Troy Aikman

aer2007_003.doc

AIKMAN EFFIENCY RATINGS COMMENTARY – Week 3

There is reasonable conformity at the top of the NFL and Aikman Efficiency Offensive Ratings with New England and Dallas 1-2 in both – and who can disagree after the way these two teams have moved through each of their first three opponents.

The Steelers get a boost in the offensive AERs because they are fifth in the NFL in points and tied for third with only three turnovers.

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On the defensive side of the ball, the Patriots are ranked number one by the NFL, but they are only 23^rd in the AER defensive rankings. This seemed funny to me, I mean New England has played strong defense this year, why are they so low?

Well, those who look inside the formula more than I do tell me it has to do with the Patriots extraordinarily poor play in a limited amount of red zone defensive opportunities. All five times the opposition has been able to get into scoring position, they have scored touchdowns for as we grade it a perfectly bad 35 points allowed out of a possible 35.

Traditionally, over a full season, teams range between allowing about 80% of the possible points to only 50% for the stoutest defenses. At 100%, the Patriots are dragging their rating down because of this extreme result. As soon as they hold an opponent to a few field goals in the red zone, they will get some points in this category quickly.

That’s a short technical explanation, but I have to admit that in this case the AERs are underselling New England’s defensive effectiveness. After all, opponents have only made it as far as the red zone five times compared to a league average of nearly 10 times.

Also, on defense you may ask why are the Eagles and Vikings so high? Philadelphia has been very stout in the red zone, allowing only seven scores (four TDs, three FGs) in 10 opponent’s opportunities. The Vikings get their bonus points with eight takeaways so far.

WEEK 2

One thing we track with our Aikman Efficiency Ratings each week is the way teams with higher AER Game Ratings tend to win more often than teams that gain more yardage.

Not every week is like last week, but Week 2 of the 2007 NFL season was nearly our first 16-game week where every team with a higher AER Game Rating actually won the game on the field.

The AER leader won 15 of 16 games with the lone exception being the Titans who had a slightly higher AER than the Colts (79.6 to 77.5) while losing the game 20-22.

With a 14-2 mark on Week 1, the AER Game Ratings leaders are now 29-3 (90.6%) while the teams with the most yards are 23-9 (71.9%).

We’ve been tracking this since the start of the 2005 season and in that time AER Game Ratings leaders are 454-90 (83.5%) to 376-168 (69.1%) for the teams with the most yards.

Only one time in 36 weeks, have the teams with more yards won more games than the teams with the higher AERs.  AER teams went 14-0 in Week 3 of 2005 and have had seven weeks with just one loss since then including last week.

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You may hear a lot this week about how the Denver Broncos will bring the number one offense in the NFL into their game Sunday against the Jaguars.  Of course, that’s how the NFL measures it which means the Broncos have gained 455.5 yards per game in their first two contests. 

Now, we like what the Broncos have been doing – but they’ve only converted all those yards into three touchdowns and 38 points. 

So as far as the Aikman Efficiency Ratings are concerned the top two teams are the Patriots and the Cowboys who the NFL’s yardage ranking will tell you are 2^nd and 4^th respectively.  But New England (78) and the Cowboys (82) are both 2-0 and each have scored more than twice as many points as Denver.  We’re very comfortable with these two clubs sitting atop the AER Offensive chart after two weeks.

The Broncos are 6^th in the AER, not bad – and we think more in line with their actual production so far.  And with a stout defense, Denver does currently sit atop the Aikman Combined Ratings.  We should remind you that the two-week sample is small and still dependent on a limited number of games and quality of opponents.

AER COMMENTARY – WEEK 1

We are back with another season of the Aikman Efficiency Ratings – which to refresh your memory are a mathematical set of Ratings that attempt to determine the actual performance of an offensive and defensive unit in all of the major facets of the game. Unlike the NFL, we don’t just check one category.

When you hear or read that a team has “the #1 offense” in the NFL, the way the NFL measures it that means they have gained the most yards. Period.

Now don’t get me wrong, yards are important – and they have a role in the AERs. But there were many times in my playing career that I noticed our Cowboys team might be outgained or nearly even in yardage in a game we handily won. With the lead we would control the clock and the ball with our running game in the fourth quarter, give up some yards in our prevent defense, win easily and see our offensive and defensive ratings drop.

And so the Aikman Efficiency Ratings were developed and computed each week with the help of our friends at Stats, Inc. We look at five major categories – yards per play, turnovers, points, first downs and red zone performance. We consider historical league averages in each category in awarding the points with 75 as the middle. It’s possible for a team to reach 100, but the best we’ve ever had (dating back to 1995 when red zone data became available) is 94.4 by the 2004 Indianapolis Colts.

That Colts team – the one for which Peyton Manning threw his 49 touchdown passes – is a good example of what we’re talking about. Although they would certainly seem to be a logical choice as the NFL’s best offense in recent years – they were only second in ‘04 to the Chiefs the way the NFL figures it.

On defense, we flip the scale so a 100 for a defense equals a 50 for an offense. Only one defense has made 100 – that was the 101.0 by the 2000 Colts. Again, that defense that carried the Ravens to the Super Bowl XXXV title is generally regarded as the best of recent years. And again, they weren’t even the number one defense by the NFL’s yards allowed calculations in ‘00, that honor went to Tennessee.

Here are the top offenses and defenses since 1995 as the AERs calculate them. You can also see where they ranked in the NFL that year. None of the top five on offense also led the NFL in their season, although there is more consistency on defense.

Below are our Week 1 Ratings for 2007. Obviously, with only one week of data to work on we don’t know to what extent they represent great performance by the Patriots, Cowboys and Giants offense and to what extent the Jets, Giants and Cowboys defenses are wanting.

I would point out though that our AER Game Ratings (which these in effect
are) do a great job of identifying the characteristics of winning performance – far better than merely which team gained the most yards.

Including a 14-2 record last week, the team with the highest AER Game Rating has won 83.1% of the time while the team with the most yards is a winner at only a 69.3% clip. We’ll also keep track of that for ‘07 here in the week’s to come.