While Bill James and his Sabermetrian disciples revolutionized analysis of baseball over the past generation, no similar movement took place in regard to analysis of football. However, as this NY Times article reports, football at the highest levels is increasingly embracing Sabermetric principles:

Now the sabermetric revolution may be gaining a toehold in football as well. And here too the center of the revolution can be found in Massachusetts, where Coach Bill Belichick has led the New England Patriots to victories in two of the last three Super Bowls.
Belichick is known for his unorthodox strategies: being more willing than most to not punt on fourth down; running the ball far more than average in certain crucial situations; and eschewing two-point-conversion attempts in situations when orthodox doctrine recommends them.
Not coincidentally, experts in the world of football statistical analysis endorse all these strategies. For example, David Romer, an economist at the University of California at Berkeley, published a working paper arguing that conventional football wisdom led to far too much punting. Romer analyzed thousands of plays and calculated the chance of scoring from any position on the field. Based on that, he gauged the relative worth of the field position gained by punting against the lost opportunity to score. Romer found that football coaches punt far more than they ought to — perhaps acting out of fear of the worst outcome (going for it on fourth down and failing), rather than rationally balancing risk and reward.
Romer’s paper, “It’s Fourth Down and What Does the Bellman Equation Say? A Dynamic Programming Analysis of Football Strategy,” is far from light reading, so it came as a shock to Romer when he learned that Belichick, who was an economics major at Wesleyan University, had read it.

The main thrust in football statistical analysis is the development of a metric known as “defense-adjusted value over average,” or “DVOA.” The statistic takes into account that not all yards gained in football are created equal. For example, gaining 5 yards on third down and 4 is more beneficial, on average, than gaining eight yards on third and 10. Aaron Schatz over at FootballOutsiders.com is doing the best analysis with DVOA:

Just as it is in baseball sabermetrics, context is crucial to Schatz’s analysis. Schatz rates every play a team runs by comparing it with the league average performance for plays in as close to that situation as possible. In Schatz’s analysis, the relative success of a play is determined by, among other things, the down and distance, the current score, the field position and the opponent’s strength. DVOA, in short, is an attempt to create a tool of analysis for football similar to such Jamesian baseball statistics as offensive winning percentage, runs created and OPS (on-base percentage plus slugging percentage).

Meanwhile, the lack of refined football statistics obscures just how phenomenal a season Peyton Manning this seasons. Although Manning has received a fair amount of publicity over the fact that he will break Dan Marino‘s record of 48 touchdown passes in a season, Allen St. John in this Wall Street Journal ($) piece observes that Mannings’ excellence is better reflected by another key passing statistic — yards per pass:

For pro quarterbacks there’s no statistical Holy Grail. The conventional milestones Mr. Manning is approaching don’t quite resonate. We have developed a benchmark of our own that should make watching the rest of Mr. Manning’s historical season all the more compelling.

10 Yards per Attempt: What’s the essence of football? Almost every time the referee spots the ball on first down, a team has one goal — move the ball 10 yards and earn another set of downs. In a game of variables, it’s the one near-universal. By the Numbers has long touted YPA as the game’s most revealing passing stat because it factors in all the qualities that a great quarterback needs. Accuracy is important, but so is the ability to go deep.
And 10 yards per attempt is near perfection. It means that almost every time a quarterback throws, the linesmen move the chains. And while it’s been achieved in the past by greats like Sid Luckman and Otto Graham, it’s a goal that has become elusive in the modern NFL. Mr. Manning’s YPA of 9.41 is the best single-season mark of any post-merger quarterback with more than 350 attempts in a season. Indeed, just topping nine yards per toss puts Mr. Manning in some pretty heady company. Only four other post-merger QBs have been able to top nine yards per throw for a full season, and three of them made the Super Bowl in the year they did it.

The three Super Bowl QB’s who topped nine yards per pass were Marino, Joe Montana, and Boomer Esaison. Who was the other quarterback who averaged more than nine yards per pass in a season?
Lynn Dickey of the Packers in 1983!

Colts 23 Texans 14.

The Texans actually made a game of it against high-powered Peyton Manning and the Colts, but Manning methodically picked away at the Texans defense for six 4th quarter points to salt this one away for the Colts. The Texans closed to within 17-14 with about six minutes to go in the 3rd quarter, but the Texans could not mount any meaningful offense against an average Colts defense for the rest of the game (only two first downs and 35 yards in the 4th quarter). No team is going to beat this Colts team scoring 14 points.
Texans’ QB David Carr continues to be unimpressive in his development, which is best reflected by the Texans’ sputtering offense the past two weeks under his control. Although the mainstream media continues to fawn over Carr, he simply is not performing at the level that a top draft choice should be in his third season in the NFL.
Carr’s recognition skills continue to be mediocre, and his unorthodox throwing motion makes it difficult for him to take full advantage of the passing lanes. Moreover, Carr’statistical performance has been mediocre. Carr was 16-21 for 167 yards and an interception against the Colts, which means that his yards-per-pass — the key statistic for evaluating an NFL QB’s performance — was a pathetic 5.5 yards today. For the season, his yards-per-pass is about 6.3 yards, and he has thrown for only 13 TD’s against 12 interceptions.
By way of comparison, check out the statistics of Drew Brees, a QB with comparable experience to Carr who plays for a team that was about equal in stature to the Texans coming into this season. Brees has thrown for 23 TD’s against only 6 interceptions, and his yards-per-pass is over a half yard per pass better than Carr’s. As a result, Brees’ QB rating is over 103, while Carr’s rating is less than 85. More importantly, the Chargers are 10-3 and the Texans are 5-8.
Inasmuch as the rest of the Texans’ team played well enough to win for the second week in a row, the Texans’ management has a huge problem developing with Carr. The Texans have a ton of money invested in him, but it’s becoming clearer with each game that Carr is nothing more than an average NFL QB, at best. With games at Chicago and Jacksonville the next two Sundays before closing at home on January 2nd against the Browns, the Texans’ management must begin addressing whether they have a bust on their hands with Carr. Inasmuch as the Texans’ offensive line still has not completely recovered from the failed Tony Boselli transaction, the Texans can ill-afford to have their overall offensive development stunted by a QB that is not developing at the same rate as the rest of the unit. And at this point, Carr certainly is not.

Saints 27 Cowboys 13.

The Cowboys are the only organization in the NFL that begins printing playoff tickets with a 5-7 record. However, after the woeful Saints humiliated the Pokes at home on Sunday, the 5-8 Cowboys will now simply be playing out the string in their last three games against the Eagles, Redskins and Giants. The Cowboys have more personnel problems overall than the Texans, so this is a franchise that is clearly in a serious rebuilding mode.
It’s going to take at least two seasons for the Cowboys to have a realistic chance for the playoffs, and that assumes that they acquire a top flight QB as soon as possible. If they draft a QB, then this team is a good three seasons away from being a playoff team. It will be interesting to see if the Big Tuna has the stomach to stick around during a long rebuilding phase. My bet is that he does not.

And just in case anyone thinks that Notre Dame has the market cornered on over-the-top football fans, check out this story about a dispute that broke out at Texas A&M University over buying Cotton Bowl tickets:

A woman, who is a senior at Texas A&M, who asked that her identity be withheld, shoved a paper copy of a waiting list for SBC Cotton Bowl tickets into her mouth to secure her place in line while waiting to pull tickets for the sold-out game at about 6 a.m. Thursday.
“The piece of paper doesn’t justify a spot in line to me if no one is standing there,” she said. “If they wanted a spot, they should’ve woken up.”

Aggie blogger Chris Elam over at Safety for Dummies is all over the story, and even identifies the notorious List-Eater.
Lawsuits certainly to follow.

Having followed college football my entire life, I would have never thought that the University of Notre Dame would have a hard time hiring a head football coach.
Until now.
A week or so ago, Notre Dame fired Tyrone Willingham — a highly-regarded coach within the profession who will not be without a job for long — after three seasons and a 21-15 record. Since that time, both the retiring Notre Dame president and its athletic director have stated publicly that they did approve of the firing.
But, as the Washington Post’s Sally Jenkins points out in this op-ed, if they did not approve of Coach Willingham’s termination, who did?:

Now, the only thing that has taken a hit here is Notre Dame’s affectations. [President] Malloy’s statement begs the question: If the school president isn’t responsible for Willingham’s firing, then who is? . . . [I] have to wonder if this pale after-the-fact confession is what passes for administrative support at Notre Dame these days. Malloy’s statement was easy enough to say a week later and 700 miles away. He was in the room where Willingham’s fate was being determined. But he deferred, citing his impending retirement.

As Ms. Jenkins notes, for all its nostalgic value, the Notre Dame football program is simply not all that attractive to good football players anymore:

Notre Dame has become a creaking old fraud. That’s why people don’t want to go there anymore. Its integrity is based on yellowing old cinema reels. Its facilities are outmoded (although it does still have that stadium.) Its recruiting pitch is no longer persuasive: as a destination for coaches and blue-chip recruits, its appeal falls somewhere between those of sleek warm-weather football schools, and the more elite educational institutions such as Stanford and Duke. It’s not just old; it’s cold.

[Moreover,] the Irish have struggled on the field for nearly a decade and a half now. It’s been 16 years since they won the last of their record eight titles, and 10 seasons since they won a bowl game. They’ve lost four straight to Boston College, three to Tennessee and two in a row to Purdue. And they’ve had just two NFL first-round draft picks since 1999 — compared with nine for Ohio State and 21 for Miami.

Which leads me to pass along an old joke among college football aficionados:

Q. What do you call Notre Dame without a football program?
A. Creighton.

At any rate, Notre Dame will eventually find a good football coach, although it is far from certain that the new coach will fair any better than Coach Willingham, who remains a good coach. Rather, Notre Dame’s real problem is reflected best by the hypocrisy of the statements made by its president and athletic director decrying the termination of Coach Willingham.
You see, these two administrators have negotiated the most lucrative television contract of any university athletic program in the nation and have overseen the raising of tens of millions recently to expand Notre Dame’s historic stadium. Then, after having a key role in creating this swamp of financial expectations, these two fellows criticize a move that was made precisely because the football program was not meeting those high expectations. Frankly, a much better case can be made that the firing of Coach Willingham was utterly consistent with the values that have become most important in the Notre Dame football program.
Notre Dame is relearning the hard lesson that you reap what you sow. The timing of Notre Dame’s realization of that enduring truth will have much more to do with the re-emergence of its football program than whoever the Domers choose as their next football coach.
And it would help to find another Joe Montana out there somewhere. ;^)

Jets 29 Texans 7.

After leading 7-6 at halftime, the Texans folded in the second half to allow the Jets to win easily. In another miserable performance during a season of inconsistent outings, Texans’ QB David Carr (12/25 for 157 yds, no TD’s and 2 ints) threw into coverage the entire day and once again provided considerable evidence that he lacks even average recognition skills after 2.5+ seasons in the NFL.
With Carr totally ineffective, the Jets gradually began to dominate the line of scrimmage in the second half and ended up rushing for more than 200 yds against the Texans’ beleaguered defense. Nevertheless, other than Carr, the rest of the Texans played reasonably well and this loss is squarely attributable to Carr’s inability to find the hot receiver against the Jets’ stout defense.
With young AFC QBs such as Brees, Roethlisberger, Leftwich, and Palmer all outperforming Carr, the Texans’ management has to be getting nervous that they blew the first pick in their first draft on what is appearing to be, at best, a barely above-average NFL quarterback.
The 5-7 Texans return to Reliant Stadium next Sunday to be sliced into small pieces by Peyton Manning and the Colts.

Cowboys 43 Seahawks 39. The Cowboys scored 14 points in the final two minutes of the game to edge the Seahawks on Monday Night Football. The Pokes’ running back from Notre Dame — Junius Jones — looks pretty darn good and has placed Eddie George so far down the Cowboys’ bench that he is not even mentioned anymore. The 5-7 Cowboys take on the 4-8 Saints next Sunday at Texas Stadium in Dallas.
College Bowl Game Selections

The final games of the regular season worked out well for Texas and Texas A&M, as the Longhorns moved into a BCS Bowl game against Michigan in the Rose Bowl, and the Aggies moved up into the Cotton Bowl on New Year’s Day in Dallas against Tennessee.
However, the EV1.net Houston Bowl on Dec. 29 was a loser in the bowl selection process as the Independence Bowl selected Iowa State, leaving the Houston Bowl with Colorado, which was pummeled by Oklahoma 42-3 in the Big 12 Championship game on Saturday night. The Houston Bowl wanted to match already selected UTEP with Iowa State because the Cyclones improved dramatically over the last part of the season and their fans travel well. On the other hand, Colorado’s supporters are notorious for being the worst traveling fans in the Big 12. Indicative of that trait is the fact that they bought a total of 1,700 out of 8,000 alotted tickets for the Big 12 Championship game.

The other Texas bowls have interesting matchups. San Antonio’s Alamo Bowl has Ohio State playing Oklahoma State on December 29, while Arizona State and Purdue will fling it around El Paso’s Sun Bowl on New Year’s Eve.

Texans 31 Titans 21. My younger son and I went to the Texans game today with a couple of friends and we all enjoyed an entertaining game. The Texans began the game in a coma and found themselves trailing 21-3 midway through the second quarter as Titans’ QB Steve McNair sliced and diced the Texans’ secondary. The Texans then pieced together their only drive of the first half to narrow the score to 21-10, but still looked overmatched as they could not stop McNair’s pinpoint passing. Then, seemingly without reason, the Texans offense woke up in the third quarter, David Carr began to look like a top level NFL QB, and the Texans’ defense started getting pressure on McNair. Before you knew it, the Texans had scored two TD’s to take the lead 24-21. The remainder of the game pretty much involved the Texans playing it close to the vest on offense while defending furiously against the Titans’ fourth quarter thrusts. Finally, a McNair fumble and interception in the fourth quarter thwarted the Titans’ final drives, and then the Texans’ Domanick Davis ran in a late TD from 41 yards to seal the victory for the hometown crew. The bottomline on this one was that the Texans’ offensive line did a much better job of establishing a running attack for Davis and in protecting Carr, and that’s the primary reason that the Texans (now 5-6 on the season) were able to beat the former Oilers for the second time this season. Next week’s game for the Texans is at the Meadowlands against the Jets.
Dallas 21 Chicago 7. After a horrid first half display from both teams that almost set back NFL offenses from several decades of development, the Pokes’ Vinnie Testaverde made the first of what will likely in coming weeks be several appearances in relief of current Cowboys savior Drew Henson and engineered two second half drives to secure the win for the Cowboys on Thanksgiving Day. Henson — who curiously has gotten rich off of unrealized potential in both professional baseball and professional football — stunk in his first start for the Pokes, going 4 of 12 for 31 yards with 1 interception that was run back 45 yards for a Chicago TD. Thus, in his first outing, Henson passed for more yardage and touchdowns to the other team than his own. The 4-7 Cowboys go to Seattle for the Monday Night game next week against the Seahawks. The Texans have a real chance of finishing this season with a better record than the Cowboys, which would not go over well with Pokes’ owner Mr. Jones at Valley Ranch.
Texas Longhorns 26 Texas Aggies 13. In a game that was not as close as the score indicates, the Horns calmed down after a first half near-disaster to pound the Aggies into submission in the second half and come away with their fifth straight win in the storied series between the two programs. The Horns were about ready to take a 13-7 lead at the end of the first half when Texas QB Vince Young had a brain fart and fumbled the ball while attempting to stretch his arm over the goal line. Aggie safety Jonte Buhl picked up the fumble and raced 98 yards for an Aggie TD and a stunning 13-7 Aggie lead at halftime, which did not go over well with the Horns. That incident appeared to make the Longhorns downright ornery as the Horns’ defense suffocated Aggie QB Reggie McNeal in the second half, holding the Aggie offense to a total of about 60 yards total offense. In one series during the fourth quarter, Texas took complete control of the line of scrimmage and sacked the elusive McNeal on three straight plays before the exasperated Aggie QB threw an interception on the fourth play. Meanwhile, Young and Cedric Benson kept pounding on the overworked Aggie defense and methodically scored 19 second half points to put the game away. The 10-1 Horns now await the outcome of the league championship games, but it is looking more and more like the best Texas team of the Mack Brown era will again miss out on a Bowl Championship Series game on New Year’s Day. That’s a shame, became this Horns team — particularly its fast and strong defense — is pretty darn good. The Aggies look like they are headed for the Holiday Bowl in San Diego against Arizona State for the Ags’ first bowl game in three seasons.
Louisiana Tech 51 Rice 14. Rice’s disappointing season ended on Monday night in a 51-14 loss to Louisiana Tech before a “crowd” of friends and family members of 8,317 at Reliant Stadium. The Owls finished with a record of 3-8 on the season.
The 3-8 Houston Cougars’ season finished last week (mercifully).
And finally, don’t miss Kevin Whited’s final Big 12 wrap-up.

This Austin American-Stateman article reports on the latest undertakings of former University of Texas Heisman Trophy and NFL running back Ricky Williams. The quixotic Mr. Williams — who retired from the NFL earlier this year at the relatively young age of 27 — is now training to be a faith healer:

Williams has turned up about as far from professional football as you can get, as a student of the ancient Indian medical system known as Ayurveda. In the Sierra foothills, no less.
“I realized a while back that I have an innate ability to be compassionate,” he said, “and I saw that the strength of compassion is something that healers have and healers use.”

Williams is now a month into a 17-month course at the California College of Ayurveda (pronounced I-yur-vay-da) in Grass Valley, a city of 12,000 about 45 miles northeast of Sacramento. He’s renting a one-bedroom cottage in nearby Nevada City.

Reluctant at first to talk, [Williams] soon started describing his old life in football and his new life in holistic healing.
“Ayurveda deals with using your environment to put yourself in balance,” he said. “I’ve realized, both on a psychological and physical level, that the things we do in football don’t bring more harmony to your life. They just bring more disharmony.”

Is he happier now that he’s removed from the game?
“I’m closer to being happy. I’m doing things that make me happy,” Williams said. “In football I loved to practice and I loved to play, but I hated to be in meetings, hated to talk to the media, hated to have cameras in my face, hated to sign autographs. I hated to do all those things.”

But then Ricky — how do you explain this?
Earth to Ricky, over and out.

Packers 16 Texans 13. On ESPN Sunday Night Football, the Pack handed the increasingly hapless Texans their third straight loss on a last second field goal despite the fact that they were down to their third string running back and could do nothing but pass. As usual, the Texans could not mount a pass rush, so Brett Favre methodically drove the Packers to 13 fourth quarter points to overcome a 10 point Texans’ lead. Meanwhile, the Texans’ offense continues to struggle as David Carr was only 5-for-11 for 49 yards in the second half and the Texans were so bad on offense against a mediocre Packers’ defense that the capacity Reliant Stadium crowd started booing. Although the Texans’ offensive line has not provided consistent protection over the past three games, Carr continues to fail to live up to his stature as the number one pick in the 2002 NFL Draft. In looking at the other 15 AFC teams, only five of them — Baltimore, Buffalo, Miami, Cleveland, and Oakland — would clearly trade their starting QB right now for Carr. For the first pick in the draft, Carr should be a better player than that, and his slow development is becoming a big problem for the Texans.
Baltimore 30 Dallas 10. Dallas actually led 3-0 after the first half, which was so bad that it almost placed the development of NFL offensive systems back several decades. The Cowboys next hope (maybe prayer?) at quarterback, Drew Henson, got some mop up duty in the fourth quarter, so maybe he will get the start against the Bears on Turkey Day. The Cowboys are simply a very bad football team right now, even worse than the Texans.
Louisville 63 Houston 27. The Coogs actually pulled to within eight points in this one just after the start of the fourth quarter, but then the Cardinals turned on the afterburners and left them in the dust (mud?) at Robertson Stadium. The Cougars finish 3-8 and, after two seasons of the Art Briles’ era, still show no signs of developing a decent defense. Add in the need to re-develop the offensive line and the Cougars have their work cut out for them in this upcoming off-season.
The Aggies and Longhorns were idle this past weekend as they prepare for Friday’s big game, and the Rice Owls were also off as they prepare for their last game of the season against Louisiana Tech that I believe is now scheduled for the Monday (?) after Thanksgiving at Reliant Stadium.
And, as usual, check out Kevin Whited’s always insightful Big 12 Wrapup over at PubliusTx.net.

This Dallas Morning News article catches up with former Dallas Cowboy quarterback and folk hero Clint Longley, who as a 22-year-old rookie out of Abilene Christian University replaced a woozy Roger Staubach early in the third quarter and led the Cowboys to a dramatic 24-23 comeback victory over George Allen‘s Redskins 30 years ago on Thanksgiving Day.
Longley was a live wire, so his remarkable performance generated more than the usual amount of interest throughout Texas and the NFL. One of the best comments on the game came from Cowboys offensive lineman, Blaine Nye, who described Longley’s performance (11-20 for 203 yards and 2 TD’s) as “the triumph of an uncluttered mind.”
Longley’s three year professional career was utterly undistinguished except for that one magic game and one other incident — when he sucker-punched Staubach during training camp in 1976, prompting the Cowboys to trade Longley to San Diego. By the end of that season, the Chargers waived Longley and he never played for another NFL team.
Charlie Waters, a former Cowboy teammate, noted that Longley’s unpredictable nature manifested itself in the Staubach sucker-punch:

Waters knew how unpredictable Longley could be. The season before, Waters had agreed to let Longley keep his new pony on three acres of land he’d purchased near the team’s practice facility.
“He pulls up in a 1957 Cadillac,” said Waters, “and the horse’s head was sticking out one of the back windows and its ass was hanging out the other side.”

Over the past 30 years, Longley has refused all interview requests and now lives quietly — albeit idiosyncratically — in Corpus Christi. He did not grant an interview for the story, but DMN reporter Matt Mosley did a good job in the article, anyway. Read the entire piece.

This Washington Post article confirms that former University of Florida and Washington Redskins football coach Steve Spurrier is headed to the University of South Carolina to replace Lou Holtz as football coach there. South Carolina apparently sealed the deal with Coach Spurrier — who does not allow his coaching duties to get in the way of playing golf — in the following manner:

Spurrier, 59, agreed to the deal Wednesday, after he and his agent, Jimmy Sexton, met with Holtz and South Carolina alumnus William “Hootie” Johnson at Augusta National Golf Club, where Johnson is chairman . . .
Sources close to Spurrier have said Johnson’s role at Augusta National and Spurrier’s desire to be a member at the exclusive club approximately 70 miles from Columbia, S.C., were a factor in the coach’s decision. Holtz is also a member at the club and Johnson is a former Gamecock fullback. Spurrier received a tour of the club’s facilities Wednesday.