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Correlations Between Punting and Defense and Punting and Winning
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Well, you guys think I'm a nut... So here it is, the data you've all been waiting so patiently for. I've included the Excel Workbook I used. the 20##P tabs are punting stats, the 20##D are defensive stats with correlations to punting, and the 20##WL tabs are W/L records with correlations to punting. I even made a sheet with all the glorious data in one spot.
There is no strong correlation between having a good punter and how good an NFL defense is and there is no strong correlation between having a good punter and win percentage. So, next time you want to defend a contract to a punter for millions per year, I'm going to tell you that you're an idiot. So long as a punter is NFL caliber, he's simply good enough. Below are the correlation coefficients. I'll leave it to you folks to pour through the rest of it on your own.
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News flash:
Dustin Colquitt isn’t making 4 mil per year on his new contract like you said which is what originally started this debate. It’s a slightly above average deal. Also, I don’t think anybody would expect a good punter to have much of a correlation to winning statistically, since they’re ****ing punters. That still doesn’t mean it’s useless to have a good one week in and week out. You know what’s worse? Paying a guy like Donald Stephenson 4 mil per which is the kind of shitty contract a lot of teams have. Now, go show us some analytics on short WR’s as proof Tyreek Hill won’t work out at WR! :rolleyes: |
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If a punter doesn't have much correlation to winning, why over pay or pay one more than the minimum? |
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Colquitt isn’t being overpayed like he was the last two years. I’m not defending that contract. This one is slightly above average though, and I understand why they chose to keep him around, even though I probably would’ve let him walk. |
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I just wasn't sure where the hate towards kccrow was coming from. Seems he's got the data here to show what he's stating. |
I think people tend to get confused about analytics and probabilities.
For instance, you used short wr's. I'd imagine there would be a certain size that tends to be more successful. Doesn't mean that a shorter one can't be or whatever. |
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He just annoys me sometimes because he thinks he knows more than the pros when he’s just another idiot on a message board like us, hence me bringing up his stupid take on Hill. |
Looks to me like it's 2.5 mil average for the next 3 years
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But I didn't see where he posted that so I won't comment on it. |
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One more thing, we’re paying our Kicker peanuts and have been for most, if not all, of Reid’s tenure. That certainly softens the blow of overpaying a little for a good/reliable Punter.
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Just because they're paying one position peanuts doesn't mean it's still not an issue to overpay another spot that doesn't necessarily bring value. You could pay your kicker and punter less and use that money for a different spot that makes a bigger difference. I think it's obvious however, that the front office and coaching staff here value the punter more than Kccrow does, but that doesn't make it wrong |
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Yeah, I wouldn't go that far
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All bullshit aside, I like Kccrow and what he brings to the board, so I don’t want to come off like a dick. Thanks for putting in all the work you do man!
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Yeah, I'm trying to remember the last good team to have a shitty punter though?
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Any team with a good enough Offense couldn't give much of a shit about the punter
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You don't like my takes, then go quote the idiots at PFF that are nothing more than a bunch of Brittish douchebags sitting behind a computer desk, eating nachos and haven't so much as even played the game. Better yet, block me. I'll be blocking your ass. |
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LMAO
You’re such a ****ing pussy I should’ve known you couldn’t handle it. Didn’t you threaten to leave forever because somebody hurt your feelings? Your talent evaluation skills suck ass anyways. I was just trying to be nice. |
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You're just another dumbass piece of shit that doesn't bring anything of quality to this board, but sure likes to prance around calling everyone else's shit garbage. Dumbass mother****er. |
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You talking like you’re the baddest mother****er on the planet (no pun intended) is absolutely hilarious though. Real badasses know there’s always somebody badder. That’s how I know you’re full of shit. |
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LMAO |
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I didn't read thru the thread but I can tell you that punter from texas can win a game for you. When you drop 27 punts in one game on the 1 yard line your defense should get at minimum 3 safetys. 6-0 wins every time.
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lol this thread got fun
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say that to my face ****er not online and see what happens
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I've skipped a lot of posts in here because of all the shade being thrown, but I was just wondering if a punter has as much value as a holder for kicks as he does for punting.
I doubt there are stats correlating missed kicks with blame on the kicker/holder/snapper though to be able to dig into this? |
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I'm not sure those are the right things to be measuring.
To really determine the effectiveness of a good punter you'd have to measure the effect he has on the defense, not directly correlating a team with good defense to the quality of their punter. Does having a top five punter in the league v. a replacement level punter keep points off the board, does it make teams have to drive more of the field to score? A good defense doesn't need a great punter to be good, but how much better does having a great punter make a good defense? That's the question that needs to be asked. Anecdotally, I would point to the Texas v. Mizzou bowl game last year for what an elite punter can do to a teams offense. If you want to tell me that Mizzou starting over 1/2 of their drives inside their own 15 yard line didn't have an affect on that game I have a bridge in New York I'd like to sell ya. |
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Post your data up in a google drive spreadsheet. |
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Just so you know, I did correlate the number of punts inside the 20 versus points per game and yards per game by defenses. The data you want is there.
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Which is how much better does a top 5 punter v. a replacement level punter effect the game. Simplistically posting points and ypg and then the correlation between that and the number of times a punter puts the ball inside the 20 is a poor metric. A very basic take down of that metric is the fact that teams with poor offenses will tend to have a higher usage rate of their punter, giving that punter, regardless of his quality, more chances to knock down punts inside the 20 yard line. The Jets had the most punts in the NFL in 2017 and the 3rd most punts knocked down inside the 20. The Jets also had one of the poorest offenses in the NFL in 2017. The Jets also had one of the lowest % of punts inside the 20 in the NFL last season. Your metrics are way too basic to be evaluating the impact a great punter has on a team. Which, is why the formula needs to be built to determine the effect that a great punter over replacement level has on a team. You can't directly marry punting average/IN 20, net, etc., to defensive rankings and call it a day. A more compelling measurement would be the % of punts inside the 20 yard line. From a high level 8 of the top 10 teams in the NFL last year in that statistic were in the top 15 in the league in defensive points per game. 6 of the top 10 in PPG were also top 10 in % of total punts inside the 20. You need to determine how much better or worse a team would be with a great punter. Does having a great punter mean instead of giving up 21.3 points a game the team now gives up 20.5? If so, what value does that give to the teams over the course of a season. Your simplistic tables and expression of the statistics don't get the job done. |
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Here is PTS/G and %IN 20 Rank Sorted Low to High
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Here is YDS/G and %IN 20 Ranks Sorted Low to High Team Yds/G %IN 20 Rank
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I also ran the correlations on PTS/G to %IN 20 and YDS/G to %IN 20 and they are here:
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I read something you said wrong, looking at it now
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Ok, so you weren't wrong to say 8 of the top 10 in PPG were top 15 in Punts inside the 20%. However, this theory doesn't really hold up in other years in the data set. Also, I've shown no strong correlation. There also isn't a strong correlation between YDS/G and Punts inside the 20 %.
Despite the fact that we haven't found any strong indicator that punting affects defense in a meaningful way this did prompt me to do one more data set, and that is Win % versus Punt IN 20 % and that has given the strongest correlation of all data.
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This is surprising, because one would expect that if they did affect W% they'd also affect Defensive performance. That really doesn't seem to be the case. |
Number of teams in the top 10 in % of Punts IN 20 that were also in top 15 in PTS/G
2017: 8 2016: 6 2015: 5 2014: 6 2013: 5 What this tells me is that if you have a punter that is in the top 30% of the league in % IN 20, then you've got about a 60% chance of being in the top half the league in PTS/G. But, if you have one of the 70% of the rest of the punters, you still have a 40% shot... However, 2017 skews the data and if we were to regress that value more towards the mean (6), we'd end up closer to a 55%/45% split. More to follow... |
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The Texas punter was the MVP of that bowl game. He’s a helluva punter. |
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The point of it all, to me, is to ask yourself whether or not it's actually worth spending high dollars on a "great" punter when, statistically, it really doesn't make much of a (if any) difference? If you can spend low draft capital, or even sign a punter as an UDFA, and he will perform in line with NFL standards at the position, there isn't a clear statistic that I've found that correlates it being any worse than the best in the game over the long-haul. One thing I'm looking into right now is the differences between punters that are 1 standard deviation below the mean in terms of IN 20 % and those that are 1 standard deviation above the mean. This should give me a better idea of impact of a bad punter versus great punter. |
Number of Punters above and below one standard deviation from the mean by year:
2017: >1STDEV = 5, <1STDEV = 3 2016: >1STDEV = 6, <1STDEV = 4 2015: >1STDEV = 6, <1STDEV = 6 2014: >1STDEV = 7, <1STDEV = 8 2013: >1STDEV = 2, <1STDEV = 5 Here are the approximate ranges within 1STDEV of the mean, so the data I worked with were for punters above and below these: 2017 1STDEV = 42.98% to 30.42% 2016 1STDEV = 44.69% to 29.99% 2015 1STDEV = 42.29% to 27.85% 2014 1STDEV = 41.68% to 28.90% 2013 1STDEV = 41.41% to 28.59% I combined these into 1 list to get some data, and so I ended up with 26 punters in total in each category. >1STDEV Average %IN20 = 46.4% (Min 42.5%) Average W% = 59.6% Average PTS/G = 20.9 Average YDS/G = 344.4 <1STDEV Average %IN20 = 26.1% (Max 30.0%) Average W% = 35.1% Average PTS/G = 24.2 Average YDS/G = 352.6 If I take the data set as a whole I get the following correlations: IN20% to YDS/G = -0.140 IN20% to PTS/G = -0.430 IN20% to W% = 0.565 What I've learned. It is better to have a great punter in terms of %IN20 than an absolutely shitty punter. That said, overall that means you need to find a punter that is within 1STDEV of the mean or better. It may indicate as well that if you have a punter that is better than one standard deviation from the mean, he is an advantage. In case you're curious, here's the best and worst through the past 5 years in terms of %IN 20.
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Looking into Net Average, in the same way I looked at %IN 20, I came away with results that indicate Net Average is not a factor.
Number of Punters above and below one standard deviation from the mean by year: 2017: >1STDEV = 5, <1STDEV = 4 2016: >1STDEV = 5, <1STDEV = 4 2015: >1STDEV = 5, <1STDEV = 5 2014: >1STDEV = 5, <1STDEV = 6 2013: >1STDEV = 5, <1STDEV = 3 Here are the approximate ranges within 1STDEV of the mean, so the data I worked with were for punters above and below these: 2017 1STDEV = 42.30 to 39.14 2016 1STDEV = 42.21 to 38.44 2015 1STDEV = 41.68 to 38.16 2014 1STDEV = 41.30 to 37.73 2013 1STDEV = 41.55 to 37.48 I combined these into 1 list to get some data, and so I ended up with 25 punters above and 22 punters below 1STDEV. >1STDEV Average Net = 42.9 Average W% = 50.75% Average PTS/G = 22.4 Average YDS/G = 348.2 <1STDEV Average Net = 37.2 Average W% = 47.44% Average PTS/G = 22.8 Average YDS/G = 337.7 If I take the data set as a whole I get the following correlations: NetAve to YDS/G = 0.164 NetAve to PTS/G = -0.080 NetAve to W% = 0.065 After seeing all of this data, I can pretty well conclude that the only real factor you need to look at with a punter is % inside the 20. That seems to be the only factor that has any significant impact on games and it seems to do so in terms of PTS/G and W%. Now the question is, at what point is there a cutoff where it no longer matters? This would tell me a reasonable break in what should define a punter "worth paying" versus one that isn't. My next question would be, at what point is the cutoff for bad punters? I'm working on formulating how I want to tackle these questions. Basically, I have to continue to include punters by %IN 20 in tiers until I reach a 50% mark for win percentage, IMO. If anyone has a suggestion, feel free to chip in. |
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With Mahomes now at QB with still a very suspect defense you need finesse punting more than ever pinning back the opposing offense giving your suspect defense more of a chance for a stop and why Colquit got paid. Veatch recognizes his defense needs help in the field position game for sure. |
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We also discussed looking at how offensive performance affects Punt Inside 20 %. I think there's a solid chance it is a factor. Just looking at the data I've poured through and the teams I see having punters at the worst end of that, like Buffalo, Cleveland, New York, etc, I just want to see how it looks. I've put way too much time into this tonight and I'm not any further. I'm looking for more beyond Dustin Colquitt though in all of this. I want to see if there really is a reason to pay a punter good money and when that situation should exist from a statistical perspective. I think I'm close to that answer now, but I don't know if I can take it much further. It's been forever since I got my undergrad degree in mathematics. I haven't used it for a very long time, especially anything beyond basic algebra because of the field I'm in. I don't' have the time nor do I remember much on multivariate analysis. I'd love to see someone that does take this to another level. It'd be interesting to see it. |
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