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*Project Pro Bowl - Modern_Duke - 08-26-2021 For this not-at-all self-serving media, I wanted to take an impartial look at who should make pro bowl and all-pro at center. Thanks to qWest's lovely statistical compilation sheet, here are the human centers this season: So I'll be brief and cut to the chase. I think we can disqualify Farley, Manclaw, McBobby, Skeeter, Mo, and Grey right off the bat, based on too many penalties, too many sacks allowed, or both. That leaves Bob, Project, and Miglaskems.  And its a tough cut because it's a very good season, but lastly I will take out Miglaskems - I just can't make an argument that would make his resume stand up to Bob's. That makes this a head to head battle between Bob and Project. Bob has the pancake lead on Project, but you'll notice that Project had a perfect season - 0 penalties and 0 sacks allowed. Only 1 other full time OL accomplished that this season, Berlin's Matt Krause. Hopefully that's enough I need to make my argument Project as the top Center, but just in case, let's take a closer look at these stats. Now, obviously there are not many stats to look at for OL, one positive (pancakes) and two negative (sacks allowed, and penalties). I'll start by focusing on the negative stats What is the cost of a sack? Hey wait a minute, neither Bob nor Project allowed a sack, why focus on this? Well we'll get there later, plus it's worth exploring anyway. The first thing I want to point out is that the 0 sacks allowed by Bob and Project are not equal. The reason for that is the Yeeti sure do love to throw the ball. Colorado threw the ball 724 yards, the most in the league, while Sarasota threw it 666 times (spooky). That's 58 more chances Project had to allow a sack and didn't. Leaguewide, Centers allowed a sack on 0.23% of passing plays. So, apply that to each player's volume, and Project allowed -1.65 sacks compared to what league average would be for that volume, while Bob allowed -1.52 compared to average. The obvious bad thing about a sack is the yards that you lose. If you give up a 7 yard sack, you have cost your team... *calculates*... 7 yards of field position. But that's not the only thing you lose, there is also the opportunity cost of missing out on a positive play. What the hell does that mean? The league average yards per attempt for quarterbacks is about 7. So, let's use an example. It's 1st and 10, and the quarterback drops back to pass. If he doesn't get sacked, on average you would expect the play to gain 7 yards, so now it's 2nd and 3. Instead, if the quarterback gets sacked for a 7 yard loss, it's now 2nd and 17. That 7 yard sack didn't actually cost the team 7 yards, it cost 14 yards. Let's put that on hold for now. What is the cost of a penalty? Now I may be thinking about this wrong, but unlike the sack example above, I don't consider any opportunity cost for a penalty. Again to use an example, if a 1st and 10 play results in a 10 yard penalty, it's 1st and 20 instead of 1st and 10. The team still has the opportunity to gain that average of 7 yards on 1st down, so there's no additional negative there. So while a 7 yard sack actually costs 14 yards, a 10 yard penalty just costs 10 yards. Simple enough? Now lets go back to the stats. As I mentioned, Project had a perfect season, and therefore had 0 negative stats. Bob meanwhile had negative 15 yards on his resume. Is that it? Oh heavens no. This wouldn't be my media without an unnecessary amount of data being pulled. What if I told you those aren't the only negative plays? What else is a negative play that an offensive lineman could be responsible for? How about tackles for loss. Now obviously 'tackles for loss allowed' isn't tracked on the index, but we can figure it out ourselves but looking at box scores and seeing how many TFLs opposing defenses racked up. But the center isn't responsible for all TFLs of course. A linebacker or defensive end could pick up a TFL on an outside run nowhere near the center. But what about defensive tackles? I think its fair to say that a center's assignment is always to block a defensive tackle. Let's isolate that So how did opposing DTs perform? I'll be the first to admit this isn't an exact science, but I just added up the stats for all opposing DTs. Some teams have 3, some teams have 1, but I considered them all the same. Bob's opposing DTs compiled 61 tackles, 11 TFL, 6 Sacks Project's opposing DTs compiled 63 tackles, 3 TFL, 7 Sacks Let's apply the opportunity cost from before to these numbers I'm sure that's very straight forward and easy to understand. But I'll explain just in case. The top row is just an estimate of how many yards are lost on each type of negative play. I used a 1 yard loss on average for each TFL, and a 7 yard loss on average for each sack. Those aren't really based on anything, just my estimates. Then I show the opportunity cost, so the average yards/rush and yards/pass attempt for Sarasota and Colorado respectively. Like I talked about before, those two numbers together are the real cost of the negative play. Then I multiplied that by the number of TFL and Sacks allowed to DTs. All in all, doing it this way shows total negative yardage of -113 yards for Project and -146 for Bob. This is just from negative plays though, so don't forget the 15 penalty yards that Bob picked up too, for a total of -161 yards. To summarize: The simple way has Bob with 15 more negative yards than Project The complicated way has Bob with 48 more negative yards than Project Now let's take a look at the positive plays: What is a pancake worth? I have no idea. ... Since there's no consistently good way to determine on which plays pancakes occurred, there's no real data to use for any kind of calculation on the positive impact of a pancake. But that doesn't mean we're stuck, it means there's just some level of subjectivity to this. Bob had 19 more pancakes than Project. Are 19 pancakes worth more than 15 to 48 yards? Or, does a single pancake result in +0.8 to +2.5 yards per play on average? That may not sound like a lot, but it is. Think of it this way, does a pancake from the center transform the running back from Jordan Howard (4.2 career yards per carry) into Derrick Henry (5.0 yards per carry)? What about transform the quarterback from Blaine Gabbert (6.1 career yards per attempt) into an even better Patrick Mahomes (8.4 yards per attempt)? I say no, thereby giving my unbiased vote to Project Should centers (and guards for that matter) even get pro bowl spots? What a stupid question, of course they should