Last week we shared the stats about the ten very best and very worst defenses in the League, but this week we'd like to look at that same concept a little bit differently.  Some teams are carried to success by their great offenses (gender teams, typically) and others are carried by great defenses (Vaspian, historically), so we wanted to explore a more in-depth view to see how balanced each team is on both sides of the ball.  To start with, we ranked all teams in the League on both offensive points per game and defensive points per game allowed from best to worst (the best is #1, the worst is #46).  Then we subtracted each team's offensive rank from its defensive rank to see how big the difference was, and to what side of the ball (if any) each team skewed.  Sound complicated?  It's probably easier just to show you:

 

 

What does this graph even mean, why did we pick weird colors, and why aren't the bars even labeled?? All good questions (we admit, this is a weird one) but hear us out:

 

If you're on the top of the above chart in that orange color, it means your offensive rank is better than your defensive rank.  For example, BAADies are the 3rd best offense in the League and the 37th best defense, so their combined score is +34. Not So Sticky on the other end of the spectrum is the 46th best offense in the League and the 10th best defense, so their combined score is -36 (shown in purple).  These two teams represent the biggest extremes in the League right now, and everyone else falls somewhere in between.  Anyone in orange leans towards offensive strengths, anyone in purple leans towards defensive strengths (those dashed boxes on the chart are just there to call out the biggest discrepancies where one rank exceeds the other by more than 10 in either direction).

 

So why did we pick orange and purple as the colors?  We usually use green and red for our graphics, but green typically implies "good" and red typically implies "bad", and this graph isn't about "good or bad" -- it's just about which side of the ball each team seems to be strongest.  The best example of the point we're trying to make is right in the middle of the graph, where you'll see Creekers and Legends tied at +1 (almost perfectly balanced, SLIGHT lean towards offense as their stronger side).  On the surface they could not be more different teams: Creekers are 0-6 (offensive rank: 44th, defensive rank: 45th) and Legends are 6-1 (offensive rank: 4th, defensive rank: 5th).  But both teams are about equally balanced in terms of their offense vs their defense... it just so happens that Legends are great on both sides, and Creekers are NOT great on both sides.  That's why we didn't label each bar on the graph - the +1 itself is kind of meaningless when you're describing the Creekers or Legends -- the important thing is where your team falls on the graph relative to the OTHER teams shown.

 

What did we learn from the chart?

 

For starters, D4 is the most "offense leaning" division in the League, with the top five "offensive" teams all playing in that division.  In fact other than Cobblestone (-2 leaning "defense") every other team in the division skews towards offense.  Of course the two gender teams are leading the way which should be no surprise, as BAADies are closely followed by Cunning Stunts as the most offensively skewed teams in the League.

 

We also learned that there's not much correlation between where you are on the above graph and how well you're doing in the standings.  For example the four most hypothetically "balanced" teams in the League are Creekers (0-6), Legends (6-1), Practice Squad (0-5) and No Punt Intended (5-2).  Two of those are great teams, and two of them are not.  Practice Squad is the only team in the League with perfect balance... unfortunately they're ranked 40th on both sides of the ball, which means they have a lot of adjustments to make everywhere.  

 

Puckett All-Stars are one of the most offensive-leaning teams in the League, and Untouchaballs are one of the most defense-leaning -- both are currently in first place.  So again, the graph isn't meant to tell you who's doing well and who's not... but it IS meant to tell you WHY you're succeeding or WHY you're failing.  If you're strongly in the orange and you want to improve, you should probably look to your defense to shape up.  If you're strongly in the purple and you want to improve, you should probably look to your offense to shape up.