This is showing my whole ass as a dumb football fan but I can’t stand analytics where you have to put a whole essay into making the metric make sense. Are these important things we are measuring or are they important because we measure them?
Steelers offense ranks 14th by DVOA. Defense ranks 7th. Overall they are the 11th best team by this metric in the NFL.
An interesting bit I liked from the read:
There are three main reasons why offensive DVOA likes the Steelers offense much more than other metrics.
- The average Steelers drive through Week 10 started at the 26.4-yard line. That ranked 31st in the NFL. They have to go farther to score than almost any other team.
- The Steelers avoid turnovers. They have the fewest turnovers in the league. Although the new version of DVOA this year gives turnovers a smaller penalty than older versions of DVOA, they still matter and avoiding turnovers is a good thing!
- The biggest issue is schedule. As bad as Canada has been criticized, it seems insane to me to fire him after a game where the Steelers couldn’t score against the Cleveland Browns. Have you seen the Browns the rest of the year? They are killing every offense on the schedule (except, for some reason, Indianapolis).
In the first 10 games of the season, the average defensive DVOA of Pittsburgh’s opponents was -8.5%. If the season ended today, that would be the third-toughest offensive strength of schdeule in DVOA history, trailing only the 1982 Buccaneers (-10.2% in a nine-game strike year) and the 2004 Browns (-8.7%). Half of Pittsburgh’s games have come against top-eight defenses, which are really top-seven defenses if you don’t consider the Steelers themselves. Things get easier for the Steelers, with an average offensive strength of schedule for the remainder of the year. It’s very likely that the offense will look better no matter what and people will attribute it to the offensive coordinator change even if Kenny Pickett isn’t really playing any better and the coordinator change hasn’t really changed things.