pbmax
07-05-2007, 01:33 PM
from Football Outsiders: http://www.footballoutsiders.com/2007/06/26/ramblings/dvoa-rankings/5208/
Read the whole article to find out about other interesting teams that year, this is just the Packer stuff.
You could spend a couple of days studying their statistical tools and definitions, but to bottomline it:
(DVOA is Defense Adjusted Value Over Average and DPAR is Defense Adjusted Points Above Replacement)
1. Team - Green Bay really dominated the league in 1996. The difference between Green Bay’s DVOA of 40.6% and second-place San Francisco’s DVOA of 29.4% is the second-largest of the DVOA era. (The first-place team with the biggest advantage in total DVOA was the 2001 Rams, 13.0% higher than second-place Philadelphia.) DVOA ranks the Packers first in defense, second in special teams, and third in offense.
2. Team - Eddie Epstein lists the 1996 Packers as the sixth best team of all-time in his book Dominance. One of his methods for judging teams is called Adjusted Power Index, based on standard deviations above the league average (a.k.a. "z-scores") in points and yards, both on offense and defense, all adjusted for schedule. The Packers have the highest API of any team in the book.
3. Season - WEIGHTED DVOA makes it look like the Packers were slowing down as they entered the postseason, but that’s a bit of a mirage caused by the technicalities of the WEIGHTED DVOA formula. Green Bay had four wins with single-game DVOA of 90% or greater, but that included the first three games of the season: a 34-3 stomping of Tampa Bay in Tony Dungy’s head coaching debut, a 39-13 drubbing of Philadelphia (and ex-Mike Holmgren assistants Ray Rhodes and Jon Gruden) on Monday Night Football, and a 42-10 blowout of San Diego. Those happen to be the three games which aren’t included in WEIGHTED DVOA by the end of the year. The Packers were not fading going into the postseason — they dipped in the middle of the year, but after their Week 8 bye, the three highest single-game DVOA ratings came in the last three weeks of the season as they beat Denver 41-6, Detroit 31-10, and Minnesota 38-10.
4. Favre and WRs - One of the amazing things about the 1996 Packers is that they dominated the league even though the receivers couldn’t stay healthy and weren’t necessarily that good when they did play. Brett Favre won the league MVP and definitely deserved it, leading the league’s quarterbacks with 83.2 DPAR even though he didn’t have a receiver in the top 20. Antonio Freeman ranked 22nd with 18.0 DPAR despite missing five games at midseason. Robert Brooks blew out his knee in Week 7, so he was unranked, but he had 10.5 DPAR before his injury. Don Beebe replaced him in the starting lineup and ranked 32nd in the NFL with 12.7 DPAR. Andre Rison had a -17.8% DVOA when the Jaguars told him to get lost after ten games; the Packers picked him up for the last month and he was even worse, with a DVOA of -36.3%. For the full year, Rison ranked 69th out of 71 receivers with -4.7 DPAR. Finally, Desmond Howard had 23 passes and an abysmal DVOA of -58.8%. He had seven catches on third down and was stopped short of a new first down on four of them. The best receiver on the team was probably tight end/H-back Keith Jackson, who finished second to Shannon Sharpe among tight ends with 20.4 DPAR.
5. Desmond - Although he couldn’t play wide receiver, Howard probably had the best punt-return season in NFL history. Howard remains the only player to win a Super Bowl MVP award because of what he did on special teams, but you may not remember just how amazing he was during the regular season itself. Howard had 875 yards on punt returns, which remains the NFL record. He dominated just as much based on our stats, which give the point value of field position gained on returns compared to the NFL average on punts of that distance, adjusted for weather and altitude. Howard is the only player to finish a season with punt returns worth more than 20 points of field position compared to league average. Looking at all five units that we measure in special teams, for 11 seasons, only Buffalo’s kick returns in 2005 (Terrence McGee) had more value than Green Bay’s punt returns in 1996.
Read the whole article to find out about other interesting teams that year, this is just the Packer stuff.
You could spend a couple of days studying their statistical tools and definitions, but to bottomline it:
(DVOA is Defense Adjusted Value Over Average and DPAR is Defense Adjusted Points Above Replacement)
1. Team - Green Bay really dominated the league in 1996. The difference between Green Bay’s DVOA of 40.6% and second-place San Francisco’s DVOA of 29.4% is the second-largest of the DVOA era. (The first-place team with the biggest advantage in total DVOA was the 2001 Rams, 13.0% higher than second-place Philadelphia.) DVOA ranks the Packers first in defense, second in special teams, and third in offense.
2. Team - Eddie Epstein lists the 1996 Packers as the sixth best team of all-time in his book Dominance. One of his methods for judging teams is called Adjusted Power Index, based on standard deviations above the league average (a.k.a. "z-scores") in points and yards, both on offense and defense, all adjusted for schedule. The Packers have the highest API of any team in the book.
3. Season - WEIGHTED DVOA makes it look like the Packers were slowing down as they entered the postseason, but that’s a bit of a mirage caused by the technicalities of the WEIGHTED DVOA formula. Green Bay had four wins with single-game DVOA of 90% or greater, but that included the first three games of the season: a 34-3 stomping of Tampa Bay in Tony Dungy’s head coaching debut, a 39-13 drubbing of Philadelphia (and ex-Mike Holmgren assistants Ray Rhodes and Jon Gruden) on Monday Night Football, and a 42-10 blowout of San Diego. Those happen to be the three games which aren’t included in WEIGHTED DVOA by the end of the year. The Packers were not fading going into the postseason — they dipped in the middle of the year, but after their Week 8 bye, the three highest single-game DVOA ratings came in the last three weeks of the season as they beat Denver 41-6, Detroit 31-10, and Minnesota 38-10.
4. Favre and WRs - One of the amazing things about the 1996 Packers is that they dominated the league even though the receivers couldn’t stay healthy and weren’t necessarily that good when they did play. Brett Favre won the league MVP and definitely deserved it, leading the league’s quarterbacks with 83.2 DPAR even though he didn’t have a receiver in the top 20. Antonio Freeman ranked 22nd with 18.0 DPAR despite missing five games at midseason. Robert Brooks blew out his knee in Week 7, so he was unranked, but he had 10.5 DPAR before his injury. Don Beebe replaced him in the starting lineup and ranked 32nd in the NFL with 12.7 DPAR. Andre Rison had a -17.8% DVOA when the Jaguars told him to get lost after ten games; the Packers picked him up for the last month and he was even worse, with a DVOA of -36.3%. For the full year, Rison ranked 69th out of 71 receivers with -4.7 DPAR. Finally, Desmond Howard had 23 passes and an abysmal DVOA of -58.8%. He had seven catches on third down and was stopped short of a new first down on four of them. The best receiver on the team was probably tight end/H-back Keith Jackson, who finished second to Shannon Sharpe among tight ends with 20.4 DPAR.
5. Desmond - Although he couldn’t play wide receiver, Howard probably had the best punt-return season in NFL history. Howard remains the only player to win a Super Bowl MVP award because of what he did on special teams, but you may not remember just how amazing he was during the regular season itself. Howard had 875 yards on punt returns, which remains the NFL record. He dominated just as much based on our stats, which give the point value of field position gained on returns compared to the NFL average on punts of that distance, adjusted for weather and altitude. Howard is the only player to finish a season with punt returns worth more than 20 points of field position compared to league average. Looking at all five units that we measure in special teams, for 11 seasons, only Buffalo’s kick returns in 2005 (Terrence McGee) had more value than Green Bay’s punt returns in 1996.