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Your 2015 College Football Playoff Cheat Sheet
College football begins a new era today. After years of frustration with the Bowl Championship Series, there's finally a playoff to crown a national champion. If you haven't followed the season closely to this point but want to follow along, here's a quick rundown of what you should know about each...
How To Fix Fantasy Football Scoring With Simple Advanced Stats
With only one touchdown in Week 16, Aaron Rodgers ranked 15th in fantasy points among quarterbacks during fantasy football championship week, likely costing many a Rodgers owner a fantasy title. However, Rodgers' performance was much more valuable on the real football field, where his contributi...
How Did NFL Teams Perform Compared To Stat And Vegas Predictions?
This chart, by StatsbyLopez, shows the actual win totals of every NFL team, and how they stacked up against preseason predictions both from analytics sites and over/unders from the Vegas sportsbooks. (Click the magnifying glass to expand, or view it full-size at StatsbyLopez.)...
"Redskins" Mentions Down 27% On NFL Game Broadcasts In 2014
NFL announcers said the word "Redskins" 472 fewer times this regular season than in 2013, a decrease of 27%. We expected the Washington nickname controversy to impact how announcers called games, but not to this degree; in fact, yesterday's slate of broadcasts only found "Redskins" being mentioned 1...
Sure, <i>Now</i> The Jets Make The Biggest Plays Of The Week
After the Jets let Miami's Lamar Miller dash for a 97-yard touchdown run at the beginning of the third quarter, which was the longest play from scrimmage in Dolphins history, they trailed by 10 points, their WPA sat at 20 percent, and it appeared Rex Ryan would lose his last game, which seemed f...
So Good News And Bad News, Then
Yesterday, Carmelo hit a Christmas Day scoring milestone and the Knicks hit a futility-in-general milestone. This seems exactly right. ...
Josh Smith Has Been So, So, So, So Bad This Year
Stan Van Gundy has thrown Josh Smith into a volcano. Surely, this is the funniest thing that will happen in the NBA this year. But while we wait to see where Josh ends up next—the Rockets are apparently in the lead, but we all want him on the Mavs—let us remember that however well we think he might ...
Miami Lost And Then Won The Game On Two Huge Special-Teams Plays
With about five minutes remaining in a tied contest against Minnesota, Miami received a kickoff with the game seemingly tilted in their favor with Win Probability at 61 percent and an opportunity to run clock and take a late go-ahead lead. But rookie wideout Jarvis Landry slipped on the return, got ...
Here's A Mutant Hybrid Of Everyone's NFL Playoff Projections
With the NFL playoffs just a few weeks away, there are a lot of playoff probabilities going around. Functionally, these all do more or less the same thing. So instead of churning out our own—which, face it, we are probably not going to do better than what's already out in the world—we're mashing eve...
This Year's Bad NFL Teams Are Some Of The Worst Ever
Every season, there are at least a few atrocious NFL teams, teams that are disasters. But this season there are six of those teams—Jets, Jaguars, Titans, Raiders, Buccaneers, and Washington. Which seems like an abnormally high amount of shitty teams. So using Pro Football Reference data, we examin...
Which Fantasy Football Sites Have The Best Projections?
This post was originally published on Datascope. Republished here with permission....
Chart: Which Fired NCAA Football Coaches Were Biggest Disappointments?
Around this time every year, a handful of major college football programs dump their coach in search of quick success. Some moves work better than others. ...
Why The NHL Lost Control Of Its Mumps Outbreak
This is the most baffling sports medicine story of the year: Thirteen NHL players and two referees have been diagnosed with mumps—a potentially severe and exceedingly viral infection that classically causes fever, body aches, malaise, and in about half of cases, parotitis (a painful swelling of the ...
Why Wasn't Alabama's Blake Sims A Heisman Finalist?
For all practical purposes, the modern college football climate demands that the Heisman award go to the best or favorite quarterback in the country. So matter who is invited to New York—this year it's Oregon QB Marcus Mariota, Wisconsin RB Melvin Gordon, and Alabama wideout Amari Cooper—it's pret...
How Accurate Are ESPN's Fantasy Football Projections?
This post was originally published on Datascope. Republished here with permission. ...
The Biggest Two-Yard Run Of Week 14
Glancing briefly at box scores will tell you the Colts beat the Browns and Andrew Luck threw a go-ahead touchdown with 32 seconds remaining. But the box score won't tell you the leverage of the plays leading up to the touchdown, or that Boom Herron's two-yard rush immediately preceding the touchdo...
Rajon Rondo's Free Throw Shooting Is Historically Awful So Far
Rajon Rondo has never been a great free-throw shooter. Coming into the 2014-15 season his career average was 62.1 percent—substandard for a point guard—but so far this season, Rondo has been a calamity. He's shot a horrendous 9-30 (30.0 percent) clip from the "charity stripe" in his 15 games played....
Why Does The Flu Vaccine Suck This Year?
Did you get your flu shot? I didn't really want to (I hate needles) but as an infectious disease physician at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital, it would be exceedingly poor form if I opted out. My job requires it, and I recommend the vaccine to just about every patient, every day. The shot doesn't actu...
Which NBA Team Screws Up Its Timeouts The Most?
How much do you trust your team's coach to set up a play during a timeout? Probably more than you should....
Which Elite NBA Teams Are Beating Up On Bad Opponents?
Here's a helpful bit of observation that popped up on reddit last night. A redditor called Caged put together the point differentials of NBA teams against above- and below-.500 opponents. Unsurprisingly, they look a little different from the straight-up version....