*Behind Enemy Lines: A Look at Impact Plays by DL

[Dylandeluxe]

[div align=\\\"center\\\"]Behind Enemy Lines
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*This article started over a heated debate between myself and @IsaStarcrossed over the value of a for loss and the value of a sack in the NSFL. So I wanted to give Isa a shoutout for being the inspiration for this media piece.*


Grading Formula:
These values were come up by myself and probably have plenty of fallacies if we deep dive into it but I thought it was a fun way to examine the impact DL across the league had this year.

Tackles For Loss Impact: 4.17
Collectively the league rushed for 14,715 yards on 3521 carries. I divided the rushing total by total carries to come up with this number. The logic being that a tackle in the backfield would prevent on average a gain of 4.17 yards across the league.

Sacks Impact: 7.06
Collectively the league passed for 34361 yards on 4870 passing attempts. The logic above was also applied here, a sack would on average prevent a 7.06 yard passing play.

Forced Fumbles & Fumble Recoveries: 10
It was hard to deep dive and quantify a given value for this but I knew I wanted to give some sort of bonus for these stats so I settled on 10 points for both. While not always plays behind the line of scrimmage, both are huge impact plays.

Tackles: N/A
Tackles are even more difficult to assign a value to and I decided to leave them off. I know that leaves off a valid stat to evaluate by but I am unsure how to approach it.


The Rankings:

NSFL
First I will show the Pre-Bonus rankings of the defensive lineman this season.
This does not factor in Forced Fumbles and Fumble Recoveries.
We see Gingsberg's mix of sacks and a DL leading 12 tackles for loss gives him the pre-bonus #1 spot.
Baldari led all rookies with a 10.9 lead over the next leading rookie Virtanen.



Finally we will factor in the FF and FR bonus and get our final ranking.
Dick Wizardry moves into the top spot with a league leading impact score of 97.33.
Faux also climbs from 6 to 2, while Gingsberg falls to 4.
Moore helped his case the most with these bonuses climbing from 13th to 3rd!




Now a quick look at both rankings for the DSFL
DSFL
Passing yards value is adjusted to 6.26
Rushing value has been adjusted 5.02
These are for DSFL accumulated passing and rushing yards




This was fun for me to research for my self so I thought I'd share with you guys!
I am sure there are plenty of ways to improve these formulas but I figured I'd do one for my own. I may explore ways to do other positions.

[IsaStarcrossed]

This took a ton of research and effort on your part, man. Hell of a job in going above and beyond. It's incredible what you did here and made for a fascinating read. Well done!

[Hallmonitor_20]

Now this is a baseball level of analytics.

But why should their WAR be looked at for HoF voters?

[Modern_Duke]

Good stuff. I would say sacks should be worth even more as they result in negative yardage, not 0 yards. Estimate maybe 5 yard loss?

[Dylandeluxe]

Good stuff. I would say sacks should be worth even more as they result in negative yardage, not 0 yards. Estimate maybe 5 yard loss?

It's definitely something I considered. I've always been a stats guy in the sense of i know stats off my brain but never an analytics guy so this is my first foray into the realm.

I was working off the site index and not the sim file so I'd have to look if it tracks accumulative lost yards on sacks but the reasoning I didn't want to factor it in was to not weigh the sacks side of things to unbalanced. Guys like Gingsberg would shoot down the list so I thought examining yards potentially stopped would be a somewhat balanced approach.

[AdamS]

This is amazing. Exactly the kind of thing I'd like to see an awards committee using.

Yes yes I know I got number one somehow. Just ignore that

[Sermokala]

This is some really good work. You see a lot of people inventing stats or combining stats to try to make something make sense but this isa very reasonable and logical take on stats that are hard to argue.

I would have argued in the sim sacks are nothing more then another TFL but connecting the TFL to the running game and sacks to the passing game makes a ton of sense that surprises me that I didn't think of before.

A big problem I feel with analytics in general is that stats become abstract and lose their basis as they become more derivative but this keeps grounded.