A good quick article to read for NFL stat heads and slider makers

[fistofrage]

http://www.sportsonearth.com/article...erage-nfl-game

You're sitting down for a Sunday slate of NFL games. You crack open your light beer (because NFL Sunday commercials have brainwashed you into believing light beer is the only phylum of beer) and take a bite of partially stale potato chips and immediately regret your decision not to go to the grocery store since it's Sunday and, dammit, Sunday is your day. You turn on your quite large TV whose specs you recite to any first-time viewer and glorious football is engaged.





Now if I told you that NFL game you're watching would be a perfectly average NFL game, would you keep watching it? Do you even know what an average NFL game looks like?

Maybe we can't capture everything, but using Advanced NFL Stats' data (except when otherwise noted), allow me to take you on a tour of a perfectly average 2013 NFL game (all data is through Week 11, a total of 162 games). Please maintain an average level of excitement while reading.

* * *

The game starts with the first of 10.5 kickoffs. My apologies in advance if you like returns, because 5.7 of those kickoffs will be touchbacks. Of the plays you will see this afternoon, there will be 80.5 passes and 53.1 runs, so I hope you enjoy passing. From those 80.5 passes, 5.4 will result in sacks, all of which will be immediately followed by a very large man dancing as if he were a much smaller man. The remaining 30.9 plays will be kickoffs, punts, field-goal attempts or kneel-downs.

There will be 133.6 "regular" plays (runs or passes). Just fewer than seven percent will be for 20 yards or more (about nine plays), meaning a vast majority of plays will be conveniently confined to the width of the play-by-play camera angle. Sixty-five percent -- or 87.9 plays -- of runs or passes will gain yards; 11.1 runs (21 percent) will be stuffed for no gain or a loss; 45.9 (57 percent) pass attempts will gain yards and 22.8 (a little more than 28 percent) will be for longer than 10 yards.

There will be a total of 24.7 possessions, or about 12 per team and 3.2 of them (13 percent) will end in turnovers. There will be 2.3 fumbles, but only 1.2 of those fumbles (50.7 percent) will be lost (because fumbles are recovered randomly, as these numbers demonstrate). Two interceptions will be thrown. There will be 3.1 passing touchdowns and 1.6 rushing touchdowns. You can expect a defensive touchdown every other game. There will be 10.3 punts -- 2.5 of them will be fair caught -- and of the 4.1 field-goal attempts, 3.6 (87 percent) will be made.

The game will be stopped. A lot. There will be 8.9 penalties and 1.6 reviews and about 55 percent will come from the replay booth. Of the reviews triggered by the replay booth, 58 percent will be upheld. Coach's challenges will be more successful, as just less than half will be upheld. These reviews will take a total of 3 minutes and 30 seconds, or 2:08 per review (this data comes from my own timing of 48 reviews this year).

The final score will be 29.0 to 17.8. Via Pro Football Reference's game length data, all this will take 3 hours, 10 minutes and 34 seconds, 100 percent of which you will never get back.

[4thQtrStre5S]

Excellent summary...

[NimitsTexan]

Granted, the article was written by a soccer fan in an attempt to denigrate NFL football (and its fans?). . .

[4thQtrStre5S]

Quote: Originally Posted by NimitsTexan

Granted, the article was written by a soccer fan in an attempt to denigrate NFL football (and its fans?). . .

Soccer fans are not close of being capable of taking down American Football...

[fistofrage]

Quote: Originally Posted by NimitsTexan

Granted, the article was written by a soccer fan in an attempt to denigrate NFL football (and its fans?). . .

I don't care what his view of football is, he summarized the data well so it would be in a pretty nice compact summary.

I think its important to point out that a 20 yard play is a pretty big deal because all the high light shows make them look like common place.

http://www.nflpenalties.com/

Check out the penalty numbers on this sight. Holding is the #1 called penalty in all of football but we can't get it in Madden. PI is lower than I thought, but those numbers don't include defensive holding or illegal contact.

[4thQtrStre5S]

Quote: Originally Posted by fistofrage

I don't care what his view of football is, he summarized the data well so it would be in a pretty nice compact summary. I think its important to point out that a 20 yard play is a pretty big deal because all the high light shows make them look like common place. http://www.nflpenalties.com/ Check out the penalty numbers on this sight. Holding is the #1 called penalty in all of football but we can't get it in Madden. PI is lower than I thought, but those numbers don't include defensive holding or illegal contact.

We may not get holding calls, but we can get an over abundance of False Start calls; it is just so backwards. I have gotten the CPU to get around 6 a game, depending on penalty slider settings.

[fistofrage]

Quote: Originally Posted by 4thQtrStre5S

We may not get holding calls, but we can get an over abundance of False Start calls; it is just so backwards. I have gotten the CPU to get around 6 a game, depending on penalty slider settings.

We can face mask and roughing the passer and clipping too. Although, surprisingly clipping goes away if you have the holding slider higher than clipping and you still don't get the holding.

[TheDominator273]

Is that supposed to make us not like football? I don't see the point of the article besides giving a lot of interesting facts.