Have you ever wondered what the Kansas City Chiefs’ offensive production would look like if you could visualize it?
I’m not talking about watching the actual plays happen or going deeper into the x’s and o’s like we do in The Film Room features. I’m talking straight up, statistical chart form visualization.
Maybe not everybody finds this to be interesting, and it can be hard to follow at times, but the good folks over at Deadspin.com have put together a great piece that basically puts each team’s offensive production into scale based off of DYAR—which stands for Defense-Adjusted Yards Above Replacement.
It’s basically some intense football saber-metrics that I’m not qualified to talk much about—I’m horrible at math and statistics—so I’ll let Reuben Fischer-Baum of Deadspin explain:
"It’s a Football Outsiders metric that compiles the total value a player generates over the course of a year, and adjusts for the strength of opponents, instead of the slightly better known DVOA."
I still don’t quite get what the heck is going on here, but the visualization is something that you need to check out if you’re a Chiefs fan.
Here’s the Chiefs offensive production, graphed out, per Fischer-Baum:
As you can see mostly everybody is in positive production, with the running back position and Jamaal Charles, in particular, leading the way. That’s not a surprise.
It is somewhat surprising to see the tight end position ranked so low, though Sean McGrath is rightfully in the positive.
Also, for those who like to criticize Alex Smith, do notice that he’s firmly in the positive of these rankings. He may not be a superstar, but here’s proof that he can be effective.
Note: Thanks to Reuben Fischer-Baum and Kyle Wagner of Deadspin for allowing us to use their graphic.