Thanks for the link Kafka. I’ll check it out. Also, I agree that other factors may not be accounted for in an EV analysis like the one Huck did. Although you could tailor the same methodology to account for turnovers (assign them some negative value, especially in the case of a pick 6) or to compare an offense’s performance only against the top defenses it has played.

Here is one link that looked interesting:
http://math-blog.com/2007/06/02/3-awesome-free-math-programs/

I have not used any of this stuff because I already have a copy of Matlab.

The quality of an offense is not only how many points it can score but also includes other factors such as: turnovers, ability to score quickly when necessary, ability to run clock when necessary, ability to score against the best Ds, ability to create good field position from bad field position, etc.

It seems like a challenging problem. What makes it even more challenging is that the quality of the D being faced has to be factored into the computation.

From a software prespective, I’m more interested in applications that provide a realtime assist for coaching decisions and applications that assist coaches in analyzing video.

This early in the year there are some obvious data problems. Arkansas has only had two drives that have started on their opponent’s side of the field this year out of 35 possessions. So their 7.0 EVs in those areas is obviously misleading. The position where there’s the most data shows Texas with 13 possessions and Arkansas with 18 starting between their own 20 and 34 (inclusive). Texas’ EV is a little over twice that of Arkansas’.

And while playing Alabama did hurt their EV in that range, they only managed 2.9 points per drive out of 12 possessions that began in that range against Western Illinois and Louisiana-Monroe.

It’s possible to use Excel, just tedious. MATLAB is more powerful.

But I can probably use Excel to do what I’m going to do.