2014 Defenses or now it makes sense why the Packers fell apart in the NFC Championship

After creating charts for the outcomes of offensive possessions by series, I decided to replicate the charts for a team’s defense.

Here’s the premise: the success of a team depends on offense, defense, and special teams — wow, no surprise — and sometimes the strength varies by quarter — again, wow and sarcasm. I decided to chart what happened by quarter based on four possible outcomes.

The outcomes for defenses are:

Giving up touchdowns
Allowing field goal attempts — regardless of the outcome a team put themselves in position to score
Forcing punts
Creating turnovers — either by fumble recovery, interception, or turnover on downs.

I charted this information by quarter and made the bars bigger for quarters where a team was on the field more often. In the case of the charts you will see below, wider bars means teams experienced more possessions during that quarter.

Here is the Green Bay Packers defensive chart for 2014:

[image width=”360″ height
=”300″ lightbox=”yes” src=”http://stanke.co/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/gb-by-quarter-def.png”]

If you are like me, you noticed that 40% of possessions in the 4th quarter against the Packers defense ended as touchdowns — more than double the rate of any other quarter. After seeing this chart, and reviewing the offensive possession chart for the Packers, the outcome of the NFC championship has some context. The outcome of the five 4th quarter and overtime drives for the Seahawks offense: Punt, Interception, Touchdown, Touchdown, Touchdown. If we make a lot of assumptions about the numbers, then the odds of 3 touchdowns happening over 5 possessions is about once every 9(!!!!) games against the Packers. If we also take into account the offensive performance, a similar type of implosion would occur once every 30 games! When the team fell apart last year, I thought the odds of that happening had to be one-in-a-million, but the were much, much better than expected!

Interesting narratives for other teams:

Indianapolis could produce turnovers more often in the 4th quarter, but still gave up a lot of touchdowns.
Arizona’s defense was great, but got better each quarter of the game.
Miami gave up in the 4th quarter — well documented and backed by the numbers.

Here are the charts defensive charts for all other teams:

[image width=”360″ height
=”300″ lightbox=”yes” src=”http://stanke.co/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/teams-by-quarter-def.png”]

And a close-up fore each team’s defense (left-right arrows for smoother transitions):

[slide first_slide=”yes” last_slide=”” src=”http://stanke.co/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/dal-by-quarter-def.png”]

[slide first_slide=”” last_slide=”” src=”http://stanke.co/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/nyg-by-quarter-def.png”]

[slide first_slide=”” last_slide=”” src=”http://stanke.co/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/phi-by-quarter-def.png”]

[slide first_slide=”” last_slide=”” src=”http://stanke.co/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/was-by-quarter-def.png”]

[slide first_slide=”” last_slide=”” src=”http://stanke.co/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/chi-by-quarter-def.png”]

[slide first_slide=”” last_slide=”” src=”http://stanke.co/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/det-by-quarter-def.png”]

[slide first_slide=”” last_slide=”” src=”http://stanke.co/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/gb-by-quarter-def.png”]

[slide first_slide=”” last_slide=”” src=”http://stanke.co/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/min-by-quarter-def.png”]

[slide first_slide=”” last_slide=”” src=”http://stanke.co/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/atl-by-quarter-def.png”]

[slide first_slide=”” last_slide=”” src=”http://stanke.co/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/car-by-quarter-def.png”]

[slide first_slide=”” last_slide=”” src=”http://stanke.co/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/no-by-quarter-def.png”]

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[slide first_slide=”” last_slide=”” src=”http://stanke.co/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/ari-by-quarter-def.png”]

[slide first_slide=”” last_slide=”” src=”http://stanke.co/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/sea-by-quarter-def.png”]

[slide first_slide=”” last_slide=”” src=”http://stanke.co/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/sf-by-quarter-def.png”]

[slide first_slide=”” last_slide=”” src=”http://stanke.co/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/stl-by-quarter-def.png”]

[slide first_slide=”” last_slide=”” src=”http://stanke.co/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/buf-by-quarter-def.png”]

[slide first_slide=”” last_slide=”” src=”http://stanke.co/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/mia-by-quarter-def.png”]

[slide first_slide=”” last_slide=”” src=”http://stanke.co/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/ne-by-quarter-def.png”]

[slide first_slide=”” last_slide=”” src=”http://stanke.co/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/nyj-by-quarter-def.png”]

[slide first_slide=”” last_slide=”” src=”http://stanke.co/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/bal-by-quarter-def.png”]

[slide first_slide=”” last_slide=”” src=”http://stanke.co/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/cin-by-quarter-def.png”]

[slide first_slide=”” last_slide=”” src=”http://stanke.co/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/cle-by-quarter-def.png”]

[slide first_slide=”” last_slide=”” src=”http://stanke.co/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/pit-by-quarter-def.png”]

[slide first_slide=”” last_slide=”” src=”http://stanke.co/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/hou-by-quarter-def.png”]

[slide first_slide=”” last_slide=”” src=”http://stanke.co/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/ind-by-quarter-def.png”]

[slide first_slide=”” last_slide=”” src=”http://stanke.co/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/jac-by-quarter-def.png”]

[slide first_slide=”” last_slide=”” src=”http://stanke.co/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/ten-by-quarter-def.png”]

[slide first_slide=”” last_slide=”” src=”http://stanke.co/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/den-by-quarter-def.png”]

[slide first_slide=”” last_slide=”” src=”http://stanke.co/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/kc-by-quarter-def.png”]

[slide first_slide=”” last_slide=”” src=”http://stanke.co/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/oak-by-quarter-def.png”]

[slide first_slide=”” last_slide=”yes” src=”http://stanke.co/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/sd-by-quarter-def.png”]