Dr. D on the Seahawks' 2-3 Start
We know, we know

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How much confidence has jemanji lost in the Seahawks?  Right around 0%, plus or minus an xFIP point or two.

You lose two games in OT on the road, against opponents playing great?  You score only 13 points against Detroit, despite racking up 350 yards?  Your offensive line is supposed to be a tragicomedy but the least yardage you've had all year is 324?   You play the Packers and Bengals on the road, not to mention the house of horrors that is St. Louis, and you go 2-3?  All of this is, sabermetrically, a little bit like Hisashi Iwakuma starting a year 1-2, 7.14 despite having 31 strikeouts and 4 walks.  Enhance calm, John Spartan.

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Some M's fans here might be a little bit behind the curve on football SABR.  Well, at least one M's fan might be, the one with the shtick.  How 'bout we visit a football SABR-primer and see where the Seahawks are on it.

Football Outsiders has selected about two dozen maxims which correlate to baseball ideas like "Pitcher W-L isn't that big a deal" and "Bernie Carbo didn't really 'know how' to drive in the big run."  In other words, once somebody said them to you, you suddenly felt real stupid.  With no further ado, we mosh off the italicized stylings of Football Outsiders:

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I/O:  You run when you win, not win when you run.

The first article ever written for Football Outsiders was devoted to debunking the myth of "establishing the run." There is no correlation whatsoever between giving your running backs a lot of carries early in the game and winning the game. Just running the ball is not going to help a team score; it has to run successfully.

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Lou Rawls just ran for 169 yards, more yards than Marshawn Lynch ever ran for in his life.  The Seahawks lost.  Some sample sizes of 1 are more convincing than others.  Rawls' historic game was a perfect illustration of the idea.

If you found that kind of interesting, read the rest of FO's entry on this issue.  But on the other hand, bro's:

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I/O:  If their overall yards per carry are equal, a running back who consistently gains yardage on every play is more valuable than a boom-and-bust running back who is frequently stuffed at the line but occasionally breaks a long highlight-worthy run. 

Our brethren at Baseball Prospectus believe that the most precious commodity in baseball is outs. Teams only get 27 of them per game, and you can't afford to give one up for very little return. So imagine if there was a new rule in baseball that gave a team a way to earn another three outs in the middle of the inning. That would be pretty useful, right?

That's the way football works. You may start a drive 80 yards away from scoring, but as long as you can earn 10 yards in four chances, you get another four chances. Long gains have plenty of value, but if those long gains are mixed with a lot of short gains, you are going to put the quarterback in a lot of difficult third-and-long situations. That means more punts and more giving the ball back to the other team rather than moving the chains and giving the offense four more plays to work with.

... Most boom-and-bust running backs, however, contribute to their own problems by hesitating behind the line whenever the hole is unclear, looking for the home run instead of charging forward for the four-yard gain that keeps the offense moving.

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Pete Carroll is a big fan of the Rawls R&B, as any Cowboys trade analyst could tell you.  He "stomps his feet, runs aggressively, runs downhill."  Rawls seems to have an extra level of decisiveness and burst when he takes the bawl.  And though he doesn't make people miss all that much, what I like about Rawls is that 6 extra feet after contact ... actually, the 6 extra feet he gets after a UPS truck runs over him.  He delivers a finishing blow.  

Quite possible the Seahawks have found a guy to blend with Beast Mode over the next coupla years.  At least, that's what it looks like from a baseball standpoint.

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I/O:  Field position is fluid. 

Every yard line on the field has a value based on how likely a team is to score from that location on the field as opposed to from a yard further back. The change in value from one yard to the next is the same whether the team has the ball or not. The goal of a defense is not just to prevent scoring, but to hold the opposition so that the offense can get the ball back in the best possible field position. A bad offense will score as many points as a good offense if it starts each drive five yards closer to the goal line.

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It was sentences like that last one, that bit me so hard back in the early 1980's.  The sheer joy of a Zen-like light bulb is part of what makes sabermetrics, and the Mariners, a worthwhile use of hobby time.

In other words, now I get it.  Why NFL coaches "overweight" field position.

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I/O:  Shotgun formations are generally more efficient than formations with the quarterback under center.

Over the past five seasons, offenses have averaged 5.8 yards per play from Shotgun (not counting the Wildcat or other college-style option plays), but just 5.0 yards per play with the quarterback under center.

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:: blinks ::

The baseball analogy is, Roenis Elias (and every other pitcher in the game, it seems) coughs up a .300 AVG on his fastball to go with a .140 AVG on his curve ball.  (Seriously, that's about what it was.)  And yet the game is very, very grudging about acknowledging these realities.  Imagine if the pitches were just Red, Yellow and Blue.  What would you choose then, I'm saying.

In NFL terms, passing is the coin of the realm and it is still wayyyy underrated.

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I/O:  Highly-drafted wide receivers without many college touchdowns are likely to bust.

Football Outsiders Almanac 2009 introduced a new metric called Playmaker Score, which measures rookie wide receivers by simply multiplying average yards per reception and total career touchdowns in college. Players who score high in this metric do not necessarily become stars in the NFL, but no first- or second-round pick with a score below 8.0 has yet to live up to his draft position. Like the Lewin Career Forecast, Playmaker Score is far more accurate with receivers chosen in the first two rounds, and it doesn't seem to work for hybrid slot receiver/running backs such as Percy Harvin and Dexter McCluster.

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Many of these are obvious to you NFL junkies.  We know, We Know.  :: musburger ::  But for me?  This is kind of like Olkin ERA:  just take a pitcher's SLG, x OBP, x 31, and use that instead of ERA.  So with Tyler Lockett, all we need to know is that he was super explosive in college?  And you can forget all the stuff about third-down catches, or ratio of index finger to third finger, and all that?

I dunno, but I like it.

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I/O:  Rushing is more dependent on the offensive line than people realize, but pass protection is more dependent on the quarterback himself than people realize.

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This seems like it could have Seahawk applications, but who knows what they are.

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I/O:  The future NFL success of quarterbacks can be projected with a high degree of accuracy by analyzing their collegiate performance, starting experience, and projected draft slot.

QBASE, our latest attempt to project the NFL careers of draft-eligible quarterbacks, was developed by Andrew Healy and unveiled in April of 2015. The math behind QBASE is complex, but the idea is simple: quarterbacks who played well in college over a large sample size and also impressed scouts with their intangible qualities are more likely to succeed in the pro ranks than their peers. The trick is identifying prospects who meet all three criteria.

From 1997 to 2010, the top QBASE scores for quarterbacks taken in the first 100 picks of the draft belonged to Philip Rivers, Carson Palmer, Donovan McNabb, Peyton Manning, Byron Leftwich, Aaron Rodgers, Ben Roethlisberger, John Beck, Matthew Stafford, Chad Pennington, and Daunte Culpepper.

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That list of QB's kinda looks like a 2002-era list of Ron Shandler pitchers.  Talk about low-hanging fruit.

You guys will have to tell ME how Russell Wilson fits in here, as far as where RW3 would fit into QBASE and/or how the Shire affects that.  But --- > it's been Dr. D's thought for three years that he would jell about year 4 or 5.  Far be it from him to say he tolja so.  RW3 is ominously finding those receivers running down the centerline and the Perfect Storm looks like it's brewing from here.

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I/O:  Championship teams are generally defined by their ability to dominate inferior opponents, not their ability to win close games. 

Football games are often decided by just one or two plays -- a missed field goal, a bouncing fumble, the subjective spot of an official on fourth-and-1. One missed assignment by a cornerback, or one slightly askew pass that bounces off a receiver's hands and into those of a defensive back five yards away and the game could be over. In a blowout, however, one lucky bounce isn't going to change things.

Championship teams beat their good opponents convincingly and destroy the cupcakes on the schedule. Certainly there are exceptions to this rule, including last year's Super Bowl champion. However, in the DVOA era (1989-2014), 23 of 26 Super Bowl champions have had more blowouts against sub-.500 teams than close wins against above-.500 teams.

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Easy part of the sked is comin' up.

Be Afraid,

Dr D

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