SI Ranks Offensive Backfields

[GTripp0012]

Originally Posted by Brian Orakpo

Ive always liked the ypg defensive stat. Mainly because the ppg can be flawed if your offense puts the defense in bad field position on a regular basis.

Hopefully the Skins will have more sacks and turnovers this year with the additions they have made. Then the defense can take the next step to actually being a great defense.

YPG is less flawed than PPG, because the sample size is greater, but it still suffers from a lot of the same faults, like, per game stats doesn't tell you anything compared to per drive or per play stats.. It also correlates to winning poorly, since yard differential is way less predictive than point differential.

Put a different way, a team that ranks 1st in yards and 5th in points on offense is probably better than a team that ranks 1st in points and 5th in yards. This is simply because a team that has the ability to get the yards might not always have incentive to maximize points. But the team with the greater point differential is almost always the better team than the one with the greatest yard differential.