Tag: WPA

Straws on a Camel’s Back: 5 biggest plays from Cowboys’ Week 9 defeat

Which play was the nail in the coffin? When did the Cowboys officially go from favorites to likely losers? Dissecting the game by EPA, WPA impact outlines the key turning points. | From @ProfessorO_NFL

The Dallas Cowboys rode into Week 9 with a six-game winning streak and their quarterback, Dak Prescott, returning from an injured calf that held him out the prior week. With a high-powered offense and a defense coming off of their best game of the season, the Cowboys hosted the Denver Broncos in a rare noon kickoff at AT&T Stadium.

The Broncos entered the matchup with a six-game winning streak of their own, winners of six consecutive matchups with the Cowboys going back to the 1995 season. For the season, the Broncos were 4-4 losing four in a row before edging by the Washington Football Team with a 17-10 win.

On paper, this was a game that the Cowboys were favored to win easily. Unfortunately for Dallas, the Broncos were having none of that.  A mixture of failed third and fourth-down conversions for the offense and big plays allowed by the defense added up to a bad day for Cowboys fans as the Broncos won, 30-16. Those sixteen points scored by Dallas made the score appear closer than the game actually was. Denver’s defense set the tone early and brought a lot of pressure against Prescott while the Broncos’ offense broke tackles and gashed the Cowboys with big plays. Sometimes you’re the hammer, sometimes you’re the nail.

Here are the five biggest plays of the game using Expected Points Added (EPA) and Win Probability models from rbsdm.com. EPA is a formula that takes historical data and applies it to every play to determine if it increases or decreases a team’s expected points given the outcome of that play.  Every down and distance has a level of expected points; the likelihood a team will score on that particular drive based on that situation. Therefore EPA measures the shift in expected points as a result of a specific play.

Prescott’s top 17 IMPACT plays of 2020; when Cowboys QB1 could walk and chew gum at the same time

Four score and seven years ago… well, seven weeks to be exact… four scores feels accurate though. This team once had a quarterback who could do it all. Now? The Dallas Cowboys offense has fallen on hard times and we hold these truths to be self …

Four score and seven years ago… well, seven weeks to be exact…  four scores feels accurate though. This team once had a quarterback who could do it all. Now?

The Dallas Cowboys offense has fallen on hard times and we hold these truths to be self evident. After averaging 32.6 points a game through the first five contests of 2020, they didn’t score 32 points total over the next three. In fact they’ve scored just seven touchdowns in the last six games. The faucet has been turned off, the river has run dry.

The primary difference, obviously, is the man who has lined up under center for the last two months. Dak Prescott’s ankle injury in the third quarter against New York shut all hopes for the season down. The Cowboys weren’t world beaters — that win improved them to 2-3 on the year — but they were able to score at will when they weren’t turning the ball over. Now? The offense is a shell of itself and we’re not talking about one of those impressive leatherback sea turtle shells.

With Andy Dalton and Ben DiNucci, the offense had been miserable. Putting Garrett Gilbert in, which I advocated for, made a huge difference against the Steelers, but they still managed just 19 points for the entire game. Dalton returned, and with two weeks to prepare and inside intel on the Vikings the club bubbled up for a week, but went right back in the can against Washington. The shuffle of forever-more backups definitely leads one to miss one Rayne Dakota Prescott.

In that vein, and because there’s a pseudo-bye week happening, it’s time to reminisce back to when the Cowboys had a high-powered offense. Remember when it was expected that the quarterback would have a big IMPACT on games?

Here, we’ll be breaking out a hybrid of two advanced stats, Expected Points Added and Win Probability Added, and the term we’ve settled on are Impact Plays.

EPA measures how likely a play will lead to points. WPA measures how much a play increases a team’s chance at winning the game.  I feel that combining the two provides a true glimpse into what the layman would call clutchness

We’ll provide some glossary definitions and notes and observations at the end, but let’s get to the plays and highlights. All data is compiled using NFLfastR.