Flanker vs. Split End

[sabotai]

I've done a test to see if their is an inherent differences between the Flanker and the Split End. What I've seen would suggest there really isn't much different between the positions.

I ran 10 seasons tracking the stats of two identical receivers (one being FL and the other SE). It should be noted that I ran these tests seperately. I ran 10 seasons for FL and then 10 more for SE. The reason was because I was planning on doing something else, but after the 10 seasons of FL tests, I decided to run some seasons for the SE and compare the changes.

Over 10 seasons, here is what I've found.

The Flanker was targeted 1111 times and caught 647 balls. 8313 yards for a 12.8485 average 1401 YAC, 46 TD, 69 Drops and 4259 Pass Plays. Target%: 26.086

YAC per Catch: 2.165
Drop%: 6.211%
Catch - Drop Ratio: 9.377 (for each 1 Drop)
Percent Catch: 58.236%


The Split End was targeted 1090 times and caught 637 balls. 8143 yards for a 12.783 average. 1090 YAC, 40 TD, 73 Drop and 4093 Pass Plays. Target%: 26.631

YAC per Catch: 1.711
Drop%: 6.697%
Catch - Drop Ratio: 8.726 (for each 1 Drop)
Percent Catch: 58.440%


Fumbles were almost the same, 7 for the Flanker over 10 seasons and 6 for the Split End.

I wouldn't read too much into the Drop percentage or ratio as the split end only had 4 more drops over 10 seasons than the Flanker.

The one thing that jumps out at me is the YAC, however. The lowest amount of YAC a Flanker had in a season was 93, while the lowest for the SE was 65. The most for FL was 184 and the SE had 175 in one season. However, he also had 161 in another season, but for the other 8 seasons, the SE didn't come close to those two numbers. Here's the season-by-season listing for YAC (In order of lowest to highest)

FL: 93, 102, 108, 120, 128, 153, 168, 169, 176, 184
SE: 65, 87, 88, 92, 99, 105, 108, 110, 161, 175

My guess is in those two big YAC years for the SE, he caught a short pass and broke it big.

From the numbers abover, the FL gets about 2.165 YAC per catch, and the SE gets about 1.711 YAC per catch. That's a difference of 0.454 YAC per catch.

If we take the median catches and median YAC we get slightly idfferent numbers. The Flanker's median catches is 65 with a median YAC of 140.5 and the SE's median catches is 61 with a median YAC of 102. That gives us a 2.162 YAC per catch for the Flanker (very slightly lower). And for the SE, it gives us a 1.672 YAC per catch (a bigger decrease). The difference = 0.49

Of course, now you should be asking yourself. If the Flanker gets about 0.454 more YAC per catch than the SE over 10 seasons, why is their average yards per reception almost identical.

If we take out YAC for the yards and redo the average, here's what we get.

Flanker: 6912 Yards, 10.683 Yards per catch (IOW, on average, he's just passed the the 10 1/2 yard line when he catches the ball)

Split End: 7053 Yards, 11.072 Yards per catch (IOW, on average, he's just passed the 11 yard line when he catches the ball)

I think, based on this, that the difference between SE and FL is that 1) Flanker runs shorter routes, on average, than the SE. 2) Flanker gets more YAC, on average, than the SE. Most likely because he's running shorter routes.

At least, that's what I get from this. I'll probably repeat the test to see if I get similar results.

[mhass]

Interesting. So given the choice, would you put your top WR in the FL spot, like the NFL (I assume we're talking FOF) teams generally do? Apparently FOF QB's don't "prefer" one position over another.

[sabotai]

Well, not sure yet. Something I will try next is to see how well a flanker performs in the split end position and vice versa.

[Warhammer]

The other item you need to watch out for is what formations you are running plays out of. Some formations may favor one receiver over the other.

[MIJB#19]

Early thoughts:
If the flanker initially has more YAC it's an interesting item in case you have two different receivers where one is the guy who's always free (high route run) and one who's the yardage guy (high getting down field, big-play). If the 0.5 YAC are an easy bonus, I'd put my route runner at flanker, and yardage guy at split end, so to "exploit" the extra yardage a bit more.

[Warhammer]

Early thoughts:
If the flanker initially has more YAC it's an interesting item in case you have two different receivers where one is the guy who's always free (high route run) and one who's the yardage guy (high getting down field, big-play). If the 0.5 YAC are an easy bonus, I'd put my route runner at flanker, and yardage guy at split end, so to "exploit" the extra yardage a bit more.

One thing you need to keep in mind, and is something that I have relearned in the past two weeks, formations play a huge role in who gets the catches. For example, if these tests were run with a heavy emphasis on a Pro Formation, the FL may not be the one to run the deep routes in that formation. Therefore, the SE would have the better yardage numbers. However, if you change the primary formation to a 3-WR set, the FL may run deeper routes than the SE, etc.

What I saw in my games the last few weeks, by making a minor change in which formations I am passing out of, and what my passing plays are geared for, I have improved my QB's YPA by a yard! I have also improved the number of times my WRs have been targeted. I have verified that most of this is due to the formation useage because I ccompletely changed my yardage focus and maintained similar numbers.

Basically, in a Pro or I Formation, you are going to be passing primarily to a RB or the TE. So, even if you set your yardage %s to be heavy on the 20+ yard passes, you will not throw many of them because the formations you are choosing are geared towards the 1-8 yard pass plays. The plays you go deep on are severely limited because there are not that many to choose from.

Now, if you change your formation to a 3WR+ set, and keep your yardage %s the same, you will find your success rate goes way up! Why? Because a 3WR+ set has longer routes, and most of these routes are run by WRs. Since you are running more plays out of the same formation, the defense can not key in on one or more players (which results in fewer "The defense knew that play" or whatever it says). Conversely, you would not want to operate a short passing game out of the 3+ WR set, because not many short passing plays are run out of it.

Hope that helps, even though I did get a bit OT.

[jbmagic]

Warhammer makes a good point.


if the test can be run again with each type of formation 100% to see what the FL and SE does in each will be interesting.

[sabotai]

That's why I use the same gameplan every time, I have it set pretty balanced and the QB knows all of the formations. :)

And I would be very hesitant to run a test with a formation set to 100%. The reason being is you'll end up with a ton of "the defense has seen that play before" (or whatever it says). The best way would be the just keep a balanced gameplan as I have an parse the game logs to see the difference. I don't have time to go that deep into it though.

[Warhammer]

That's why I use the same gameplan every time, I have it set pretty balanced and the QB knows all of the formations. :)

And I would be very hesitant to run a test with a formation set to 100%. The reason being is you'll end up with a ton of "the defense has seen that play before" (or whatever it says). The best way would be the just keep a balanced gameplan as I have an parse the game logs to see the difference. I don't have time to go that deep into it though.

Its not the same thing as running each formation 100%. For example, we may find that a standard 3WR set favors the SE, while the 3WR Trips formation favors the FL. Maybe the Pro set favors the FL, but he runs shorter routes than the SE does in that formation. That is the level of detail we are missing.

All we can glean from your test is that over the long haul, we are talking about a .5 YPC difference. However, let's say you have a stud FL, and you want to get him the ball as much as possible, what do we change in the game plan to get the ball to him over the SE? All the tests have shown so far is there is not substantial difference over running him at FL over SE and vice-versa.

What you have proved is that a given WR will produce statistically even results when used over a period of 10 years at either WR position.

[MIJB#19]

Warhammer, I don't mind the bit of OT stuff, sharing strategies is always fun. You keep amazing me with all your theories, which you backup up with experience and seem to make sense. FWIW, your tips on defensive game planning seem to be working very well for my multiplayer team.

With that same multiplayer team, I wondered how to get a WR who can get long receptions, until I noticed this season, with some formation use changes, my WRs are just making more longer receptions with a bit more YAC and both the FL and SE being the same guy. Okay, the QB is a bit more mature, as is the OL, but the TE is also getting more looks, while the FB and RB have roughly the same % of looks. But as you said, the use of 3WR sets is a little bit higher, I think, and all the WRs are having good yards per catch numbers.


Enough OT stuff, back to Sabotai's testing. ;)

[sabotai]

Its not the same thing as running each formation 100%. For example, we may find that a standard 3WR set favors the SE, while the 3WR Trips formation favors the FL. Maybe the Pro set favors the FL, but he runs shorter routes than the SE does in that formation. That is the level of detail we are missing.

I was responding to jbmagic. If we were to test the formation differences, running formations at 100%, as he suggested, would give bad data because the defense would catch on to too many plays and really mess up the data.

All we can glean from your test is that over the long haul, we are talking about a .5 YPC difference.

Yup.

What you have proved is that a given WR will produce statistically even results when used over a period of 10 years at either WR position.

Not so fast. What I showed was that a FL playing in the FL position will perform almost satistically identical to an SE that has the same attributes playing in the SE position.

A Flanker playing as an SE will perform a little differently than an SE with the same attributes playing in the SE position. And a SE playing in the FL position plays differently than the FL. (I ran the tests today and will post the results soon. Kind of wierd results. Not sure what I make of them really.)

[sabotai]

I reran the tests, except this time I ran the FL in the SE position and the SE in the FL position.

You'd expect to see similar stats, even if there is a small penalty to playing out of position. But...not really.

The flanker still got more YAC than the split end, even though they were playing in each other's position. However, the flanker had a lot less.

The Flanker had 1.85 YAC per catch (vs. the SE getting a 1.71 YAC per catch)

The Split End had a 1.76 YAC per catch (vs. the FL having 2.15 YAC per catch)

Again, I used the same exact gameplan, the same rosters (it's the same exact saved game in fact). Something tells me the game partially uses a WR's inherent subposition in helping to determine the YAC they get instead of what position they are in. (Perhaps there is a bug somewhere in the simming?) Either that, of YAC is more random and dependant on the specific situation than dependant on player attributes.

Other than that, both receivers saw the catch percentage go down. They both also had a higher chance of dropping the ball. The Flanker had a 2% drop in catch % while the SE had a 3% drop in catch percentage. The Flanker had a 1% increase in Drop % and the SE had a 0.5% increase in Drop %.

It would seem that both take a slight performance penalty when played in the other position. But the more I run these tests, the more I think having just 10 seasons of data is not enough since it still could just be random luck that caused the slight decrease in performance. I'd bet if a statistics guy looked at my data, he'd say the numbers fall within the margin of error.

Oh well. To be continued.