New NFL Stats That Would Improve Analysis, Understanding of Football

In today's NFL, there's essentially a statistic for everything. Sites like ProFootballFocus.com and FootballOutsiders.com track every player on every play and their staffs have even formulated a myriad of useful advanced stats to help everyone better understand the game of football. 

While every fan should thoroughly peruse those sites to gain more football knowledge, there are a few statistics I'd like to develop for the 2012 season, ones that'll further expand analysis and comprehension of what's happening on NFL fields across the country. 

In conjunction with the column I typed last week that discussed how stats don't always tell the whole story in the NFL, I give to you three new stats I'd like to incorporate into football research and examination this year. 

Aerial Yards Per Completion

Yards per attempt is an often used statistic, one that over time, essentially illustrates how productive a quarterback is, especially down the field. Typically, the more dynamic the passing offense, the higher the YPA average. 

For example, Aaron Rodgers (9.25) and Tom Brady (8.57) led the NFL in YPA in 2011. Not coincidentally, Colt McCoy (5.90) and Blaine Gabbert (5.36) had the lowest YPA averages. 

While I don't have a major issue with this telling statistic, how about evolving to a stat that measures the aerial yards per completion for a quarterback? Wouldn't that be an even more revealing metric?

Clearly, yards after the catch couldn't be factored into the equation, but AYPC would simply track where the receiver caught the football in relation to the line of scrimmage on that particular play. 

Yes, dedication and some serious DVR rewinding would be needed on a per game basis, as box scores never record where the receiver caught the football before he ran it 50 yards for a touchdown.

Or, to save time over a longer period, AYPC could be calculated by taking the YAC from all pass-catchers of a certain team, (provided here by SI.com) subtracting it from a quarterback's passing yards and dividing his completion total. (Obviously, games in which the quarterback didn't play or didn't throw all the passes would be taken into consideration)

Yards per attempt certainly wouldn't be rendered obsolete, but AYPC would provide insight from a few interesting perspectives. 

It would highlight the courageous and effective efforts of gun-slingers like Rodgers and Brady and shed light on timid checkdown lovers like Gabbert and McCoy. However, it would also show us which teams get more YAC out of their receivers than others and which quarterbacks have relatively inflated passing yard totals as a result.

It would give us a broad sense as to the type of passing offenses run across the league, as well. 

While it wouldn't be perfect, aerial yards per completion certainly seems to be a progressive statistic worth monitoring in the NFL. 

Impact Tackles

Hopefully if you're reading this, you realize that tackle totals for an individual do not always equal success in football. The players with the three-most tackles in the NFL each season should not automatically receive a free pass to the Pro Bowl. 

What's bad about the elementary tackle statistic is that it's impossible to decipher the truly impactful "tacklers" from the guys who bring the ball-carrier to the ground after a 15-yard gain. 

Sure, a fundamental job for every football defender is to tackle, and sometimes a tackle 20 yards down the field is a touchdown saver. 

But oftentimes, a player can rack up 10-plus tackles in a given game, none of which would be considered a "positive" play by the defense. 

As alluded to in my previous stat column, Paul Posluszny was a "tackling-machine" during his time with the Buffalo Bills, but was light years away from being a genuinely impactful linebacker. 

Therefore, I'm suggesting a somewhat tricky "impact tackle" statistic.

It would track tackles made within the first three yards of the line of scrimmage (the thought being that three runs of three yards would fail to move the chains, traditionally resulting in a punt) and tackles for loss would be factored in. 

Now, down and distance wouldn't be part of the equation, thus making a tackle after a two-yard gain on 2nd-and-1 the same weight as a tackle after a two-yard gain on 3rd-and-3. 

It would be inconceivable to calibrate a system to measure tackles that stopped first downs due to the variance in down-and-distance situations each team faces throughout the course of the season. 

Impact tackles would straightforwardly record the number of tackles NFL defenders made close (three yards) to the line of scrimmage. 

Something tells me the best linebackers would rise to the top.

Adjusted Interceptions

All interceptions are different. Some are overthrown. Some are underthrown. Some are the result of bad timing. Some are the result of a incorrect route run by the wideout. Some throws are picked off due to an amazing play by the defender. 

But in the stat book, all interceptions are attributed to the quarterback. 

While it would be foolish and rather subjective to meticulously to break down interceptions and assign blame to everyone involved, a more clear-cut quantification is needed. 

To eliminate any argument between whether a pick was the fault of the quarterback or the receiver, adjusted interceptions would step in. 

We can all agree that in the NFL, a ball that hits a receiver in both of his hands should be caught, right? 

Well, many times passes that hit the hands of wideouts, tight ends and running backs aren't caught and fall into the laps of defenders for easy interceptions.

Those picks simply wouldn't be counted toward a quarterback's adjusted interception total. I'm sure 2010 Eli Manning would have loved an adjusted interception statistic.

Understandably, there would still be some discrepancy with adjusted interceptions, as some passes that hit a receiver's hands are harder to catch than others, but it would refine a "black and white" statistic that really possesses a great deal of gray area.

With adjusted interceptions, we'd have a much more accurate count of picks that were legitimately the fault of the quarterback.

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