17th-20th isn't meaningful.

The Broncos are on a league-leading 4-game, +33 Elo hot streak (the Raiders, Bears, and Steelers are on 3-game Elo hot streaks). The Jets are on a 4-game -29 Elo cold streak (the Titans, Panthers, Seahawks, and Patriots are on 3-game cold streak).

^(1)See Wikipedia. Elo ratings are numeric and assigned to each contestant. The ratings are used to estimate performance. After each game, the difference between a contestant's estimated and actual performance is used to update their rating. For the NFL, this can all be summarized as "Who did you beat/lose to and by how much? And who have they beaten/lost to and by how much? And who have they beaten/lost to ...

^(2)Moving backward through the years, each preceding season has a much smaller impact on the current ratings. Team ratings from 2010 have zero impact on today's ratings. Ratings from only a couple years ago, say 2021, have almost no effect on today's ratings. Seasons going back to 2010 are only used by the model to ensure its accuracy over thousands of NFL games.  

All they talk about is odds and parlays.

With rules favouring the offenses so heavily in the NFL, I believe that the intentional grounding penalty should come with an additional loss of down.

Meaning say it’s 3rd and 10, QB doesn’t get out of pocket, ball doesn’t get to line of drum mags, no receiver etc etc and he throws it away, i think it should be a dead spot foul, but the ball is now turned over to the opposing team. The 4th down should be nullified.

I think the defense should be rewarded for great coverage with additional pressure.

Arrowhead Stadium — home of the Kansas City Chiefs — had the highest percentage of players (17.9 percent) vote it as the best NFL stadium among the 84 players who responded to the question. The Minnesota Vikings’ U.S. Bank Stadium (13.7 percent), the Los Angeles Rams and Chargers’ SoFi Stadium (8.9 percent), the Green Bay Packers’ Lambeau Field and the Seattle Seahawks’ Lumen Field (both 8.3 percent) followed in the rankings for best stadium.

Players also sounded off on the league’s worst venues to play in, with the New York Jets and Giants’ MetLife Stadium outranking the others (18.4 percent) in that category. The Washington Commanders’ FedEx Field (13.9 percent) and Buffalo Bills’ Highmark Stadium (12.7 percent) were the other top vote-getters for the worst stadium to play in.