Last week, we discussed simplifying your offense to focus only on your best plays (the ones that bring you joy). But how do you objectively determine your best plays? We use a combination of Mean, Median, and Mode along with an Efficiency Percentage to give each play a Value. That value determines the return on investment of each play.
We start by placing the yards gained for every play in a spreadsheet. Then we determine a Mean by adding up the total yards gained by a play divided by the total number of times it was called. We then put the yards gained for a play in ascending order to find the Median value. The Median is the middle value of the yards earned by each play when listed lowest to highest. While in ascending order, we look for a Mode. A Mode is the value that occurs most often. We then add the Mean, Median, and Mode together and divide by three to get what we consider the true Average yards a play produces. Note: sometimes there is no Mode or there are several Modes. In those cases, we do not include a Mode average and just add the Mean and Median then divide by two.
The reason we use all three (Mean, Median, Mode) is that most plays do not have a large enough sample size to determine a reliable Mean. (You may recall the old maxim, “The larger the sample, the truer the mean.”) A play yielding one really long gain or loss will skew the average when there is not a significant sample size.
The Efficiency Percentage is determined by taking the total number of plays that were efficient, divided by the total number of times the play was called then multiplying by 100. A play is considered efficient when it yields 4 yards, a first down or a touchdown.
Lastly, we add the true Average and the Efficiency Percentage to get a Value. The higher the Value, the better the return on investment for the time it takes to install the play. We are looking for Values of 80 or higher. For example, A play with a 5-yard average and is efficient 3 out of 4 times (75%) would have a Value of 80. The chart shown here lists the values of our Running Plays from 2019. Some gave us great joy. Others need to be reevaluated. There is no time to teach all nine plays this year.
Coach Rich Alercio is available to discuss coaching philosophy, X’s & O’s, or teach his O-Line “techniques in the trenches.” Contact Coach at richalercio@gmail.com and share http://www.olineskills.com with your colleagues and friends. Thanks for supporting this blog and joining our conversations, and as always, thanks for your time!
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