thependulumswings

Analytics are woven into the makeup and strategy of major team sports today much more than ever before.  It roots are in baseball way back when and it was designed to give the fledgling hobby of fantasy baseball a more cerebral look at who you were drafting and why.  It was called sabermetrics originally.  The term is derived from the acronym SABR, which stands for the Society for American Baseball Research, founded in 1971. The term sabermetrics was coined by Bill James, who is one of its pioneers and is often considered its most prominent advocate and public face.

From that seed of a start has grown a forest of stats, now called “analytics,”  covering baseball, football, basketball, hockey, as well as several other sports.   Ivy League savants are employed in many sports franchise front offices coast to coast and even across the pond where they play futbol, not football.

The bbr staff was working well into the evening last week and discussing these new metrics and their merits as well as their shortcomings.   In the background on our fat Samsung was a meaningless Tuesday night NCAA football game.  Buffalo and Miami, OH were trading touchdowns at a rapid pace.  The Bulls outlasted the Redhawks 52-41.  Bonus points to you if you know which team goes with which nickname.

One of the many team stats shown along the way was turnovers.  When shown the announcer referred to them as takeaways.  This prompted some research and debate among us.  Our research turned to the NFL.  Fansided.com. published an article that shows results from 2010-2014 that, while a bit dated, shows irrefutable evidence as to how critical winning the turnover battle really is.  An excerpted paragraph follows.

During that five-year span teams that finished in the top ten in turnover differential finished 521-278-1. That’s a winning percentage of 65.2 percent and equates to about 10.4 wins per season. On the other end of the spectrum, the teams that finished in the bottom ten in turnover differential finished 287-512-1. That’s a winning percentage of about 35.9 percent and equates to about 5.7 wins per season.

And just below from Boydsbets.com you can see what happens per game when you win the turnover battle by 1 through 4 or more turnovers covering all games since 2005.   It shows both straight up(SU) winning and how the stat affects betting against the spread (ATS).

Suffice it to say that if you hold onto the ball a bit better than your opponent you win.  If you hold on to it significantly better you almost always win.

But, we wonder.  We wonder in this day of advanced analytics if there is a deeper dive still to be taken.  Remember the announcer called a turnover a takeaway as if they were one.  We wonder if there really are two measurements that better depict how you got the ball from your opponent.

Aren’t there turnovers and takeaways?  A turnover could be defined as the offense inflicting damage upon itself.  If for example the QB overthrew, without pressure, a receiver by 5 yards into the waiting arms of the deep safety isn’t that more giving than taking?  If a running back is running free and clear and coughs it up on his own isn’t that more giving than taking?  What if you were DeSean Jackson?  He made a habit of giving not taking.

Conversely, aggressive and smart defenses create turnovers, or as we prefer, takeaways.  If you blind side the QB and he loses control prior to throwing it, it’s a takeaway.  If a cornerback  jumps an out route its taken, not given.

We readily admit that there is grey area in between the clear examples above.  However, there are grey areas in many judgement calls in sports.  An umpire uses his eyes about 250 times a game to decide in his judgement if a thrown baseball is a ball or a strike.   Surely we can split hairs on whether the D taketh or the O giveth.

How you lose possession speaks to how you protect the ball and how the D wants the ball.  We think bad teams give it away and good teams take it away.  We think that great teams don’t give it away on O, but take it away on D.  From the results shown above the most important stat battle that you must win to win a game is turnover differential.

Should there be two stats?  We think so.  Turnovers and takeaways aren’t the same.

In the NFL it’s a don’t give and do take world.