Does Te'o get his job back?

[sandiego17]

If Flight of the Concords played NT for the Chargers, and Kids in the Hall played NT for Atlanta, would there be a metric to determine how we feel about tailgating with only fish tacos - and no BBQ OR ribs? How about if the only grill utensils were plastic forks? I rest my case.

That only goes to prove my point. Fish tacos are made of fish most of the time and fish are faster than cows, pigs or even chickens. Chickens can't fly, some fish can, but I think chickens wish they could fly.

:sprite:

[sandiego17]

Have you ever been in a science class? When you try to see what happens as a result of changing one variable, you do your best to keep the other variables fixed. Why? Because if you let the other variables change, then your result is a reflection of a combination of factors and not necessarily the result of just the change in the variable you are trying to study.

Nope. I dropped out of school after preschool. If by 4 you haven't learned everything you need to be successful, that's on you.

You and Steve have been guilty of violating this concept with respect to assessing what the effect of having a good run actually is--from day one.

Me and Steve? :shifty: How did you know? Are you stalking me?

All I have said is that if you make the run defense better, the whole defense overall will be better. That assumes everything else stays the same. If you change other variables, you have just left the scope of my assertion.

First, that's not all you have said. Second, you don't have unlimited resources and there are such things as roster limitations. Nobody here wouldn't want Jamal in his prime, or even just past his prime. Its a disagreement on your making it a prerequisite to be successful.

In your examples, all of the other variables are changed. We were more suspect against the run against CIN than against DEN, but we overcame that because of better time of possession, better net turnovers, better pass defense and better offensive production. That does nothing to undermine any of the points I have made. That doesn't mean we played good run defense against CIN.

My example? You brought up the Denver game when mocking TTK's points post. I just showed you that the Bolts played better vs. the run vs. Denver in a loss than vs. the Bengals in a win, if using YPC. The fact that other factors were more important to the different outcomes, well....I completely agree. Other factors were much more important. What's your point again?

Finally, as for Soliai, I said that I thought he could help us but that ATL paid too much for him. You do get that when I heard the price paid by the Falcons for Soliai, I immediately stated that he was not worth that much, right? He was believed by me to be the best true NT out there on the free agent market at that time. Even if Soliai's individual performance has fallen off, a proposition that has not been established by any cited stat in this thread, all that would mean is that Soliai is not as good as he used to be. That does nothing to undercut anything I have said about the importance of having a good NT.

He's been bad, even if he was at the vet minimum.

[blahblahblah]

Have you ever been in a science class? When you try to see what happens as a result of changing one variable, you do your best to keep the other variables fixed. Why? Because if you let the other variables change, then your result is a reflection of a combination of factors and not necessarily the result of just the change in the variable you are trying to study.

You and Steve have been guilty of violating this concept with respect to assessing what the effect of having a good run actually is--from day one.

All I have said is that if you make the run defense better, the whole defense overall will be better. That assumes everything else stays the same. If you change other variables, you have just left the scope of my assertion.

I saw all of the playoff losses I cited. Lack of run defense in the second half killed us in those games against NE, PIT and the NYJ. I was at the Jets game. I can guarantee you that we win that game if Greene does not run all over us for a TD and I would have liked our chances even with the Greene run if we had made the final third down stop that we blew because our run defense was not very good.

In your examples, all of the other variables are changed. We were more suspect against the run against CIN than against DEN, but we overcame that because of better time of possession, better net turnovers, better pass defense and better offensive production. That does nothing to undermine any of the points I have made. That doesn't mean we played good run defense against CIN.

Further, YPC against is my go to stat for run defense, not for all defense. It may not be perfect, but over a whole season, it usually does a pretty good job of sorting out the good run defenses from the bad ones. Total yards is crap.

Finally, as for Soliai, I said that I thought he could help us but that ATL paid too much for him. You do get that when I heard the price paid by the Falcons for Soliai, I immediately stated that he was not worth that much, right? He was believed by me to be the best true NT out there on the free agent market at that time. Even if Soliai's individual performance has fallen off, a proposition that has not been established by any cited stat in this thread, all that would mean is that Soliai is not as good as he used to be. That does nothing to undercut anything I have said about the importance of having a good NT.

Mr. Almost a Mathematician has never heard of multivariate analysis.

[TTK]

That only goes to prove my point. Fish tacos are made of fish most of the time and fish are faster than cows, pigs or even chickens. Chickens can't fly, some fish can, but I think chickens wish they could fly.

:sprite:

The sprite logo is pretty much what this thread needs at this point.

[Panamamike]

Have you ever been in a science class? When you try to see what happens as a result of changing one variable, you do your best to keep the other variables fixed. Why? Because if you let the other variables change, then your result is a reflection of a combination of factors and not necessarily the result of just the change in the variable you are trying to study.

You and Steve have been guilty of violating this concept with respect to assessing what the effect of having a good run actually is--from day one.

All I have said is that if you make the run defense better, the whole defense overall will be better. That assumes everything else stays the same. If you change other variables, you have just left the scope of my assertion.

I saw all of the playoff losses I cited. Lack of run defense in the second half killed us in those games against NE, PIT and the NYJ. I was at the Jets game. I can guarantee you that we win that game if Greene does not run all over us for a TD and I would have liked our chances even with the Greene run if we had made the final third down stop that we blew because our run defense was not very good.

In your examples, all of the other variables are changed. We were more suspect against the run against CIN than against DEN, but we overcame that because of better time of possession, better net turnovers, better pass defense and better offensive production. That does nothing to undermine any of the points I have made. That doesn't mean we played good run defense against CIN.

Further, YPC against is my go to stat for run defense, not for all defense. It may not be perfect, but over a whole season, it usually does a pretty good job of sorting out the good run defenses from the bad ones. Total yards is crap.

Finally, as for Soliai, I said that I thought he could help us but that ATL paid too much for him. You do get that when I heard the price paid by the Falcons for Soliai, I immediately stated that he was not worth that much, right? He was believed by me to be the best true NT out there on the free agent market at that time. Even if Soliai's individual performance has fallen off, a proposition that has not been established by any cited stat in this thread, all that would mean is that Soliai is not as good as he used to be. That does nothing to undercut anything I have said about the importance of having a good NT.

How do you propose to do that without a common data set? Unless you were playing common opponents, you would need to normalize the data before analyzing it. Adjusting for an opponents strength/weakness would be one way to do this.

fWIW that is what a lot of the advanced metrics attempt to do. Are they perfect...no. but they are increasingly valued by teams to analyze situational performance.

[Yubaking]

Such a bunch of bullshit here. So delusional.

Even more bullshit about running for first downs. Teams generally shouldn't be able to just run down the field. It's awful. running for first downs is essentially the other team imposing it's will.

By the way, only analysis you have ever cited is worthless yards.

Hilarious! You stepped in dog manure again.

Okay, so DVOA dogshit is meaningful and it says we are a good run defense, right? Surrendering first downs via the run makes ATL a bad run defense in your view, right?

Per ExBKR, ATL has surrendered 33 rushing first downs and we have surrendered 21 of them. Okay, but we're not done yet. ATL has faced 1.56 times the number of carries that we have faced. You do get that, right?

So, multiplying our first downs by 1.56 will give us the number of rushing first downs that we would have surrendered playing at our current rate of play if teams had carried the ball as much against us as they have against ATL. Rounding to the nearest whole number, when you perform that mathematical operation, the number of first downs yielded is...33. That would be the same 33 that ATL has given up on the ground. So we yield first downs via the run at the same rate per carry that ATL does, which makes us...a bad run defense, contrary to what DVOA BS has to say, by your own analysis. Other teams have the same rate of ability to impose their will against us as they do ATL.

If you had studied the ATL run TDs surrendered, you would find that most of them were very short (3 yards or less). The "long" runs were 4, 6 and 13 yards (on a QB scramble). ATL is the worst pass defense in the league, so teams can pass and run against them all the way down the field and when they get the ball in close, they decide to run it in for the TD (probably because it is less risky than trying to pass for the TD). Their pass defense is last and their run defense is 22nd. They are going to have their backs against the wall a lot with that kind of profile and they are going to give up a lot of TDs.

Also, you can't ignore the other side of the argument that you seem to be suggesting by highlighting my rushing TD argument and calling it BS. That is, ATL is leading the league in fewest pass TDs surrendered by a team that has played 4 games. So if giving up TDs on the ground makes a run defense bad, then not giving them up in the air must make a pass defense good. So ATL has the best pass defense in the league, right? But they don't. It is dead last, awful and horribad. The point is that number of TDs surrendered by either run or pass defense is just an indication of the kind of play the final play of the drive was and nothing more without additional information.

So could it be that that teams drove the ball down and could have scored either way, but chose the easiest way most often with 3 yards or less to go on most of the scores? In studying the TDs, that's what it looks like.

[Yubaking]

Mr. Almost a Mathematician has never heard of multivariate analysis.

I have heard of it, but have no practical experience with it. It has literally been 28 years since I last studied mathematics of any kind (advanced calculus then). If you count statistics, then 26-27 years ago, a long time ago either way.

I have not seen an application of multivariate analysis to what we have been discussing. I am sure it would take considerable study and effort for me to break it down (given my lack of exposure to it) to have an opinion about it if such an analysis were to exist herein.

[Yubaking]

How do you propose to do that without a common data set? Unless you were playing common opponents, you would need to normalize the data before analyzing it. Adjusting for an opponents strength/weakness would be one way to do this.

fWIW that is what a lot of the advanced metrics attempt to do. Are they perfect...no. but they are increasingly valued by teams to analyze situational performance.

I agree that it is problematic, but I think it is common sense that if you improve the run defense, the overall defense will be better if you keep the pass defense the same. I think it can be shown that our run defense is not strong right now. It isn't the worst ever or anything, but we have kind of gotten a pass so far because the one good running team we played only ran 13 times against us and no team has run more than 41% of the time against us (seemingly low for the greatest percentage among 4 opponents).

Everything looks fine now because the perceived weakness is not being stressed. I am hoping we can hold up on defense if/when that happens, but I have my concerns.

[Beerman]

The 1 good running team? That's rich.

Buffalo led the league in rushing attempts last year. They were also leading it prior to us playing them I believe (and was the main reason they were 2-0 prior to facing us). Arizona is a team built around running the football as well. Seattle was UNABLE to run on us (or pass for that matter).

You keep saying if only teams would start running on us. Do you not watch the games? When they do, we have guessed correctly with run blitzes a lot of the times this year. Stopping 1 run is all it takes to force a team to throw it. It's not a difficult concept. Steve has tried explaining it to you, but you simply refuse to listen.

Lastly, no one is saying we are a good run defense - we are AN AVERAGE run defense. I specifically stated that with the rankings from the football outsiders article. We were never going to be great, we simply didn't build the team that way. However, we are doing enough with what we have. We are by no means one of the worst run D's in the league, much how ATL is. Not even close despite your misguided attempts to show we are (with no shred of proof to boot). Laughable really.

The key to the defense this season has been forcing teams to throw it on us - We are excelling on the edges vs. #1 and #2 WR's ranking 5th and 2nd respectively in yards allowed vs. them. We need to improve between the hash marks and in the flats vs. RB's.

[Guest]

FYI guys, I have developed a macro for vBulletin that allows you to automatically scroll past Yuba's posts in any thread. I am selling the plug-in for $0.99. I expect to be able to retire in an hour.

[richpjr]

Too funny SC!

[KNSD]

The sprite logo is pretty much what this thread needs at this point.

:sprite: :sprite: :sprite: :sprite: :sprite: :sprite: :sprite: :sprite: :sprite: :sprite: :sprite: :sprite: