Okay, so my natural proclivity to procrastinate during the season meant that you had to wait six extra months for this little experiment to be over. And I think I’m going to do it again this year with some possible tweaking and less procrastination. The whole point behind this thing was initially to show which players are the ones that are making plays. And I think it does a fairly good job illustrating that even with its inherent biases towards quarterbacks, running backs, defensive linemen, and against offensive linemen and defensive backs.

For example, Curtis Lofton wound up with a defensive total earning of $0.00. Now that is not to indicate that Lofton had no impact on defense. He very much did. But Lofton made few plays outside of making tackles for loss. He finished second on the team with 17. And while his ability to sniff out the run definitely was a major reason why the Falcons finished the 2009 season with a Top 10 run defense, it was his issues in coverage that negated many of those big plays. Lofton was credited with 11 blown coverages, including 4 for touchdowns (tied with Peterson for the most on the team). And that’s not to say that Lofton is a horrible cover guy, but opposing teams routinely targeted him on third downs and were able to convert too often. And while Mike Peterson had more (14.5) blown coverages, he was able to make up for it at times because he was also credited with 7 passes defended, including four that came on third downs, resulting in a change of possession.

For the 2010, I’m tinkering with the idea of tweaking the scoring system so that in particular it doesn’t favor running backs and defensive linemen. Basically the flaw is that running backs really can’t earn any negative points when they are carrying the ball besides fumbling. I’m thinking of adding the measure of “Missed Hole” in which the back is stopped for a loss and it wasn’t directly attributed to a missed block by an offensive linemen. There were a few times that I saw this in 2009. I don’t think it would dramatically lower backs scores, but it would at least be something that backs can do wrong. I’m also thinking of adding a “Key Blocked” measure for defensive linemen (and linebackers). Basically it will be the opposite of a key block for an offensive linemen. So when a defender is blocked, which springs a runner for a key run (3rd down conversion, 10-yard gain, touchdown, etc.). That way we can discover which defenders are consistently victimized when opposing teams have success running the ball. Although I have the feeling that this will unfairly target defensive tackles rather than linebackers and defensive ends, since most runs are between the tackles. But I still have a little more than a month to think about that.

Anyway, let’s get on to the totals. The first two tables are for offense and defense and include playing time (thanks to Pro Football Focus) and penalty totals. And thanks to an upgrade in the table plug-in this site uses, you can now sort the data within the tables.

Now I’ll get to the actual stats. Again, if you need to be reminded of what these stats mean, you can look at the forum thread that explains it all.