Over at Advanced NFL Stats, Brian Burke has put together a great visualization plotting the offensive and defensive performance of the league's 32 teams. It's nothing too complicated—basically a NYMag Approval Matrix for football—but it reveals a lot about the state of the NFL through Week 5.


The measurement here is expected points added (EPA) per game, which sums how much a team's offense has increased the odds of scoring, or a team's defense has decreased those odds, following every play (similar to RE24 in baseball). This type of stat acknowledges that not all situations are equal—yards per game might be a useful comparative figure, but five yards on 2nd and 10 and five yards on 3rd and 4 aren't the same thing. The axes are set at the league averages, so even a slightly negative EPA defense like the Colts can qualify as "good" in today's NFL.

The scales had to be adjusted to fit the Broncos, but who would have guessed that the Colts attack would come in fourth? How many more points does Matt Schaub have to hand his opponents before the Texans' offense drops below the Jags? And what teams are going to distinguish themselves from the "decent D/medicore O" clusterfuck in the top left? Stay tuned, these update every week.


[Advanced NFL Stats]

Regressing is Deadspin's new home for sports science, statistics, medicine, and other nerdy endeavors.