Over the past couple of years, the New Orleans Saints’ offense has been criticized for its lack of wide receiver options. Luckily for Saints’ fans like me, this area has been addressed by the signing of Emmanuel Sanders back in March — or has it? To answer this question, I dived into play-by-play (PBP) data to explore nearly every pass play from the Saints’ 2019 season. Spoiler: Emmanuel Sanders is just what the Saints need — get excited Who Dat Nation!

在过去的几年中，新奥尔良圣徒队的进攻由于缺乏广泛的接球手选项而受到批评。 对于像我这样的圣徒球迷来说，幸运的是，三月份伊曼纽尔·桑德斯(Emmanuel Sanders)的签约已经解决了这一领域-是吗？ 为了回答这个问题，我深入研究了逐场比赛(PBP)数据，以探索圣徒队2019赛季几乎所有的传球比赛。 剧透：伊曼纽尔·桑德斯(Emmanuel Sanders)正是圣徒们所需要的-激动民族国度！

In this analysis, I used PBP data provided by Max Horowitz on Kaggle. An overview of the 2019 Saints’ offense showed that they attempted 602 passes (18th most in the league), which is equivalent to 61% of their plays. Interesting, but let’s look at these pass plays more closely. Since conventional statistics like pass yards, pass touchdowns or even passer rating don’t always tell the whole story (see Blake Bortles Is The Tom Brady Of Garbage Time), I focused on what I think is a more informative statistic called Win Probability Added (WPA). In a nutshell, WPA is a metric that measures how much more likely a team is to win a game after a given play. For example, in the loss against the Falcons last year, Drew Brees completed an 18 yard pass late in the 4th quarter when the game was out of hand. This play had WPA = 0%. Compare this to Brees’ 14 yard completion in the second quarter when the game was still competitive. This play had WPA = 4%. A more detailed description of WPA can be found here, but the idea is that WPA will put pass plays in the context of winning games. So, where did the Saints’ pass offense rank in terms of WPA? As shown below, best in the league:

在此分析中，我使用了Max Horowitz在Kaggle上提供的PBP数据。 对2019年圣徒队进攻情况的概述显示，他们尝试了602次传球(在联盟中排名第18位)，占其出场人数的61％。 有趣，但是让我们更仔细地看一下这些传球的情况。 由于传球码，传球达阵甚至传球者评分等常规统计信息并不总能说明问题(请参阅Blake Bortles是《垃圾时间的汤姆·布雷迪》 )，因此我重点关注我认为是一种更为翔实的统计信息，称为获胜概率( WPA)。 简而言之，WPA是一个度量标准，用于衡量团队在给定比赛之后赢得比赛的可能性。 例如，在去年对阵猎鹰队的比赛中，德鲁·布雷斯(Drew Brees)在比赛失控的第四季度末完成了18码传球。 这场比赛的WPA = 0％。 相比之下，布雷斯在第二节比赛仍然充满竞争力的时候在14码处完成了比赛。 这场比赛的WPA = 4％。 在这里可以找到WPA的更详细描述，但是其想法是WPA将在获胜游戏的背景下放传球。 那么，圣徒队的传球进攻在WPA上排名在哪里？ 如下图所示，在联盟中最好：

That means no improvements are needed, right? Not quite, and I’ll show you why. Let’s break down pass plays by deep and short passes. Deep passes are balls that traveled at least 15 yards in the air and short is anything under that. The plot below indicates that Saints’ Quarterbacks (QBs) performed better than the league average for both types of passes. For instance, when Brees threw a deep ball, his average WPA was 2.9% compared to the league average of 1.2%. However, Saints’ QBs had deep pass attempts lower than the league average. For example, only about 14% of Brees’ pass attempts went deep while the league average stood at around 19%.

这意味着不需要改进，对吗？ 不完全是，我会告诉你原因。 让我们按长传和短传细分传球。 深度传球是指在空中至少飞行15码的球，而在该高度之下，球是短球。 下图显示了两种传球的圣徒四分卫(QBs)表现均优于联盟平均水平。 例如，当布雷斯投出一记深球时，他的平均WPA为2.9％，而联盟平均水平为1.2％。 但是，圣徒队的QB传球尝试低于联盟平均水平。 例如，布雷斯传球尝试中只有约14％的命中率更高，而联盟平均水平约为19％。

Many critics would point that this is due to Brees’ decline in arm strength, but I’d argue that it’s his lack of weapons. To back this argument, I broke down WPA by receiving options in the plot below. Only three Saints’ players were targeted at least five times for deep passes. Ted Ginn Jr. played the deep threat role with 40% of his targets being deep passes, but didn’t make the most of them based on his below average WPA (1% compared to league average of 1.3%). This makes sense as Ginn had a catch rate of 54%, one of the lowest in the league. Both Thomas and Cook excelled when targeted deep; however, for Thomas, deep targets only made up 11% of his total targets.

许多批评家会指出，这是由于布雷斯的手臂力量下降，但我认为这是他缺乏武器的原因。 为了支持该论点，我通过接收下图中的选项分解了WPA。 只有三名圣徒的球员入场至少五次。 特德·吉恩(Ted Ginn Jr.)发挥了深远的威胁作用，其中40％的目标是传球，但根据他的低于平均水平的WPA(1％，而联盟平均水平为1.3％)，并未充分利用这些目标。 这是有道理的，因为吉恩的接球率高达54％ ，是联盟中最低的之一。 当深入瞄准时，托马斯和库克都表现出色。 然而，对于托马斯而言，深层目标仅占其总目标的11％。

Given these findings, it’s clear that the Saints lacked deep pass options. For comparison, I counted the number of players that were targeted at least five times for deep passes on each team:

鉴于这些发现，很明显，圣徒队缺乏深度传球的选择。 为了进行比较，我计算了每支球队至少被五次深传的目标球员数量：

The Saints ranked at the bottom, which is problematic considering the importance of deep passes. The average WPA per pass attempt is more than three times higher for deep passes compared to short passes (1.2% vs. 0.4%). This indicates that one way the Saints can improve their offense is by adding a pass catcher who excels at deep passing plays. Here’s where Emmanuel Sanders comes in. Let’s take a look at some of the notable, pass-catching free agents that were available this year and where they ranked when targeted for deep passes:

圣徒排在最后，考虑到传球的重要性，这是有问题的。 与短传相比，深传的每次通过平均WPA高出三倍(1.2％比0.4％)。 这表明圣徒可以提高进攻能力的一种方法是增加一名擅长深传球的传球接球手。 这是伊曼纽尔·桑德斯(Emmanuel Sanders)进入的地方。让我们看一下一些今年著名的，获得通行证的自由球员，以及针对深传球的排名：

As you can see, Sanders was the top ranking deep threat available in free agency — this is exactly what the Saints need! In all, Sanders is a vast improvement over Ginn (3.3% vs 1% Average WPA per Deep Target) and, in my opinion, the missing piece to the Saints’ offense. With Sanders in the mix, I believe the Saints’ offense will 1) incorporate more deep passes in their playbook 2) better capitalize on these deep pass plays. This should maximize the Saints’ opportunities to win as long as the Saints’ defense can maintain their level of play from last year. I know most Saints’ fans were already excited about this signing, but hopefully this will get you extra pumped for the upcoming season.

如您所见，桑德斯是自由球员中排名最高的深层威胁-这正是圣徒所需要的！ 总体而言，桑德斯比吉恩大得多(每个深层目标的平均WPA为3.3％对1％)，并且在我看来，这是圣徒队进攻所缺少的部分。 有了桑德斯，我相信圣徒的进攻将1)在他们的剧本中加入更多深传球2)更好地利用这些深传球。 只要圣徒队的防守能够保持去年的水平，这应该使圣徒队获胜的机会最大化。 我知道大多数圣徒的球迷已经对这次签约感到兴奋，但是希望这会在接下来的赛季为您带来更多的动力。

My code for this analysis can be found here

我的分析代码可以在 这里 找到