Mactbone: My impression is that Rex Grossman performs well when the team is up and plays poorly when the Bears are losing. I'm curious if his DVOA/DPAR is higher when the Bears are already up by 7/14 and lower when they're down 7/14 points. Of course, he could just play well when he has a short field and poorly when he actually has to put a drive together. Just trying to get a handle on the reason the Bears will win or lose in the playoffs.

Aaron Schatz: Thanks for the excellent question, Mactbone. It turns out that you are absolutely correct. When I measure scoring gap, I generally use 8 points as the guideline, since that's the maximum score you can get on just one drive. Here are Grossman's stats when the Bears are up by 9+ points, losing by 9+ points, or within 8 points either way.

Lose >8: -17.0 DPAR, -70.7% DVOA, 4.3 ypa, 4 INT
Within 8: 1.8 DPAR, -10.6% DVOA, 5.9 ypa, 7 INT
Win >8: 39.3 DPAR, 82.2% DVOA, 9.4 ypa, 0 INT

Wow, that would concern me if I was a Bears fan. Evil Rex seems to come out whenever the Bears are losing, and they're more likely to fall behind a good team they'll meet in the playoffs than they are to fall behind some team like Detroit.

How does this compare to other quarterbacks? I ran two other random guys with somewhat similar total value this year:

Here's Tom Brady:

Lose >8: 10.2 DPAR, 22.4% DVOA, 5.5 ypa, 0 INT
Within 8: 15.4 DPAR, 5.0% DVOA, 6.5 ypa, 8 INT
Win >8: 18.5 DPAR, 36.3% DVOA, 6.1 ypa, 1 INT

Brady seems to play looser in close games -- more yards, more turnovers -- but better overall when he either is coming back from behind or has a nice lead. Here's Steve McNair:

Lose >8: -0.2 DPAR, -14.0% DVOA, 6.5 ypa, 3 INT
Within 8: 11.8 DPAR, 2.0% DVOA, 5.7 ypa, 5 INT
Win >8: 5.0 DPAR, 2.8% DVOA, 5.0 ypa, 1 INT

I have no idea if this is actually a real trend that represents the Chicago offensive style, or Grossman himself, or if it is just random chance. One of the projects I hope to do for next year's book is a study of which "splits" represent actual skills and which are basically just random from year to year.

Post by Aaron Schatz

The NFL has added a few things to the official play-by-play this season, and one of the new stats is quarterback hits. These are now counted by looking for the defender's name in brackets after a pass. For example:

2-15-BLT 20(15:00) 9-S.McNair pass short middle to 85-D.Mason to BLT 25 for 5 yards (59-D.Edwards) [56-S.Merriman].

...means that Edwards made the tackle on the complete pass, but Merriman knocked McNair to the ground after he threw it.

Now that four weeks are in the books, I decided to go back and look at which teams and players were leading the league in this category, now that the data is finally available to the public. Here are your 2006 HIT leaders so far:

NE 28
CLE 23
BAL 21
DEN 17
TB 15
NO 14
STL 13
JAC 12

At the bottom is Detroit, with 3.

That list makes some sense, but it's a little odd. Cleveland doesn't exactly scare anyone on defense this year, and could the Patriots be that far ahead of the rest of the league? Anyway, I went to look at how many HITS had been recorded in each stadium so far this year, and here are your leaders:

NE 43
CLE 33
TB 22

Every other team in the NFL is between 2 and 16. Methinks that the official scorers in New England and Cleveland may not have the same definition of HIT as everyone else. This isn't an issue of those defenses, specifically -- the Pats have 23 HITS, their opponents 20, so the HITS are being divied up equally. There are just a few too many of them.

Anyway, these numbers can still be interesting, as long as we except that they are going to be a little off for New England, Cleveland, and (to a smaller extent) Buffalo, Denver, Baltimore, and New Orleans (the four opponents in Foxboro and Cleveland this season). Here's your list of which players lead the league in HITS so far:

L.Little, STL 7
K.Lang, DEN 6
R.Colvin, NE 6
K.Wimbley, CLE 6
R.Seymour, NE 5
C.Kelsay, BUF 5
K.Vanden Bosch, TEN 5
D.Ware, DAL 5

Of course, a quarterback is not hit only when making a pass. Sometimes, he'#### before a pass. If we're truly going to count quarterback hits, we should be counting sacks as well. (We could count scrambles, but I'll save that for another day.) Counting HITS + sacks, with 1/2 sack counting as a whole hit -- it isn't like you only knock down half a quarterback -- here are your QB HITS leaders:

L.Little, STL 10
B.Scott, BAL 10
K.Wimbley, CLE 9
R.Seymour, NE 8
C.Kelsay, BUF 8
B.Young, NO 8
A.Kampman, GB 8
T.Harris, CHI 8

I should note that I'm counting here both plays that counted and plays that were cancelled by penalties -- the quarterback feels that hit whether the offense gets a free five yards for illegal contact or not.

Finally, here's a list of quarterbacks who lead the league in HITS and SACKS. Again, no scrambles here, although I can make a list including those later in the season.

S.McNair, BAL 37
C.Frye, CLE 36
K.Warner, ARI 32
D.Culpepper, MIA 28
T.Brady, NE 28
J.P.Losman, BUF 28
C.Palmer, CIN 24

And down at the bottom, for QBs who have started every game:

D.Bledsoe, DAL 11
R.Grossman, CHI 11
P.Rivers, SD 3

Yes, the San Diego offense is the only offense in single digits for HITS plus SACKS. Impressive.

Bonus points if you know who sings the song that provides the title for this post! 

Post by Aaron Schatz