Jacksonville Jaguars Fan Forums

I did a similar examination of these types of scores last year but for the life of me could not find the thread.  At any rate, I'll do it again here.  

 

It should come as no surprise that the majority of scoring a team does throughout a season is generated by its offense.  However, scoring by defense and/or special teams has a significant impact on the outcome of a game.  These types of scores are often times some of the most exciting plays in a game and for good reason.  In a game where field position significantly affects a team's ability to score on a drive, these plays bypass all that and only take seconds off the clock to boot.  If you are giving up a defensive/special teams TD, you are essentially spotting the other team points.  In a league where roughly half the games are decided by 8 points or less, you simply can't spot the other team TDs and expect to win.

 

I gathered data from www.pro-football-reference.com.  This is a fantastic site that doesn't charge you for access to the vast amount of data they have available to sort through, specifically the game play finder tool.  If you're a statistics guy and a football guy like me, you'll love this site if you weren't already aware of it.

 

I imported into excel all kick return, punt return, interception and fumble plays that resulted in a TD from the beginning of the 2008 season through this past weekend's games including playoffs and sorted it into whether the game resulted in a win or loss.  I chose 2008 because if I went back any further it wouldn't report all the data and was capping at 500 separate instances.  I think the sample size is large enough though. I was specifically looking for the net number of defensive/special teams TDs in each game meaning that if the other team also had a defensive/special teams TD it would cancel out one from the other team.  That seemed like the best way to look at this.  For example, what could we really tell about a game with this statistic where both teams ran back their opening kickoffs for touchdowns if we counted it as both a win and a loss?  Probably not much.

 

If you're still with me, we're getting to the meat now.  From the beginning of the 2008 season through Monday Night Football on December 14th, there were 577 separate games where a team netted 1 defensive/special teams TD.  404 resulted in wins or 70.02%.  There were an additional 87 games where a team netted 2 or more defensive/special teams TDs.  76 of those resulted in wins for that team or 87.36%.  
None of this should be earth shattering, but the numbers are compelling.  Obviously the converse is true as well.  If you net -1 defensive/special teams TDs, your chance of winning the game is 29.98% and if you net -2 or more your chance of winning is 12.64%.  

 

One stat won't usually tell the whole story about a specific game, but when you throw a pick 6, fumble for 6, or allow a punt or kick to be taken to the house, it's clear you're SIGNIFICANTLY hurting your chance of winning the game.

 

How does this relate to the Jaguars?  The Jaguars are currently tied for the league lead at 6 with the Cowboys and Bears in giving up defensive/special teams TDs.  For the Jags to take the next step and get to 10 wins or more next year, they're going to have to reduce these types of mental breakdowns.

After the Jaguars game against the Colts in which all 3 units scored TDs,  how many Defensive and Special Teams TDs do the Jaguars have this season?

Quote:After the Jaguars game against the Colts in which all 3 units scored TDs,  how many Defensive and Special Teams TDs do the Jaguars have this season?

They scored two in that game and two against buffalo for a total of 4.

An interesting addition to this would be to see what, if any effect D TDs had on total number of possessions.

 

If you think about it, those type of TDs essentially take an Offensive possession for the bad guys and turns it into points. KO and Punt Return TDs don't really do this as they more or less simply accelerate the timeline for the Offensive score. In other words, you still have the ball, you have just scored quicker. But with Defensive TDs, you have essentially scored without ever having to trot out an Offensive team. Does it change the overall total possessions number? Does it change the points per possession number? This would be fascinating to know.

Quote:An interesting addition to this would be to see what, if any effect D TDs had on total number of possessions.

 

If you think about it, those type of TDs essentially take an Offensive possession for the bad guys and turns it into points. KO and Punt Return TDs don't really do this as they more or less simply accelerate the timeline for the Offensive score. In other words, you still have the ball, you have just scored quicker. But with Defensive TDs, you have essentially scored without ever having to trot out an Offensive team. Does it change the overall total possessions number? Does it change the points per possession number? This would be fascinating to know.

 

Yeah that would be interesting but I'm not sure how to accomplish finding that out even with the very powerful tools the site provides.  And even if there were a way to do it, which there might be, I think you'd have to look at much smaller sample sizes because of the amount of data you'd need to examine and edit.  You'd be doing multiple searches and then cross referencing them with each other to find the specific games.  I suppose I've already done half of that since I still have the spreadsheet with some of the required data.  I'll take a look when I have some time.  What I did above wasn't terribly difficult, but it took about an hour to properly sort in excel and I'm pretty good with excel.  

 

There are a few other play types I'd like to examine as well which I might if this topic generates a good discussion, which understandably it may not.  One in particular I'm thinking about is scoring right before the half (TDs, FGs or even safeties) where you effectively (or perhaps luckily) used the clock to prevent your opponent from having a chance to respond.

Quote:Yeah that would be interesting but I'm not sure how to accomplish finding that out even with the very powerful tools the site provides.  And even if there were a way to do it, which there might be, I think you'd have to look at much smaller sample sizes because of the amount of data you'd need to examine and edit.  You'd be doing multiple searches and then cross referencing them with each other to find the specific games.  I suppose I've already done half of that since I still have the spreadsheet with some of the required data.  I'll take a look when I have some time.  What I did above wasn't terribly difficult, but it took about an hour to properly sort in excel and I'm pretty good with excel.  

 

There are a few other play types I'd like to examine as well which I might if this topic generates a good discussion, which understandably it may not.  One in particular I'm thinking about is scoring right before the half (TDs, FGs or even safeties) where you effectively (or perhaps luckily) used the clock to prevent your opponent from having a chance to respond.

 

The double dip score where you end the Half with points, then get the ball to start the Second Half is huge I think.

Quote:They scored two in that game and two against buffalo for a total of 4.

 

 Thanks.

 

 The fact that the Jags won both of these games because of these 2 TDs in each of the games isn't surprising in the least.  The numbers you posted above certainly back this up.