The analytical revolution started in the NFL whether the world around it was ready or not. All 32 franchises look for a competitive edge schematically, in personnel and even in medicine. According to Sports Illustrated, the Baltimore Ravens, New England Patriots, and Philadelphia Eagles are three of the leaders in the analytics clubhouse.

From a fan’s perspective, advanced metrics used to grade are largely foreign. It wasn’t until recent years the revolution hit fanbases across the country. Social media, for how objectively bad it can be, has probably helped bridge the gap between obscure analytics’-based sites and the masses.

One of those analytical types, Daniel Houston, never expected the match between his obsession with sports and his interest in data analysis would impact a fanbase the way it has.

Houston, a community newspaper editor, brought advanced analytical analysis to the Dallas Cowboys Twitter community. More specifically, Houston fought to normalize one of the metrics that is most closest associated advanced statistic with wins in football, expected points added.

Expected Points Added, or EPA, considers down, distance to go, field position, home-field advantage and time remaining on a play-by-play basis and assigns a numerical value for each play result. EPA is simply the difference in situation from one play to the next.

An easy example of how this works is if a team runs the ball on 3rd-and-10 from their own 20-yard-line and gains eight yards, they’d receive an EPA value of about -0.2. Conversely, if that same run happens on 3rd-and-7, the run holds a value of 1.4 EPA because they converted a long-distance third down.

Bob Carroll first popularized the concepts behind EPA in the 1989 book The Hidden Game of Football. Its resurgence is largely credited to ESPN’s Brian Burke around 2010 and has really taken off nationally in the past few years with the rise in social media.

Houston, who began writing freelance pieces on the Dallas Cowboys in 2016, discovered a tool called nflscrapR, which collects comprehensive play-by-play data before subsequently running it through the EPA model.

To better understand nflscrapR, it’s important to have a basic understanding of the programming language R, which is an environment specific to statistical computing and graphics. It hosts, computes, and visualizes the data in its own studio.

Houston attended an online Harvard University course teaching the basics of the R coding language. The class is eight weeks long, requires only a minimal time commitment each week, (one to two hours) and comes with a verified certificate for only $49.

Then, before the 2018-2019 season, Houston created the Twitter account @cowboysstats.

“I started the account in August 2018 to share some of the stuff I found and, hopefully, start to normalize EPA-based analysis among Cowboys fans and writers,” Houston said.

He said the account immediately garnered a following from influential local media members. Those media members would go on to use his work in theirs.

Houston’s research revolves around how the Cowboys should run their offense based on the expected points model. Throwing the football more often, and more specifically on early downs, is the fork in the road a team must take to achieve optimal offensive efficiency.

Forward-thinking Cowboys’ fans starving for offensive innovation in the wake of a disappointment the year prior gravitated toward the twitter account wielding a graph as its avatar. Houston credits the rise in followers to those media members sharing his work when his account was just getting off the ground. The prolific writer and local radio host Bob Sturm was one of the first to take interest in what he was doing, according to Houston.

Although Houston is genesis for advanced analytical acceptance among Cowboys faithful, it’s more important to let the data speak for itself and use Houston when we get back to EPA after exploring other metrics and sources.

Houston helped popularize EPA among Cowboys fans, but as any true scholar he uses every metric available at his disposal to paint the necessary picture to both his followers and his critics. But not everybody is so open to change. If one searches online, they’ll find no less than 100 reasons humans resist change.

The overarching cause though is fear of what follows the change. And for those who hold power in the NFL, the paper-thin job security they possess seems to be enough to paralyze progress at times.

There’s an evident disconnect between NFL coaching staffs and the aptly self-titled “analytics nerds,” Twitter and in media. Through six weeks of the 2019 NFL season, the NFL is still running the ball on a majority of first downs.

Success Rates:

Although it’s only 51%, the discrepancy in effectiveness is more pronounced according to Sharp Football Stats. Pass plays across the league on first down average 7.6 yards-per-attempt (YPA) and yield a success rate of 52%. Conversely, rushes in the same situation yield a yards-per-carry (YPC) average of 4.3 yards and a success rate of 47%.

Success rate in the NFL is defined as gaining 40% of yards necessary on first down, 60% of yards necessary on second down, and 100% of yards necessary on third and fourth downs.

The Dallas Cowboys, on first downs of less than 10 yards to gain have passed 74 times compared to 103 rushes so far in 2019 through six weeks. Their success rate on passes is 61% at 8.3 YPA. On rushes, the success rate drops to 49% at 4.1 YPC.

Success rate works for a larger scope of people because it’s easy to understand. There’s little nuance to it. You take the ball to a certain point on a certain down or you didn’t accomplish the mission on that play. The question then is what follows when that first down play is unsuccessful?

On second downs after an unsuccessful first down play (a gain of three yards or less,) the ratio between run and pass skews heavily toward passing. League-wide, teams are throwing 69% of the time at an average of 7.4 YPA and a success rate of 43%. Rushing attempts yielded 4.4 YPC and a success rate of only 29%.

The need to gain 60% of yards necessary to achieve a first down causes the lower success rates on second down. So, on a 2nd-and-10 run, even if the run goes for five yards to set up a 3rd-and-5, that play did not achieve success. The runner collects somewhat “empty” yards.

The Cowboys numbers are even more staggering, throwing on 64 of 79 2nd-and-7-plus attempts, which leads the league. Despite the biggest passing tendency in the league in such situations, they also have more success than any other team by 2% and have the highest YPA by 0.2 yards.