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Thoughts on the Dolphins Broncos Game

Discussion in 'Miami Dolphins Forum' started by KeyFin, Dec 3, 2017.

  1. cbrad

    cbrad .

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    You're right that a lot of the difference is due to that. Never really looked at it before, but the correlation between rushing YPC and rushing percentage throughout NFL history is on average 0.3422 which isn't bad.
    [​IMG]
     
  2. ChrisKo

    ChrisKo Season Ticket Holder

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    Desert
    While I don't 100% agree with your argument, because it still takes a defensive effort to get a QB rating that low. I want to thank you for putting forth the effort to articulate your argument with sound reasoning. It's a nice change of pace from the normal responses like ”player x is a bust and needs to be cut right now" without any rational arguments and only knee here reactions.

    Thank you!
     
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  3. KeyFin

    KeyFin Well-Known Member

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    Well, there's the flip side of that too though where you're running out the clock and sending your guy off guard every single play. So when a guy has 30 carries a game, that average is a little skewed there as well.
     
  4. Pauly

    Pauly Season Ticket Holder

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    That gets to what I said about passing % and rushing YPC being correlated. In situations where teams rush more than average their rushing YPC goes down and when the rush less than average their rushing YPC goes down.
     
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  5. danmarino

    danmarino Tua is H1M! Club Member

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    In 2 starts and some fill in play Drake has 65 rushing attempts for 320 yards, 2 TD's and a 5 ypc average. Also, 18 receptions for 110 yards for a 6.1 y/r.

    In 7 starts for Miami Ajayi had 138 rushing attempts for 465 yards 0 TD's and a 3.4 ypc average. Also, 14 receptions for 67 yards for a 4.8 y/r.


    Way better...
     
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  6. danmarino

    danmarino Tua is H1M! Club Member

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    You're bashing Drake for only starting 2 games and thus not getting many carries and at the same time praising Ajayi who, in your words, has "already rebounded" in Philly when he has had a total of 29 carries in 5 games....

    You just can't make this type of contradiction up...
     
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  7. eltos_lightfoot

    eltos_lightfoot Well-Known Member

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    And the amount of playing time he gets with the Eagles is probably going to continue to shrink. I watched that last game. He was a liability.
     
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  8. danmarino

    danmarino Tua is H1M! Club Member

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    upload_2017-12-5_8-22-18.png

    29/4= 7.25 rushes per game...And yet Ajayi has "rebounded" according to you.
    Bwhahahha!!
     
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  9. finsfandan

    finsfandan Well-Known Member

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    I said his YPC has already rebounded, and it has. 29 is closer to 65 than 65 is to 138, which proves my argument that Drake is only averaging more YPC because of his low rushing attempts...

    But of course you’re jostling as you always do.
     
  10. finsfandan

    finsfandan Well-Known Member

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    I’ve been repeating the same point over and over and over again. Drake is only doing well because he’s rushed 6,7,9 times per game.

    Then all of a sudden we mount a lead against a gassed defense whose offense was nonexistent and he gets 23 carries for 120 something rushing yards.

    How are we even comparing him to Ajayi? What he’s showed us is he was so damn good, teams sold out completely to stop his running game, so we had to rely less on running the ball.
     
  11. danmarino

    danmarino Tua is H1M! Club Member

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    upload_2017-12-5_8-33-16.png

    So has Ajayi...lmao!
     
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  12. finsfandan

    finsfandan Well-Known Member

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    Again, which proves my point that RBs tend to do far better when they’re rushing few times per game. I don’t know how you’re not getting this.

    We’ll see if Gase ever trusts Drake enough to average what Ajayi did with us. And if he does, we’ll see how he fairs and I’m sure you’ll be quiet.
     
  13. danmarino

    danmarino Tua is H1M! Club Member

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    Your argument is that Ajayi is better than Drake and thus the Dolphins were better with Ajayi. You then discredited Drake's numbers because, and according to you, he has too few carries with "6, 7, 8" attempts per game.

    You then claimed that Ajayi has rebounded in Philly as proof that he's better than Drake. You then completely ignored the fact that Ajayi has had "6, 7, 8" attempts per game in Philly and went off on some tangent about your "point" and some other nonsensical stuff.
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Dec 5, 2017
  14. danmarino

    danmarino Tua is H1M! Club Member

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    lol...Good catch on the "autocorrect".

    And no, you wouldn't be banned. I've never attacked you only the subject matter of your posts.

    You're angry because those posts have no defense so you resort to made up "attacks" on your person.
     
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  15. cbrad

    cbrad .

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    No! It's the other way around. That's what post #161 shows. The higher the rushing percentage, the higher the rushing yards per carry, at least across teams. That graph in post #161 shows the correlations, but if you want best-fitting lines so that you can predict expected rushing YPC given the percentage of rushing plays it's

    YPC = 0.0424*(Rush percentage) + 2.3827

    for 2016, and the average across all NFL history is

    YPC = 0.0275*(Rush percentage) + 2.6747

    which shows that as the passing game has become more important, rushing YPC has very slowly gone UP as a function of rushing percentage. That btw makes sense because defenses have to defend the pass more in any situation (relative to the past) and rushing percentage is an indicator of having a lead.

    *note that those equations only work over the typical range of rush% we see.
     
    Last edited: Dec 5, 2017
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  16. finsfandan

    finsfandan Well-Known Member

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    I don’t mind debating. I do it all the time without being bothered.
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Dec 5, 2017
  17. finsfandan

    finsfandan Well-Known Member

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    Like what’s up with this ****?

    Bwahaahaha? You called somebody a dolt the other day. How old are you?
     
  18. Fin D

    Fin D Sigh

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    You still don't understand.

    The numbers I provided were for every TEAM rushing attempt.

    Didn't matter who was running the ball in the numbers I gave you as I counted every rushing attempt and rushing yard.

    There was a stark and dramatic improvement AFTER Ajayi left. Total carries were similar before and after he left.

    Before he left the TEAM was averaging 24 attempts.
    After he left the TEAM was averaging 20.6 attempts.

    Again, you're clinging to a less than 4 carry difference.

    It is simple, the TEAM is rushing better without Ajayi.
     
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  19. finsfandan

    finsfandan Well-Known Member

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    I’m talking about Ajayi vs Drake
     
  20. Fin D

    Fin D Sigh

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    That doesn't matter.

    You still don't understand that attempts across the board were pretty much the same, pre and post Ajayi. If you did understand, then you wouldn't be talking about Ajayi vs Drake, because you'd understand the TEAM is better at running the football without Ajayi.
     
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  21. danmarino

    danmarino Tua is H1M! Club Member

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    Which part don't you understand?

    And I was the one called a "dolt". Remember? Someone wrote "Your (sic) a dolt" and I fixed their grammar. Remember? probably not because you're too busy being offended by made up things.
     
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  22. KeyFin

    KeyFin Well-Known Member

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    That is a fair point because it did happen early on this year. However, teams also knew that we were starting a QB that was rusty, out of shape and didn't know the playbook. It was common sense that we were going to lean heavily on Ajayi.

    Dan's counter that Ajayi got shut down is also valid though. He wasn't always hitting holes, wasn't blocking well and played selfish football. We know this to be true because Ajayi has admitted it himself- he was shocked that he was traded but soon after realized that his attitude was not where it should have been. And he says that he's now focused on being a team-first player...we'll see what happens there and I wish him all the best in finding that role.

    These past four weeks, we've seen a pretty balanced offense and both Drake/Williams has looked better than Ajayi....but they also both played unselfish ball as well. That's what has earned them more reps on running and passing downs, so I don't think there's any way to avoid that Drake is BETTER FOR THIS TEAM than Ajayi was. However, I'd also say that Ajayi was clearly the BETTER OVERALL RUNNING BACK off of the games he had last season and how serious he always got in the 4th quarter. Ajayi is fantastic at closing games.

    If Gase did not trade Ajayi, then we still would have had the selfish version making demands for more carries, not going all-out on pass plays and bouncing the ball to the outside far too often when he should be running the play as designed. That's the other thing we learned from all this, Drake said Sunday that the holes were excellent and the line deserves all the credit. So not only are you comparing two different running styles, you're comparing two different types of players.....one who will do anything the coach asks of him, the other who didn't want to listen at all.

    I can tell you from experience on the OL- when a RB is selfish and makes me look bad, I'm not giving 110% to open up holes for him. Maybe I give 90 or 95%, but I'm not killing myself for someone that doesn't recognize how hard I'm working for him. But then you get a guy like Drake and you're limping back to the huddle, hurting all over and saying, "Follow me brother, I'll get you where you need to go." Just like how people say this team plays harder for Moore, linemen play harder for RB's who appreciate them...that's at every level of the game and something that's rarely evident in raw statistics.

    Nine times out of ten, a coach is going to pick a guy like Drake with all those criteria. And the 10th is going to be a powerhouse running team with postseason aspirations that needs an additional stallion to grind out the 4th quarter.

    Ajayi is a PERFECT fit in Philly. Drake is a PERFECT fit in Miami. Both of you are right.

    Am I happy we gave up Ajayi? Yes and no. His talent is undeniable and I wish he could have got with the program in Miami. But under the circumstance, he had to go....I was talking about him not hitting holes and missing pass blocks in games 1 and 2. Gase stuck with him for 7 weeks before giving up, and I don't see what more he could have done when the team was spiraling out of control. It would have made some sense to bench him but then you get that extra noise in the locker room...I really think trading him was the right call.
     
  23. eltos_lightfoot

    eltos_lightfoot Well-Known Member

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    Wow. This was really good.
     
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  24. djphinfan

    djphinfan Season Ticket Holder Club Member

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    I was high on Parker coming out of college, I thought he was super talented..didnt have the intel that he's still in elelemenary school mentally.
     
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  25. djphinfan

    djphinfan Season Ticket Holder Club Member

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    in the first quarter of the year simian was being pimped as the next star'' in the game, he was on every station as such...not sure what happened..
     
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  26. finsfandan

    finsfandan Well-Known Member

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    That also happened. I reported all of your offenses recently so stop pretending you’re not a troll.
     
  27. danmarino

    danmarino Tua is H1M! Club Member

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    For God's sake, man. Clean yourself up. I think I see a snot bubble.
     
  28. danmarino

    danmarino Tua is H1M! Club Member

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    Oh...and I didn't report the person for such a trivial thing as calling me a dolt.

    I'm a man though...so there's that.
     
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  29. finsfandan

    finsfandan Well-Known Member

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    Nah, that’s your dementia setting in.
     
  30. danmarino

    danmarino Tua is H1M! Club Member

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    Good one...
     
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  31. finsfandan

    finsfandan Well-Known Member

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    The type of man to pay money to insult people online all day with impunity.
     
  32. danmarino

    danmarino Tua is H1M! Club Member

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    lol...man you whine a lot about made up stuff.
     
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  33. Dolphin North

    Dolphin North Well-Known Member

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    I'm not arguing for the sake of argument, just checking, but has consideration been given to the quality of the rushing defenses we have faced before and after the trade? I would think that may be a factor with only 3 or 4 games to compare. I haven't checked, it may even be the opposite, that we are improving on the ground against even better run defenses. I'm just wondering.
     
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  34. Fin D

    Fin D Sigh

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    I think it would be an awfully big coincidence tbh.
     
  35. danmarino

    danmarino Tua is H1M! Club Member

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    Here you go (One caveat, these are current rankings and I'm not sure what they were when we played)

    With Ajayi:

    LAC: 31st
    Jets(x2): 24th
    Saints: 17th
    Titans: 3rd
    Falcons: 18th
    Ravens: 16th

    After Ajayi:

    Raiders: 11th
    Panthers: 4th
    Bucs:23rd
    Pats:26th
    Broncos: 5th
     
  36. cbrad

    cbrad .

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    Yup, and if you take the difference between rushing yards we had in each game and the average each team has given up, you get an average of -37 per game while Ajayi was here and -8.7 per game after Ajayi was traded. So accounting for defense and using rushing YPG as the metric, we rush for on average 28.3 per game more after Ajayi than before.

    However.. even after Ajayi you can see that we're still underperforming by 8.7 yards relative to what defenses we're facing have on average given up.
     
    Last edited: Dec 5, 2017
  37. Mafioso

    Mafioso Air Force's #1 Phin Fan

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    Never in my life did I think that the statistics class i just finished last month would play a part in my daily life let alone my beloved phins forum lol. I guess the day has arrived that the standard deviation and 5% confidence interval has become relevant, applicable and understandable.....mind....blown lol
     
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  38. cbrad

    cbrad .

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    Cool!

    Not sure how far you'll go but if you want to understand most of the stuff I do here with football stats, in addition to hypothesis testing you'll need Bayesian inference (so you know the difference between the probability of an event occurring given a hypothesis and the likelihood of that hypothesis given the event), linear regression (best fitting lines), binomial theorem (useful for estimating probabilities of W/L combinations, etc...), the distinction between cumulative distributions and probability distributions (to calculate the probabilities of events UP TO a given threshold), and of course all that using conditional probabilities (conditioning on different factors).

    Maximum likelihood estimation will also come up occasionally (using a computer to find the best set of parameters that fit the data given a specified function with those parameters).

    Oh.. and of course it's essential to know the proper interpretations of the stats. Anyway, cool to hear!
     
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  39. KeyFin

    KeyFin Well-Known Member

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    But we're netting that total on four less carries per game (on average) as well. So you're talking +28 yards on four less attempts...I can't see how that isn't viewed as "better" by everyone.

    We can also play this game a different way. Drake is averaging 4.9 yards per carry, and he's carrying 4 times less than Ajayi did while gaining 28 more yards. For an apples to apples comparison, just add 4 more carries to Drakes total at 4.9 a clip (19.6 total) and now he's rushing for 48 yards more than Ajayi per game on the same number of carries.

    Since Ajayi had multiple games where he never reached 48 rushing yards total, it's hard to make the argument that Ajayi was better this year than Drake or Williams.
     
    Last edited: Dec 6, 2017
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  40. cbrad

    cbrad .

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    Yup.. I think the summary of pre-Ajayi versus post-Ajayi is pretty clear now on the running side (using stats from post #157): Ajayi was slightly better at getting extra yards on small yardage carries (his median YPC is better than that of Williams + Drake), but on the other metrics Ajayi was worse.

    Overall YPG is better post-Ajayi even accounting for the defense, we get more yards with fewer carries, we should have gotten greater YPC with Ajayi because we had a winning record with him meaning that we were in the lead more often (post #175) but didn't, and mean YPC was definitely greater. That mean being greater means that we have more big runs than before, and that makes a difference in a game.

    So other than small yardage carries, it's better now than before.
     
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