The figures below are based on data from all Western Conference games played in 2014 plus an increasing number of Eastern Conference games. In particular, all games involving the DC Current are already included.
The y positions (completion percentage) in the following two scatterplots are randomly jittered a bit to reduce overplotting. Excluding players with less than 5 throws.
I have excluded possessions that end due to end of period. What this means via example: Vancouver Nighthawks have had 226 possessions that end in a goal and the median number of passes was 5.
Main observation: vanNH turn it over more and sooner than wdcCT. But also take fewer passes to score.
wdcCT resembles pdxST in terms of making more passes than teams like vanNH. Only sfoDF have shorter possessions than vanNH, but luckily vanNH’s possessions end well more often.
Head-to-head demonstration of wdcCT making more passes, across all possession outcomes.
y = how possessions end
x = proportion of possessions that end a certain way
I use o_line
to denote a line that was sent out to receive the pull and play offense. I use d_line
to denote a line that was sent out to pull and play defense. Of course, if there’s at least one turnover, an o_line
plays defense and a d_line
plays offense. How do possessions end if we split out by which type of line is currently on offense?
Caveat: I am not (yet) adjusting for the full line changes we often see during timeouts. But that affects a small proportion of possessions.
In an absolute sense there are more possessions by o_lines
but the distribution of how the possessions end isn’t very different at all.
x and y = same as above
We revisit the same figures as above, but with a more detailed look at how possessions end. Here’s what the codes mean:
y = how a possession ends
x = proportion of possessions that end a certain way
x and y and meaning of o_line
and d_line
= same as above