what? i mean yea it’s a “flawed” metric but coaches have been running the ball more, not less in the last couple seasons. EPA is only flawed if you misunderstand what you’re looking at—it tells us, in a certain sense, how many points a team is earning from play-to-play. It is more meaningful than just counting yards, because it accounts for down-and-distance and that sort of thing. You could just as easily ask “teams are gaining 6.0 yards on pass attempts but only 4.2 yards on rush attempts, is Yards/attempt a flawed statistic?” and you’d be just as wrong. It tells us exactly what it’s telling us both times. The point is, both with rushing and with passing, is that coaches understand that football isn’t just about scoring as many points as possible on every single play, just in the same way it’s not about scoring as many yards as possible on every play. teams are rushing a lot, and EPA just gives us more information to understand the game.
what? i mean yea it’s a “flawed” metric but coaches have been running the ball more, not less in the last couple seasons. EPA is only flawed if you misunderstand what you’re looking at—it tells us, in a certain sense, how many points a team is earning from play-to-play. It is more meaningful than just counting yards, because it accounts for down-and-distance and that sort of thing. You could just as easily ask “teams are gaining 6.0 yards on pass attempts but only 4.2 yards on rush attempts, is Yards/attempt a flawed statistic?” and you’d be just as wrong. It tells us exactly what it’s telling us both times. The point is, both with rushing and with passing, is that coaches understand that football isn’t just about scoring as many points as possible on every single play, just in the same way it’s not about scoring as many yards as possible on every play. teams are rushing a lot, and EPA just gives us more information to understand the game.