statistics Page 3 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights
Do Colder NFL Games Have Fewer Penalties?
While watching some insanely frigid football last weekend, one Deadspinner wondered if there were fewer flags in cold NFL games, the result of referees deciding, consciously or not, to speed games up and get the hell off the field. Without scrutinizing hundreds of hours of game tape we can't really ...
Rex Ryan's Odd Obsession With Passer Rating
According to the New York Times, the Jets coach "cares deeply" about passer rating, that much-maligned, simplistic, often misleading statistic dismissed by many as a curio. He uses it to evaluate his and opposing quarterbacks, and considers it one of the leading indicators of team success—even as it...
Brandon Marshall Is Better Than Drew Brees, And Other Fantasy Truths
Fantasy football may not have all the blood and sweat and violence and trauma of the game as it's played on the field, but there's at least one way in which it's just like the real thing: as John Madden put it, "usually the team that scores the most points wins." How you get those points may be ver...
Phil Mickelson Takes A Statistical Approach To His Short Game
British Open winner Phil Mickelson has remained relatively quiet in the media since his win last week, but he popped up on the radar after requesting to be featured on the podcast Science Friday. What'd he talk about? Math, science and golf!...
What The Hell Is Going On With The Grizzlies' Coaching Situation?
Lost though it may have been in the relentless beatdown the Spurs delivered last week, the Memphis Grizzlies had a great season, another tremendous step forward. Under head coach Lionel Hollins, the Grizzlies' winning percentage has increased every year: from .293 in 2008-09 (he coached the last hal...
Even If Icing The Kicker Doesn't Work, It's Better Than Never Icing The Kicker
Mike Tomlin iced the kicker twice last night, but with an unfortunate twist: First, he called a timeout on his own kicker, Shaun Suisham, who proceeded to miss a 54-yarder. Then he stopped the Titans' Rob Bironas just as he was about to attempt the game-winning 40-yarder. Bironas waited two minutes ...
Just How Tight Is The AL Playoff Race?
With three weeks to go in the season, over half of baseball is still in the race. Seventeen teams are within five games of a playoff spot. You might think that's mostly due to the new second wild card, and that's the case in the NL. With all three division leaders comfortable and the Braves safe at...
Redskins Quarterback Had A Great Debut
For a bungling NFL franchise looking for a reason to believe, there's nothing quite like a breakout performance by a superstar quarterback. So after years of failure, Washington fans had to be delighted to see the numbers RGIII put up in his first start for the team. When you see a stat line like th...
Denard Robinson Had More Offense Than Michigan's Offense Today
Some stock car named Denard Robinson suited up for Michigan today and accomplished more offense than the entire Michigan offense. This sounds impossible but it is not. Like the American financial system, college football's statistics attribute success to individual performance while collectivizing t...
L.A. Kings PR Staff Plans To Withhold Stats From The Devils, Accidentally Tells Every Reporter About It
It's the responsibility of the home team's PR staff to compile statistics after each period, then rush print-outs down to both teams' locker rooms. It's not vital information, but it's nice for a coach to be able to quantify things like ice time and shots taken. During Saturday's game 5 in Newark, D...
Math! Says Hero Ball Doesn't Work
Some interesting research from the TrueHoop gang today, meant to address the non-flop-related issue of the 2012 playoffs: Who should be taking those crucial last shots? If the choice is between a covered superstar and an open non-superstar, the numbers say: give it to the open man....
Sex Offenders And NHL Success: An Astonishingly Accurate New Metric
I'm not big on advanced stats in hockey. It's not because I don't think they're valuable, but because it's tough to translate the concepts to what I'm seeing on the ice. It's my own ignorance, yes, but for a new generation of hockey metrics to take hold, they'll have to be more relatable to the aver...
ESPN's <em>Numbers Never Lie*</em> Expects Every American To Drink 12 Beers Sunday
Here's a ridiculous segment by the usually-reliable Michael Smith on ESPN's Numbers Never Lie* in which he recites a series of absurd statistics about the Super Bowl (without citing where they got the information, of course)....
The Verducci Effect Is Overworked And Broken Down
Sports Illustrated's Tom Verducci came out with his annual "Year After Effect" column yesterday, based on his hypothesis that that young pitchers tend to break down the season after an increased workload. Specifically, a pitcher 25 and under is supposed to be at risk if he pitched at least 30 more i...
Kobe Is (Allegedly) A Better Womanizer Than He Is A Basketball Player: A Statistical Analysis
The National Enquirer dropped one of its perhaps-truth bombs this week on Kobe Bryant's marriage (here's a summary, since the Enquirer wants you to splurge in the supermarket and didn't put its story online): The tab reports that Bryant had affairs with 105 women during the 10 years he was married t...
We're Getting Closer To An Actually Useful Goalie Statistic
You weren't chased away by a post dealing with hockey and Sabermetrics? Good for you! Then you've probably watched enough icepuck to realize that save percentage is a pretty weak measure of a goalie's ability. All shots are not created equal—a slapper from between the circles is going to be harder t...
The Real Reason For The NFL's Passing Explosion
We're doing a season-long NFL roundtable with our friends at Slate. Check back here each week as a rotating cast of football watchers discusses the weekend's key plays, coaching decisions, and traumatic brain injuries....
There Is An NBA GM Out There Who Doesn't Know How To Use Google
Ever wonder if the men who run our professional basketball teams are as clueless as the men who were running our professional baseball teams (as depicted by Michael Lewis in his 2003 book Moneyball)? There is no definitive answer to that question, yet, but we do now know that at least one NBA GM doe...
The Curse Of Dopey "Curse Of The Bambino" References, And Other Dumb Things About The Red Sox's Stretch Run
Harvey Araton of the New York Times, reporting from Baltimore, sets the new/old standard for witless hackery today:...