The Fumble and the Punishing Hitter

[sabotai]

Does Punishing Hitter help to cause fumbles? I've seen a lot of speculation from people that it indeed does create more fumbles. LET'S FIND OUT!

Hypothesis: A defensive player with a high "Punishing Hitter" rating will cause more fumbles when he tackles a player than a defensive player with a low "Punishing Hitter" rating.

Therefore, if a team was made up of defensive players who all had a high "Punishing Hitter" rating, that team should cause more fumbles than a team made up of defensive players who all had a low "Punishing Hitter" rating.

Procedure: I will run 10 seasons (the same season 10 times) with all defensive players on my team having a very low Punishing Hitter rating and record how many times each season their opponents fumble the ball. I will then run 10 seasons (the same season 10 times) with all defensive players on my team having a very high Punishing Hitter rating and record how many times each season their opponents fumble the ball.

As usual, injuries were turned off for this.

My players for "Very Low Punishing Hitter" seasons have a PH rating range of 0-17. For "Very High Punishing Hitter" seasons, it ranges from 85-100.

Very Low Punishing Hitter
226 Fumbles in 10 seasons for our opponents (22.6 per season, 1.4125 per game)

Very High Punishing Hitter
237 Fumbles in 10 seasons for our opponents (23.7 per season, 1.48125 per game)


Analysis: A slight increase in number of fumbles for very high Punishing Hitter ratings vs. very low Punishing Hitter ratings, but likely negligible. If Punishing Hitter did have any meaningful impact on the number of fumbles, you would expect a team made entirely of players at the upper limit of the rating to have a significant increase to the number of fumbles they forced vs a team made entirely of players at the lower end of the rating. However, in this test, it was an increase of 0.06875 fumbles per game. Statistically insignificant.

Conclusion: The Punishing Hitter rating is not taken into consideration when determing if a player fumbles the ball or not.


(Now watch Jim put it in his next patch just to make a liar out of me. :) )

[Joker]

Could it be that "punishing hitter" means "more punishing"...ie more injuries?

[Vinatieri for Prez]

Great test. This is the kind of stuff I like to see. And it really shoots down the theory I had that the rating does contribute to fumbles. I never ran tests, but whenever I would check forced fumble stats for the league, it seemed that guys in the upper range of punishing hitter were more often than not in the list. However, you have definitely shown that may not be the actual case. If it's not fumbles, then I really only see two possibilities: injuries and endurance.

[sabotai]

My opinion is that it has to do with injuries, but not injuries that last more than a game, just injuries that takes a player out for several plays.

I have a few ideas on how to test for injuries. The thing is, nothing short of going through play-by-plays will produce hard evidence (which would take more time than I'm willing to put into it). I do have some ideas on how to test for it using indirect evidence.

[sabotai]

I'll keep this in this thread instead of starting a new one.

Hypothesis: A player with a high "Punishing Hitter" rating will wear down offensive players faster than a player with a low "Punishing Hitter" rating, forcing them to play fewer downs.

Therefore, if all of the player on a defense had high "Punishing Hitter" ratings, they should cause the opposing starting RB to wear down faster then a team of players with low "Punishing Hitter" ratings, forcing the opposing team to use their back up HB more.

Procedure: The setup is the same as before. One team has PH ratings from 85-100 (Very High) and one team has PH ratings from 0-17 (Very Low).

I play the same game 20 times for each team. I chose a team that had a clearcut starter, so to avoid the teams that give their starter HB a low play time. The opponent: Seattle. Alexander is far better than Morris, and gets the majority of the carries. If "Punishing Hitter" does wear down the offensive players faster, we should expect to see Morris get more of the carries against the Very High Punishing Hitter teams.

Results

Seattle vs. Very Low Punishing Hitter defense (20 games)
Shaun Alexander: 487 carries (24.35 per game)
Maurice Morris: 100 carries (5 per game)
Matt Hasselbeck: 56 carries (2.8 per game)
Other: 14 carries (0.7 per game)

Total amount of carries: 657
Alexander: 74.12% of the carries
Morris: 15.22% of the carries
Hasselbeck: 8.52% of the carries
Other: 2.13% of the carries

Seattle vs. Very High Punishing Hitter defense (20 games)
Shaun Alexander: 489 carries (24.45 per game)
Maurice Morris: 83 carries (4.15 per game)
Matt Hasselbeck: 39 carries (1.95 per game)

Total Amount of carris: 611
Alexander: 80.03% of the carries
Morris: 13.58% of the carries
Hasselbeck: 6.38% of the carries


Analysis: Should't read anything into the number of total carries, as the run tendancies of the team depends greatly on the in-game situation.

How many carries an RB gets depends on a lot of changing variables. However, if the PH rating were to wear down the offensive players, we should expect to see a very noticable change in the amount of carries each RB got. At the very least, we should expect to see Alexander handle less of the load as he would need to exit the game more frequently to recover. But, what we see in this test is that he actually carried more of the load against the Very High PH team.

The 5% difference is meaningless. I recorded the QB run stats, however, they are mostly likely all scrambles. When you take them out of the equation and just compare Alexander's numbers to Morris' numbers, the percentages even out more.

Just taking Alexander's and Morris' (and Others) numbers into consideration

Seattle vs. Very Low PH defense
Alexander: 81.03% of the carries
Morris: 17.04% of the carries
Other: 2.33%

Seattle vs. Very High PH defense
Alexander: 85.49% of the carries
Morris: 14.51% of the carries

They come out a few percentage points closer. I suspect if I ran this test 50 or 60 more times, the percentages would become almost identical.

Conclusion: The Punishing Hitter rating does not wear down opposing players, forcing them to play less time.


Note: While I did not record rushing yards as I did this test, I obviously did see them. I did not see any difference there either. Alexander was routinely putting up big rushing numbers against both defenses, so I wouldn't be quick to look there either.

[Dutch]

I can buy into the numbers in your test. It has been suggested before that punishing hitters equates in some way to injuries.

Another logical possability: Punishing Hitter is a counter to a receiver with high courage trying to make a catch over the middle.

Thanks for the effort! Looks to clear up some unproven myths about 'punishing hitter'.

[Vinatieri for Prez]

Another logical possability: Punishing Hitter is a counter to a receiver with high courage trying to make a catch over the middle.

I've always thought this was one of the benefits of the rating (along with fumbles and wearing down opponents). If it is true the latter two are out, then this would seem to leave only the former (exc. for maybe causing injuries).

It should be noted however, that even D-lineman are rated for punishing hitter, which would seem to cut against this too (although lineman may drop back to cover, it would seem to be an infrequent occurrence that wouldn't really warrant a shown rating for the D-lineman when coverages/interceptions are not.

[QuikSand]

Once in preseason in IHOF, Jim offered some insight into this -- half-joking about using an "out to get you" gameplan for one reason or another. I am pretty sure that his insinuation was that PH ==> more chance of opponent injures.

If I can dig up the thread, I will post the contents... I think they might be odd without context, but it had something to do with threatening the well being of an opposing team who was gaming the system in preseason games.

[dj_morton]

Thanks for the work! I always thought PH was tied to the # of fumbles too.

[Ben E Lou]

I'm pretty certain it was tied to injuries in FOF2K4.

[-Mojo Jojo-]

When you did the running back carries test, did you still have injuries turned off?

[sabotai]

When you did the running back carries test, did you still have injuries turned off?

Apparently I did not have injuries turned off. I had started a test to see if injuries were the result of PH, but I scrapped because there were too many problems with my procedure. Looking at the game now, my injury rating is still at 200, meaning the tests I ran for the second test had injuries at the max level for every game.

[Sgran]

Is there any way to tell if a running back has a proclivity towards fumbling? I have a back now who seems to be fumbling a lot, but I can't think of what would indicate this propensity in the ratings. I realize you controlled for this by using the same back in your experiments, but maybe the Ahman Greens of the league are more prone to fumble when hit hard, whereas Alexander has strong hands and therefore shakes off the tough hits.

[Ben E Lou]

There is a hidden "avoid fumbles" rating.

[Vinatieri for Prez]

There is a hidden "avoid fumbles" rating.

Correct. FYI, this was a known rating (like "avoid interceptions" for QBs) in prior versions of FOF.

[wade moore]

I'm pretty certain it was tied to injuries in FOF2K4.

Yeah, and hurting Tucker Tigers who were manipulating the system to get extra development time ;).

[Subby]

So in other words this is a junk rating :)

[cuervo72]

So in other words this is a junk rating :)

What was Daimyo's theory again? :)

[liquid_zen01]

Well, if Punishing Hitter is a counter to Avoid Fumbles, that's going to be hard to test since Avoid Fumbles is hidden...

[MIJB#19]

Well, if Punishing Hitter is a counter to Avoid Fumbles, that's going to be hard to test since Avoid Fumbles is hidden...It's not that hard, because you can still test it with a self created universe, in which you can set the avoid fumbles for all players, if you wanted too.

[Autumn]

I had assumed Punishing Hitters would cause fumbles too. The only flaw I see in the first test was having the entire team be punishing hitters. Is it possible that Punishing Hitter affects an individual player's chance of causing a fumble, but that there are other factors that limit the number of fumbles caused by a team's defense? Is there a way to test by perhaps having one player with a high PH rating, and the rest low?

[Sgran]

It could also be that the punishing hitter takes a greater toll on the ball carrier's endurance.