Do you prefer yards/points as the metric of a team’s unit?

[Bryan]

Offense = yards

Defense = points

Why yards for offenses? Teams could drive from the 20 to the 20 and settle for FGs all the time. That would be misleading.

I was forced to choose a preference. Maybe in the present day when offenses are pretty much guaranteed of driving down the field, perhaps points would be a better measurement. But I think that in the past, if your offense was driving from the 20 to the 20, that was indication you had a really good offense. Teams also scored more on defensive TDs, ST TDs, and there were more turnovers setting up short fields for the offense and you could have Joe Kapp leading an offense to 4.7 yards per play (13th of 16) but being #1 in points scored.

Defense yards allowed can be weird, because teams that get a lead tend to give up more yards through the air with the other team playing catch-up. I like a combination of points allowed and turnovers forced (because as Dick Butkus said, "That's what defense is all about...getting the ball") when evaluating defenses.

[rhickok1109]

Offense = yards

Defense = points

Why yards for offenses? Teams could drive from the 20 to the 20 and settle for FGs all the time. That would be misleading.

They're still going to beat a tam that drives from the 20 to the 50 and settles for punts every time

[Todd Pence]

I liked the method somebody -- Todd Pence, maybe -- introduced here a few years ago, which divided a team's yards gained by the number of possessions. As I recall, the playoff teams were almost all right at the top, and it made a lot of sense to me. (Also, somebody else -- I'm thinking Ralph Hickock -- added a refinement of some sort that made the results even better.)

Presumably you could do the same thing from a defensive perspective, and I suspect that would work well too.

The method I used I called "Adjusted Yards Per Drive". It was calculated by taking the total number of yards gained (or in the case of the defense allowed), adding 10 yards for every touchdown and subtracting 45 yards for every interception and 50 yards for every fumble and then dividing them by number of drives. I'm very pleased with the results as a metric for rating offensive/defensive units.

I first ran these numbers following the 2013 season. One of the interesting thing to come out of those results is that the Chargers wound up having a slightly higher AYPD than the more ballyhooed Bronco offense of that year. Although IIRC the Chargers also had the lowest defensive AYPD.

Since then, I've been trying to run the numbers for every squad of the Super Bowl era and adjust the numbers to a common standard so that they can be equalized era to era. I'm well into the 1990s, and so far by this system, the 1973 Los Angeles Rams are the team is sporting the numbers of the greatest AYPO offense of all time, even greater than such squads as the Rams own 1999 counterparts. I'm wondering if there might be a flaw in my adjustment-by-era system. They were are a great team for their era, but I'm not sure I'm ready to accept the judgment that the '73 Rams were the best offense of all time.

[Bryan]

Since then, I've been trying to run the numbers for every squad of the Super Bowl era and adjust the numbers to a common standard so that they can be equalized era to era. I'm well into the 1990s, and so far by this system, the 1973 Los Angeles Rams are the team is sporting the numbers of the greatest AYPO offense of all time, even greater than such squads as the Rams own 1999 counterparts. I'm wondering if there might be a flaw in my adjustment-by-era system. They were are a great team for their era, but I'm not sure I'm ready to accept the judgment that the '73 Rams were the best offense of all time.

Back in the 90's when NFL Pro League was my/the computer football game "Du Jour", I ran a massive 'tournament' of basically every team that made the postseason from 1960-1994 (or whatever years were included on the game disk), with an elimination bracket and teams playing 'best of 3' mini-series. Anyways, the team that ended up winning the whole thing was the 1973 Rams. Somehow in that purely statistical realm, the 73 Rams were the least-flawed, most efficient team. Hadl didn't throw that often, but he completed long passes to Harold Jackson for TDs and didn't kill you with INTs (like Hadl typically did). McCutcheon averaged 5.2 YPC and the Rams had almost 3000 yards rushing, while defensively they were very stingy against the run (only 1270 yards allowed when the league average was 2000+). They didn't turn the ball over on offense, they forced turnovers on defense. Their biggest weakness was their pass defense...they weren't great but they got a lot of sacks.

[sluggermatt15]

Offense = yards

Defense = points

Why yards for offenses? Teams could drive from the 20 to the 20 and settle for FGs all the time. That would be misleading.

I was forced to choose a preference. Maybe in the present day when offenses are pretty much guaranteed of driving down the field, perhaps points would be a better measurement. But I think that in the past, if your offense was driving from the 20 to the 20, that was indication you had a really good offense. Teams also scored more on defensive TDs, ST TDs, and there were more turnovers setting up short fields for the offense and you could have Joe Kapp leading an offense to 4.7 yards per play (13th of 16) but being #1 in points scored.

Defense yards allowed can be weird, because teams that get a lead tend to give up more yards through the air with the other team playing catch-up. I like a combination of points allowed and turnovers forced (because as Dick Butkus said, "That's what defense is all about...getting the ball") when evaluating defenses.

Yes I agree and was thinking you were referencing today's NFL. I think the game has evolved from yards to points, depicting the potential scoring capabilities of offenses. The rules allow for more scoring today than in Joe Kapp's time.