A random football thought

In the few minutes of the football game that I watched last night, there was a sequence that would be interesting to probe further.  The Pittsburgh quarterback threw a pass to an open receiver for what would’ve been a first down but he dropped it; the next play was a pass interception. 

What I’d like to know is just how damaging is a dropped pass, or to extend the thought a bit the penalty that negates a first down.  If you think about it, a sport like football is trying to attain a balance between offense and defense so that one would suppose that getting a first down in four plays (really three in most situations) is reasonably probable but not easy.  Or to put it another way, that in a set of downs, the offense will only have so many opportunities to move the ball the required distance.  So what is the “cost” of wasting one of those opportunities?

When you watch baseball the announcers frequently mention that you can’t give a team extra outs.  In a sort of obverse way, it’s always seemed to me that teams rarely succeed twice in football.  I have no way of knowing what the true statistic is, but I’d bet that a dropped pass, or off target pass that would’ve been a first down or resulted in significant yardage is not a small error.

A football thought

I assume there is something like sabermetrics for football, but I haven't seen it.  While I'm no stathead there are football statistics that I think are flawed.

Running backs tend to be evaluated by average yards per carry.  But average is a terrible stat, often concealing more than it reveals (the median would be a little better here).  Since the passing game tends to be more of an all or nothing venture, I think what you want from your rushing game is consistent yardage.  You run not only to keep the defense off balance but to stay out of long distance situations, and to pick up short yardage first downs.  Average yards per carry doesn't address this at all.  If a back runs for sixty yards on one carry, and gets zero yards on nine other carries, the average is a healthy six yards but you've only had one positive play out of ten.  If you face a third and two, how confident would you be in running for it? 

I'd argue a better measure would be the percentage of carries over a certain benchmark, say three yards, plus first down carries for shorter distances.  That is,you'd get credit if you got two yards on a third or fourth and one.  This statistical measure would I think accurately work to the advantage of a Larry Csonka type and against a Barry Sanders style back.