[intro]”the [Green Bay] Packers are a second half team”[/intro]
That was the text message I got from a friend at halftime of a recent game between Green Bay and Seattle. I disagreed.
I did some web searching, and found the answer at nflsavant.com. The story was clear — Green Bay scored more in the first half. But I wanted more — were more points scored because they had the ball more frequently? How efficient were they at scoring touchdowns? The work at nflsavant.com inspired me to come with visualizations to that answered my questions — which I was able to develop after downloading 2014 box score data.
For my first iteration I want to know how do drives end — how often do drives result in touchdowns? And I want to know that for each quarter. And for each team.
The end of drives fall into four categories:
- Touchdowns – The most successful outcome of being on offense, putting six points on the board
- Field Goal Attempts – The offense put the team in a position to get three points. It’s important to note that an offense is not penalized for a missed field goal — that’s a special teams issue not an offense issue. Also, a good defense might help with field position, but that’s not a factor right now. Maybe I’ll adjust for that in future iterations.
- Punts – A sign of ineffective/unsuccessful offense.
- Turnovers – This includes fumble recoveries, interceptions, turnover on downs, and safeties. Statistically, these are worse than a punt, so they get their own category. I considered defensive scores from turnovers as another level. But those rarely occur by statistical standards. And a score after a turnover is really a product of special teams, not offensive quality.
The graphic I settled on was inspired the Statistical Atlas work by Nathan Yau and housed at his Flowing Data website. As you can see from the links, there are some similarities.
[image width=”360″ height
=”300″ lightbox=”yes” src=”http://stanke.co/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/packers-by-quarter1.png”]
The height of the graphic is represents the percent of drives resulting in a touchdown, field goal attempt, punt or turnover — totaling 100%. Each outcome is broken up by quarter, which differ by color gradient. The width of each quarter varies by the number of based on total possessions — more possessions means wider bars. In the Green Bay plot, the Packers had fewer possessions in the first and third quarter — this means narrower bars.
What resulted — a clear story that the Packers were most effective at scoring touchdowns earlier in the game.
After putting this together, I decided I should do it for every team — Each row describes teams in a division. The teams are alphabetically ordered. Remember this is 2014 NFL data.
[image width=”300″ height
=”360″ lightbox=”yes” src=”http://stanke.co/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/teams-by-quarter.png”]
Or for a closer look at individual teams — again, ordered alphabetically within each division:
[slide first_slide=”yes” last_slide=”” src=”http://stanke.co/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/dal-by-quarter-off.png”]
[slide first_slide=”” last_slide=”” src=”http://stanke.co/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/nyg-by-quarter-off.png”]
[slide first_slide=”” last_slide=”” src=”http://stanke.co/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/phi-by-quarter-off.png”]
[slide first_slide=”” last_slide=”” src=”http://stanke.co/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/was-by-quarter-off.png”]
[slide first_slide=”” last_slide=”” src=”http://stanke.co/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/chi-by-quarter-off.png”]
[slide first_slide=”” last_slide=”” src=”http://stanke.co/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/det-by-quarter-off.png”]
[slide first_slide=”” last_slide=”” src=”http://stanke.co/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/gb-by-quarter-off.png”]
[slide first_slide=”” last_slide=”” src=”http://stanke.co/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/min-by-quarter-off.png”]
[slide first_slide=”” last_slide=”” src=”http://stanke.co/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/atl-by-quarter-off.png”]
[slide first_slide=”” last_slide=”” src=”http://stanke.co/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/car-by-quarter-off.png”]
[slide first_slide=”” last_slide=”” src=”http://stanke.co/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/no-by-quarter-off.png”]
[slide first_slide=”” last_slide=”” src=”http://stanke.co/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/tb-by-quarter-off.png”]
[slide first_slide=”” last_slide=”” src=”http://stanke.co/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/ari-by-quarter-off.png”]
[slide first_slide=”” last_slide=”” src=”http://stanke.co/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/sea-by-quarter-off.png”]
[slide first_slide=”” last_slide=”” src=”http://stanke.co/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/sf-by-quarter-off.png”]
[slide first_slide=”” last_slide=”” src=”http://stanke.co/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/stl-by-quarter-off.png”]
[slide first_slide=”” last_slide=”” src=”http://stanke.co/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/buf-by-quarter-off.png”]
[slide first_slide=”” last_slide=”” src=”http://stanke.co/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/mia-by-quarter-off.png”]
[slide first_slide=”” last_slide=”” src=”http://stanke.co/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/ne-by-quarter-off.png”]
[slide first_slide=”” last_slide=”” src=”http://stanke.co/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/nyj-by-quarter-off.png”]
[slide first_slide=”” last_slide=”” src=”http://stanke.co/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/bal-by-quarter-off.png”]
[slide first_slide=”” last_slide=”” src=”http://stanke.co/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/cin-by-quarter-off.png”]
[slide first_slide=”” last_slide=”” src=”http://stanke.co/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/cle-by-quarter-off.png”]
[slide first_slide=”” last_slide=”” src=”http://stanke.co/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/pit-by-quarter-off.png”]
[slide first_slide=”” last_slide=”” src=”http://stanke.co/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/hou-by-quarter-off.png”]
[slide first_slide=”” last_slide=”” src=”http://stanke.co/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/ind-by-quarter-off.png”]
[slide first_slide=”” last_slide=”” src=”http://stanke.co/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/jac-by-quarter-off.png”]
[slide first_slide=”” last_slide=”” src=”http://stanke.co/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/ten-by-quarter-off.png”]
[slide first_slide=”” last_slide=”” src=”http://stanke.co/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/den-by-quarter-off.png”]
[slide first_slide=”” last_slide=”” src=”http://stanke.co/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/kc-by-quarter-off.png”]
[slide first_slide=”” last_slide=”” src=”http://stanke.co/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/oak-by-quarter-off.png”]
[slide first_slide=”” last_slide=”yes” src=”http://stanke.co/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/sd-by-quarter-off.png”]