Analyzing the correlation between positional productivity and winning percentage in the NFL
Quarterback is the most important position in football. Just about everyone can agree on that.
Beyond the quarterback position, the totem pole of positional importance in the NFL is subjective and lacks a firmly agreed upon order. There is no perfect consensus on which positions are the most and least important outside of quarterback being king.
I figured it was time to run the numbers and bring some clarity to the topic of positional importance. Which non-quarterback position’s productivity aligns the closest with winning and losing? Which positions do not seem to affect winning and losing as much as the rest?
Using data from all 32 teams in the 2020 regular season, I calculated the correlation between winning percentage and performance quality for every position.
Frankly, the results were extremely surprising. Positions I deemed among the most important had some of the lowest correlations with winning percentages, whereas positions I deemed relatively unimportant ranked near the top of the list.
My perception of positional value has certainly changed a bit after seeing how these numbers came out.
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These stats imply two major trends 1) Winning QBs are likely getting the ball out faster thus lessening the impact of the Edge players and stressing the CBs more. Good CBs (likely the man to man types) negate that advantage a bit. Bad CBs get u beat. 2) Good DTs are likely to un-nerve the quick timing QBs more than Edge players – who have further to go to get to the QBs, plus DTs are more likely to affect the running game more. LBs and S are most negatively affected by quick passing and pass happy offenses. It likely underscores the movement to convert S to LBs to get more athletic and better coverage in the back 7.
On balance the team building approach by JD seems generally inline with the trends these stats suggest. As always though, you need to hit on the right players.
Injuries aside, the development of our CBs will likely be most instructive to how this team develops throughout this year.
Really good points. We’re conditioned to believe edge rushers are king on defense but maybe that’s not the case anymore as teams continuously get the ball out quicker and quicker and negate the damage that edge rushers can do. Increases emphasis on tackling at CB and interior pressure at DT, decreases emphasis on deep coverage of safeties and blitzing/middle of the field coverage at LB.
JD does seem fairly in line with those trends. Hasn’t valued LB much. Devalued S by not paying Maye long-term. More CB emphasis would have been appreciated, but they had to knock out offensive needs early in the draft, so to his credit he did maximize what he had and load up on a ton of young CB prospects late.
Nice article, although it’s hard to take too much concrete from it. It would be interesting to see how much this analysis would vary year over year, or maybe how it would look averaged over several years. That might factor out some of the noise from team schedules and certain position groups happening to be correlated with each other in a given year.
Definitely a lot of outlier potential when only looking at one season. I may take a peek at the 2019 season and 2018 season to see how much these numbers hold up or if any positions had unusually strong or weak years.
Funny because Edge, TE, Guard, and LBer are our weaker positions. If the CBs can surprise along with good play from Wilson we could surprise people this year.
CB is our weakest position
With a good rookie season from Wilson (meaning he plays at an average or better level among all QBs, which would be one of the greatest rookie seasons of all time) and at least one CB breaking out and playing at an above-average level, I can see them having an outside shot at 8 or 9 wins for sure. That’s if the OL stays healthy and performs at the league-average or slightly above league-average level that I think they are capable of playing at.