Ralph's Formula for Success

[mm42]

Ralph Friedgen has a magic formula he thinks gives about a 95% chance of predicting success in football. Add up your number of offensive interceptions, fumbles, dropped passes, sacks, and penalties and divide by the number offensive plays. Keeping this figure under 12% is supposed to lead to victory 95% of the time.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/11/15/AR2006111501595.html

I'd like to see what our performance has been like over a few seasons, but unfortunately I don't know anyone who keeps stats on dropped passes.

 

[33jacket]

Ralph Friedgen has a magic formula he thinks gives about a 95% chance of predicting success in football. Add up your number of offensive interceptions, fumbles, dropped passes, sacks, and penalties and divide by the number offensive plays. Keeping this figure under 12% is supposed to lead to victory 95% of the time.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/11/15/AR2006111501595.html

I'd like to see what our performance has been like over a few seasons, but unfortunately I don't know anyone who keeps stats on dropped passes.

I would say you need to somehow factor in your defense for this to hold true. Otherwise it is purely offensive success. I mean, you can do those things to this formula just fine, and defensively and sp teams be mediocre and lose alot....

 

[beej67]

I remember him talking about that stat when he was at Tech. He said that Godsey's junior year was the best year any of his teams had ever had for it.

But head coach Ralph Friedgen argues the unexplainable becomes quite explainable with the use of a statistic he learned during his time with the San Diego Chargers called major offensive errors.

I blogged a very similar stat a year or two ago on the Hive, but I called it "Major Gamechanging Screwups." Same thing, essentially, except I didn't normalize it by # of plays.

 

[ncjacket]

I'm sure the staff keeps dropped passes, they just don't give the numbers to anyone. They track lots of stuff we never hear about. Just like basketball teams that track points per possession, etc.