Our metrics
Drive Efficiency
A team rating for how far drives get before they stall in a punt or field-goal attempt, adjusted for the opponents faced and the game situation. Zero is league average and higher is better, for offense and for defense.
How we use it
Offensive drive efficiency measures how rarely a team's drives end early in a punt or field-goal attempt for each yard of field they cover. Defensive drive efficiency is the same measure for the drives a defense faces: the better the defense, the sooner opposing drives stall.
Both come from our Bayesian drive survival model, refit every week on the current season's drives. The model accounts for where each drive starts on the field, the strength of the opponent, home field, the two-minute drill and lopsided scores. We show the median of each team's estimate with a 50% and a 94% interval, because a rating built from four or five games is uncertain.
Drives that end in a turnover are rated separately (see turnover propensity); touchdowns and drives that run out the clock count as drives that did not stall.
Where to see it
Related terms
- Combined Drive Efficiency
- Drive efficiency and turnover propensity added together, so a team's rating reflects every way a drive can end short of the end zone: punts, field-goal attempts, turnovers and turnovers on downs.
- Turnover Propensity
- A team rating for how often drives end in a turnover (interception, fumble, turnover on downs, safety or blocked kick) for each yard covered, adjusted for opponents and situation. Zero is league average and higher is better.
- Survival Analysis
- A family of statistical methods for how long something lasts before an event happens. We apply it to drives: how many yards a drive survives before it ends.
- Power Ranking
- An ordering of teams by strength rather than by record. Ours orders teams by simulated win rate against a league-average opponent.