Defensive Awards Re-Analysis Worksheet

[Hellisan]

*trying to peddle another idea mode*

I'm just pasting this straight from my dynasty... Most '14 players all know the game just hands us every defensive award. So this is just a spreadsheet (attached below) where you can say, sort by tackles then sacks and enter some linebackers in and see who had the best year, and do that with the other position groups as well..... Then report the "actual" winners in your dynasty if preferred.

As with the last couple of years, some of the defensive awards were changed to reflect the players who played best, rather than the CPU simply over-calculating the value of non-assisted vs. assisted tackles for the User, who gets almost no assisted tackles and a ton of solos, thereby handing the user half [edit: all] of the defensive awards.

The spreadsheet used to do this has been revised from the last time and is attached. If anybody uses it and revises the weights given for any of the positions, I'd love to know about it and would probably change mine to match yours if you think they're better.
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There's a conversation to be had as to whether the "weights" should be the same for all positions and you just compare the inevitably different total points numbers from the various position groups to each other to determine dominance against the mean, or whether you try and weight the numbers to get relatively similar total scores for different position groups.

Anyway, if anyone running a dynasty wants to really look at who deserved awards (some players from bad teams put up INCREDIBLE seasons while the players from more average teams win them even if non-player schools) I hope you'll consider looking at the spreadsheet.

User note: The "YR" column hasn't been filled out in here because I decided I wanted it for next season, after doing it all. It would have been useful when reporting awards.

Also, obviously, a quick fix which people probably use all the time is just to name the next guy on the list who isn't a user player (sometimes the fifth guy on the list LOL) as the award winner... Obviously nobody would know the difference and it's 1000X quicker... but then you miss some great seasons like these guys who weren't really getting much in the way of award recognition:

Rutgers LB Rasheed Nicholson: 103 tak, 23 TFL, 7.5 sack, 2 INT, 2 FF, 1 Defensive TD

I think stuff like that is what makes dynasty mode fun.

[itsbigmike]

I'm going to post my thoughts here instead of in your dynasty.

What I've done is kind of made a scale for each position where average = 100. So a LB with a score of 105 is as far from the average LB on the list as a DE with a score of 105. I called it Big Play Points Plus or BPP+ which is an ode to my days of writing about baseball and baseball stats years ago (and many of them that are graded against a 100=average scale end in a +, if that makes sense. I'm rambling.)

The average BPP for your three positions on the sheet are:

LB: 183.3
DB: 142.6
DL: 155.7

So there's a decent gap. Putting it on a 100=average scale makes it easy to compare between positions. For instance:

The top DB is Justin Henry from GA State with a 228, which in raw point totals is equivalent to Brian McFadden from your Hawkeyes (228) and a bit less than Chris Mason (DL, Texas Tech) who posted a season total of 235.

However, The three break down in BPP+ like such:

Justin Henry: 160
Brian McFadden: 124
Chris Mason: 151

In fact, Henry's season is better than anyone else at the other positions. I suppose, however, it would be much easier to just do a raw Player BPP minus the average of the group and you can compare the BPP above average between positions if that makes sense. I just like making the average = 100.

That was long winded, sorry.

My other thought is recording each team's schedule's Win-loss record. I can't remember where it is off hand and the game is not on in front of me but I think it's in the schedule/scores and you hold LB/L1 or something and you can switch to, like, your results page and then the W/L total of your team is in the top right. Then record those for every team in excel. You then use this and add that context into the awards for each team. (This is easily done by just recording each team's Opponent W/L in a list on the sheet. You can use a lookup function to then just populate a column with the opponent Win% when you type in the team. I'll attach a quick modified version of your spreadsheet and you can look at what I mean; it's late and I'm not doing well at explaining it.)

I've attached the spreadsheet. I just used random numbers to populate a SOS for the teams you have listed on the LB sheet. What you'll see that I added are all columns under the green headers.

BPP+ = Big Play Points on a scale where average for the position group is scaled to 100

SOS = The opponent winning percentage for the team the player suited up for. Values fictional and created by me, however they populate automatically. Try changing the team in the team column and see it work.

SOS+ = Just SOS put onto a scale where the average SOS is a 100.

Adj. BPP+ = Here we take the BPP+ and account for the strength of schedule. You see this in the first two players on the LB list: My fictional SOS gives Marshall a schedule that was 25% tougher than average. It gave Rutgers a SOS that was 30% worse than average. The players scores diverge accordingly. Ideally, we'd be looking at just the opposing offenses the players faced since these are defensive awards, but this is a nice, easy way to adjust for quality of competition.

In my quick glance, I think your DB award favors CB's a bit too much. I'd probably try to weight it so safeties get more love, but that's just my own personal opinion.

Edit: Didn't include the spreadsheet. Will update the post later with the file. Okay, hopefully it's attached.

[Hellisan]

I like this bigmike, the BPP+ is sweet, wouldn't this (like we talked about in the other thread) be best if the scales were alike for each position though? Then we're truly comparing everything apples to apples.

I also like the strength of schedule thing, although I think that one would be a little too time consuming for me. I would however, consider going with the actual win loss record of the player's team, sort of as a way to mimick what the game does giving some weight to how highly thought of the team is when handing out awards.

Thanks for doing this man, I'm definitely using this version with the same weights for each position and probably adding in W/L record for all teams on the list... We'll see about that one. :-)

PS maybe this should be in Dynasty HQ now that I think about it. hah

[VTHokie525]

Could you possibly go into the editor and change the assisted tackle stats back to zero for your players so they're on an even playing field?

Sent from my SM-G930V using Tapatalk

[Hellisan]

Quote: Originally Posted by VTHokie525

Could you possibly go into the editor and change the assisted tackle stats back to zero for your players so they're on an even playing field? Sent from my SM-G930V using Tapatalk

Great question. From what I can tell, the issue is that in the played games, assisted tackles are a little too rare, while in simmed games, they're entirely too common. And they count as "full" tackles if you sort them in the stats screen... Except they're made up of both full and assisted tackles. It's kind of weird. And the CPU in the background seems to think assisted tackles < full tackles. Ideally, assisted tackles would be eliminated for every player, to compare them equally.

I don't use the editor, I don't want to risk my file and it just adds another level of depth to what is already a time consuming (but really fun without the editor) process for me. Somebody else may be able to answer whether this is possible.

[itsbigmike]

Quote: Originally Posted by Hellisan

I like this bigmike, the BPP+ is sweet, wouldn't this (like we talked about in the other thread) be best if the scales were alike for each position though? Then we're truly comparing everything apples to apples. I also like the strength of schedule thing, although I think that one would be a little too time consuming for me. I would however, consider going with the actual win loss record of the player's team, sort of as a way to mimick what the game does giving some weight to how highly thought of the team is when handing out awards. Thanks for doing this man, I'm definitely using this version with the same weights for each position and probably adding in W/L record for all teams on the list... We'll see about that one. :-) PS maybe this should be in Dynasty HQ now that I think about it. hah

BPP+ is putting them on the same scale. 100 BPP+ for a LB is equal to 100 BPP+ for a DB or DL. Basically a 110 BPP+ is 10% better than their position group, so you're able to compare that across all groups, if that makes sense.

[Hellisan]

Quote: Originally Posted by itsbigmike

BPP+ is putting them on the same scale. 100 BPP+ for a LB is equal to 100 BPP+ for a DB or DL. Basically a 110 BPP+ is 10% better than their position group, so you're able to compare that across all groups, if that makes sense.

Totally get the point of it, it reminds me of (as you hinted at) OPS+ or WRC+ or other stats. (I love baseball!) Except for those stats, every little thing any hitter does (before the + calculation is made) counts equally. Here, we have weights that are counting different things for different positions. It's like if a shortstop-hit double was worth what a right-fielder hit home run is worth. Easy fix that I'll make when I go to do this next year. Thanks bigmike!

Thanks to your input this will be a highlight of next season for me... Jeez I'm a nerd.

[itsbigmike]

Quote: Originally Posted by Hellisan

Totally get the point of it, it reminds me of (as you hinted at) OPS+ or WRC+ or other stats. (I love baseball!) Except for those stats, every little thing any hitter does (before the + calculation is made) counts equally. Here, we have weights that are counting different things for different positions. It's like if a shortstop-hit double was worth what a right-fielder hit home run is worth. Easy fix that I'll make when I go to do this next year. Thanks bigmike! Thanks to your input this will be a highlight of next season for me... Jeez I'm a nerd.

Yeah, you right. I guess I kind of view the different weightings of things for LB/DB/DL being akin to the different position values in WAR calculations. +2.5 for 2b, +7.5 for SS, etc.