NFL Phenomenon: The Science of RPY Real Passing Yards

The Science of RPY: Real Passing Yards

Often, enlightening ideas are created under extreme circumstances.

An endocrinal release can cause an imagination to start swirling. These are the kind of ideas that are not only born from fishing trips, but also from watching your team fall into some kind of purgatory.

The idea of real passing yards has been in the back of my mind all year. That part of your mind that you're not sure what part of the universe it connects to.

It's more of a feeling than a thought.

It all started after watching the Dallas Cowboys under-utilize a large portion of their playbook during the preseason. 

No, I'm not talking about the wishbone. We saw that.

And there was a plethora of formations and passes. And a ton of shotguns.

But the three-headed monster that we call Barber, Jones and Choice was kept on a short leash.

Then the Cowboys lost their first two regular season games with gaudy passing numbers, but relatively few run attempts. Was there a relation?

After further investigation, I noticed a similarity in some other games around the league. The Houston Texans caught my attention.

They had an unusual streak of winning two straight games over teams that also had big passing numbers. Each of the teams they beat had 400+ passing yards in the games.

Some guys will say, "If you can throw for 400 yards, you should try and do it every game". But I disagree with this lack of reasoning.

To me, that's not really playing the whole game. It's more about putting on a show.

Something with a lot of numbers, motions, formations and three or four wideouts. 

To me, it's an illusion. It can all seem extremely real.

It's very exciting. The visual is amazing. 

But what you see is not always what you get.

When you can pass for 400 yards, you should win. But it doesn't always happen.

Why not? I believe there is a simple answer.

But nothing makes sense in today's world without an enormous amount of garbage, I mean numbers, piled on top of it. The problem with quantification is that it can be manipulated for a desired result.

These results may be just another illusion. 

So the wheels kept turning. New ideas were on the horizon.

The Cowboys were to play the Texans the third game of the year. It would be interesting to see if they had caught onto this negative trend. 

It seemed they had caught on, as they handed the Texans their first loss. 

The Cowboys had used a balanced attack of 27 rushing attempts for 101 yards, and 30 passing attempts for 284 yards, in their 27-13 victory.

Some might say that the balanced attack was a result of the passing efficiency because 10 of the rushes came in the fourth quarter. Without closer examination, it could be assumed that the game was already decided.

But I saw a different reason. A team that played the field-position game.

A team that used patience in waiting for a big play to just happen rather than forcing the issue. A team that played as a whole, and at a pace that took advantage of the team as a whole.

To make my case stronger, nine of those 10 fourth-quarter rushing attempts came on two drives that ended in a touchdown and a field goal. And all nine of those rushing plays came between the 11:57 and 4:27 marks in the fourth quarter.

Another note is that the Cowboys were 2-of-3 passing for 68 yards during these two fourth quarter drives. Was this passing efficiency related to the nine rushing plays out of 12 total plays?

If anything, those were the drives that decided the game. Not only were they able to score on both of them, but they were also a way of managing the clock to their advantage.

It was at this point that I thought the Cowboys had caught on to the beauty of balance.. but I was wrong.

Which brings us back to that fateful day that brought on the creation of the RPY formula.

The particular game that brought about the discovery of RPY was of record-breaking passing proportions, and a loss. A complete breakdown of how 406 passing yards became 178 "Real Passing Yards" can be found here.  http://bleacherreport.com/articles/487699-cowboys-loss-reveals-stunning-results-in-passing-analysis-404-yds176-real-yds

But you see, this game wasn't the first 45+ passing attempts game that had been lost by the Dallas Cowboys this season. All three of the Cowboys' losses were of this sort, and came with passing attempts of 48, 51, and 46. 

This brought about questions of why and how. But you can see that the idea of "Real Passing Yards," or RPY, has been brewing all season long.

For most teams, I believe that fully utilizing the running game has a direct impact on winning. Even if the running game appears to be unsuccessful, it has advantages that go far beyond the stat sheet.  

That's why the RPY formula is based on the simplest of instincts... Survival. 

The simple answer goes back to an idea of how I would fish a pond. Most any pond really.

A philosophy of finding the area with the most large fish. The plan would not be to fish the outer depths looking for the big one.

Instead, I would exploit their density by getting up close and personal. 

It's a very long story. So we'll skip the rest of it and get back to football and the RPY formula.

Real Passing Yards is a fairly simple method that attempts to give a true value of a balanced offense.

It doesn't tell the whole story of clock management. Or the value of field position to a defense. Or the mental and physical fatigue that I believe is partly caused by an offense unbalanced toward the passing game.

But it does, I believe, offer a look at how the stats don't always tell the whole story. In a sense, it reveals that an overused passing game can lead to poor execution. 

The RPY formula consists of subtracting yardage for plays that result in negative aspects of the passing game that might not be fully quantified in an analysis or stat sheet.

After giving you the RPY formula, I will give the adjusted stats of the four games from which the idea was born. I realize that four games is a very small sample, but the fact that these are all in a small window of time and space makes them more relevant.


RPY formula:

1. Start with the total passing yards.

2. Subtract yards lost on sacks.

3. Subtract five yards for each sack.                                                                                                     (This is to offset the probable rushing yards gained on the lost down.)

4. Subtract 20 yards for each interception, or 40 yards for a red zone interception on either end of the field. (I think this is fair since interceptions relate to field position and scoring.)

5. Subtract all interception return yards.

6. Subtract five yards for each interception. (This is to offset the probable rushing yards gained on the lost down.)

7. Subtract all lost yardage from all penalties that occurred on passing plays. (These are difficult to find, in that false starts are not always listed in the play-by-play. To be fair, I'll attempt to separate false starts using a pass to run ratio. But false starts are far more common on passing plays. All penalties that happen during the passing plays should be included also. I think it's safe to say that far more penalties occur during passing plays than running plays.)    

After these seven steps, you are left with the "Real Passing Yards" or RPY.

Here are the results of the all four Cowboys games mentioned earlier:

September 13, 2010—Washington Redskins 13, Dallas Cowboys 7.

Cowboys—48 passing attempts and 22 rushing attempts.. 284 passing yards = 229 RPY, or *172 RPY  

 * There was a pass in the flat that was fumbled immediately for a 32-yard touchdown return at the end of the first half.

If that had been calculated, the RPY would have dropped to 172. It was a pass that should never have been thrown, and a passing play that should not have been.

September 19, 2010: Chicago Bears 27, Dallas Cowboys 20.

Cowboys—51 passing attempts and 20 rushing attempts.. 374 passing yards = 276 RPY 

September 27, 2010: Dallas Cowboys 27, Houston Texans 13. (This was the one game of the four with a balanced offensive attack. As you will notice, the 284 passing yards is very similar to the 264 RPY.)

Cowboys—30 passing attempts and 27 rushing attempts..  284 passing yards = 264 RPY

October 10, 2010: Tennessee Titans 34, Dallas Cowboys 27.

Cowboys—46 passing attempts and 23 rushing attempts.. 406 passing yards = 185 RPY

  Summary 

Eventually, all forms of quantification will show their warts. None of the formulas are 100-percent correct every time.

But it is by looking at all possibilities that intelligent decisions are made. I hope that the alternative of RPY has somewhat illuminated a grey area.