Advanced Stat Notebook- Cowboys have edge in DVOA but EPA too close to call
The Dallas Cowboys will head to New Orleans to play the Saints on Thursday Night Football. Entering Week 13 with a 7-4 record, the Cowboys will look to bounce back from a Thanksgiving Day overtime loss to the Las Vegas Raiders. The Cowboys have lost three of their last four games to the AFC West, but will now face conference opponents for the remainder of the season. There were a lot of additions and losses this week that are worth noting: CeeDee Lamb, Amari Cooper and Demarcus Lawrence will return from injury while Terrance Steele, Mike McCarthy and five assistant coaches will miss the game due to COVID-19.
The New Orleans Saints currently have a 5-6 record and have lost four straight games. The Saints played on Thanksgiving as well, losing 31-6 to the Buffalo Bills. The big news for the Saints this week is that Taysom Hill has taken first team snaps at practice at quarterback and is expected to start this week. Head coach Sean Payton has not officially announced Hill as the starter over Trevor Siemian as they are monitoring Hill’s foot injury at practice. They are expecting Alvin Kamara to return for the Cowboys game as well.
Let’s open up the Advanced Stat Notebook to see how both teams have performed this season using advanced analytics. Here’s a review of four key metrics to see if DVOA, ANY/A, Toxicity and EPA give the Cowboys reasons to feel confident about picking up win No. 8 on the season.
Defense-Adjusted Value Over Average (DVOA) - Football Outsiders
Tim Heitman-USA TODAY Sports
DVOA is a metric which measures the success of each play as compared to league average using percentage points above or below average. The metric measures down, distance, field location, quarter and quality of opponent.
With DVOA, teams are looking for a higher percentage offensively and a lower percentage defensively. On offense and special teams, the objective is to perform above league average while defenses are looking to force their opponents to perform below league average.
Information via Football Outsiders.
DVOA Offense
The Cowboys have the edge in two of the three offensive DVOA categories. The largest gap is in passing DVOA where the Cowboys rank seventh overall at 31.8%, a 28.6% difference over the Saints 24th-ranked DVOA of 3.2%.
Running DVOA favors the Saints by a slight margin. The Saints rank 15th overall with a -7.8% DVOA, 1.5% better than the Cowboys 20th ranked DVOA.
The Cowboys lead in total offensive DVOA at 10%, good for 7th overall. The Saints overall DVOA is -.08% which is 20th overall.
Offensive Advantage: Cowboys
DVOA Defense
Defensively, the Cowboys lead in two of the three categories but the margin is razor-thin.
Passing DVOA favors the Cowboys who rank fourth with a DVOA of -9.9%. The Saints are just behind Dallas at -9.3%, 5th overall. The difference is .6 between the two teams defensively.
Rushing DVOA favors the Saints heavily. The Saints rank No.1 overall with a -32.6% DVOA. The Cowboys are around the middle of the pack at -9.5%, 20th overall.
Overall defensive DVOA slightly favors the Cowboys with both teams ranking in the top five. The Cowboys rank 4th overall at -9.7% and the Saints rank 5th at -9.3%. While the Cowboys lead in two categories it’s important to note that the Saints finished in the top five in all three categories. Due to the consistency, the edge goes to the Saints.
Defensive Advantage: Saints
Toxic Differential- Sharp Football Stats
(AP Photo/Ron Jenkins)
Toxic differential (also referred to as Toxicity) is a statistic created by then Minnesota Vikings offensive coordinator Brian Billick. Billick realized that adding the number of explosive plays an offense generates and subtracting the number of explosive plays a defense allows, then adding the turnover margin, was a key barometer of team success.
Under Billick’s formula, explosive plays are defined as passing plays over 20 yards and rushing plays over 10 yards. These figures were gathered by Sharp Football Stats.
Toxic Differential- Offense
The Cowboys lead in offensive toxicity due to the amount of explosive plays that they’ve been able to generate. They have 78 explosive plays with 43 coming by way of explosive passes. The Cowboys rank seventh in explosive pass plays and 14th in explosive runs. They have 15 giveaways for the season so far, knocking down their offensive toxicity score.
The Saints’ offense has not turned the ball over as much with just 12 for the season, however, they have also not been able to generate the explosive plays the Cowboys offense has either. Their 26 explosive passes ranks 29th overall and there 29 big runs ranks 21st.
Adding up the explosive pass/runs for each team and then subtracting the giveaways gives us the total toxicity score for each.
Cowboys: 78 explosive plays- 15 giveaways= 63 offensive Toxicity score
Saints: 55 explosive plays- 12 giveaways= 43 offensive Toxicity score
Offensive Advantage: Cowboys
Toxic Differential- Defense
In contrast to how we rank offenses based on how many explosive plays they create, from a defensive perspective we rank them based on how few they allow. A lower score is better for a defense in toxicity.
The Cowboys have allowed 45 explosive passing plays, the 4th most of any team in the league. They’ve allowed 33 explosive runs, 16th most overall. One thing that the Cowboys have done a great job at is forcing turnovers. They have 19 takeaways for the season so far.
The Saints have allowed 41 explosive passing plays, the 7th most in the league. While they are succeptible to giving up big passing plays, they are doing a phenomenal job of preventing big runs. They have allowed 24 total, the 2nd fewest in the league. They have been able to force 16 turnovers this season.
Cowboys: 78 explosive plays allowed-19 takeaways= 59 toxicity score.
Saints: 65 explosive plays allowed-16 takeaways= 49 toxicity score.
Defensive Advantage: Saints
Overall Toxicity is determined by subtracting the defensive total from the offensive total.
Cowboys Toxicity: Offense 63-Defense 59 =+4
Saints Toxicity: Offense 43- Defense 49= -6
Overall Advantage: Cowboys
Expected Points Added and Success Rate
Jerome Miron-USA TODAY Sports
EPA measures the impact a play has on the likelihood of scoring. With EPA, yardage, field position, and down and distance all weigh in on what the expected net points would be for the situation. As an example, a first and goal at the one-yard line would represent a higher EP-Expected Points than a third and 10 on your own 20 yard line.
EPA is the difference between the Expected Points (EP) at the beginning of the play compared to the end of the play. It measures the plays impact on the score of the game.
Success rate is a measure of how often teams get 40% of the needed yards on 1st down, 60% on 2nd down and 100% on third down or fourth down.
EPA figures gathered by rbsdm.
EPA: Offense
The Cowboys lead in all four offensive EPA metrics. Rushing EPA/play is the closest of the four categories with both the Cowboys and Saints in the mid- 20’s. The Cowboys have been slightly more efficient with a -.107 compared the the Saints -.160.
Passing EPA/play favors the Cowboys by a pretty large margin with Dallas producing a .177 EPA/play, good for 6th overall. The Saints measure up in the middle of the pack but have a positive EPA of .082 per drop back.
The Cowboys rank 10th in overall EPA/play producing .071 more points than expected on average. The Saints are 22nd overall producing -.018 points less than expected per play.
Success rate favors the Cowboys as well as they rank 8th at 47.4%.
The Saints rank 24th with a success rate of 42.3%.
Offensive Advantage: Cowboys
EPA: Defense
As a reminder, a negative EPA is desirable from a defensive perspective as the goal is to prevent the opponent from scoring points and therefore falling short of their expected point totals.
While the offensive side favored the Cowboys considerably, the defensive numbers tell a different story. The Cowboys do lead in three of the four categories but all three areas that Dallas has the advantage is by a very slight percentage.
Considering that the Saints led the league in defensive rush DVOA and allowed the second fewest explosive runs in the league, it may not be a surprise to see their defensive EPA for runs is the second highest in the league at -.187 per play. From an efficiency standpoint, rushing on New Orleans hurts your odds of scoring. Dallas is also in the negative at .079, 18th overall.
Passing EPA/play favors the Cowboys as Dallas ranks 5th overall compared to 11th for the Saints.
Total EPA/play is extremely close with the Cowboys and Saints finishing back to back at No.6 and No.7. The difference between their totals is .006.
Success Rates for both teams are very close as well with both teams ranking in the top 8. The Cowboys rank 5th with a Success Rate against of 42.1% and the Saints rank 8th with a Success Rate against of 42.5%.
Similar to what we saw in defensive DVOA, the Cowboys led more categories but the Saints ranked high consistently. The average ranking for the Saints defense is 7th and the average ranking for the Cowboys is 8.5, brought down by their 18th ranked rush epa/play.
Defensive Advantage: Saints
ANY/A
(AP Photo/Ron Jenkins)
Adjusted Net Yards Per Pass Attempt, or ANY/A, is a formula which incorporates passing yardage, touchdowns, sacks and interceptions into a per-throw average. ANY/A has a direct correlation to scoring points and as such ranks third in win predictability.
The Cowboys hold a large lead in ANY/A differential over the Saints.
As expected with the Cowboys having quarterback Dak Prescott for most of the season while the Saints have had multiple QB’s in and out with injury, Dallas has a big lead in ANY/A for. The Cowboys passing attack has been efficient most of the season as Prescott distributes the ball to a strong recieving group of CeeDee Lamb, Amari Cooper, Michael Gallup, Cedrick Wilson and Dalton Schultz. The Saints have been without their No.1 receiver, Michael Thomas, the entire season due to injury and have had to use three different QB’s.
ANY/A against is a much closer margin with the Cowboys defense allowing .3 less than the Saints defense.
The overall differential favors the Cowboys by 1.43, a significant gap. Out of the four metrics that we track weekly, this is the only one that favors one team by a large gap.
ANY/A Advantage: Cowboys
Overall Recap
Toxicity Offense: Cowboys
Toxicity Defense: Saints
Overall Toxicity: Cowboys
DVOA Offense: Cowboys
DVOA Defense: Saints
Overall DVOA: Cowboys
EPA Offense: Cowboys
EPA Defense: Saints
Overall EPA: Tie
ANY/A: Cowboys
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