This week in the Finding the Winning Factors series, let's take a look at another non-conventional stat:  Yards / Play.  It's a pretty simple calculation, and here it is:

(Pass Yds + Rush Yds - Sack Yds) / (Pass Atts + Rush Atts + Sacks)

This is a good stat to look at as it combines both rushes and passes, and finds an average.  I've learned after looking at this stuff for over a year now that straight numbers are not the way to look at this stuff.  Averages (and formulas) are the way to go.

Again, I've gathered stats from over 6,500 games, dating back to 1996.  I did this calculation for every game, then found the overall average for a game.  I then went back and compared every game to this average, and found wins/losses based on being above or below average.  Here's some initial thoughts before getting to the data:

• The overall average over the past 13 seasons is 5.09 yards / play.  This is higher than I was expecting, but not blown away.
• The #1 offensive team?  Your Indianapolis Colts at 5.62 yds / play.  Surprisingly, the Vikings were #2.  The Culpepper to Moss years must be playing heavily into this.
• Defensively, the Colts check in at 26th, with 5.28 yds / play.  Again, there were some really bad years for the Colts, so this makes sense.  #1 Defensive team? The Steelers at 4.64 yds / play. 
  
• How well did teams do when they went above 5.09 yds/play? 1965-1196-2, which is a Win Percentage of 62.2%.  Not too bad.  Defensively, holding the other team below average results in a record of 2064-1287-6, for a Win Percentage of 61.6%.
• What happens when both the offense is above average, and the defense holds the other offense below average? 1089-318, which is 77.4%.  I like any stat that produces winners 3/4 of the time.
• Which game had the best Yards/Play over the past 13 seasons?  Week 12 in 1997, the Packers were the only team to go over 10 yds/play, with 10.02.  Their opponent was unfortunately the Colts, but the 0-10 Colts actually won this game 41-38.  Strange, eh?  The worst game was 0.37 yds/play, Week 14 in 2004, where the Browns were absolutely horrific.  Four of the worst 5 games since 1996 have been accomplished by the Browns, including Week 17 from this past season.
• Of the top 12 overall games, Peyton Manning is responsible for 4 of them, including the #3 overall game, Week 8 in 2000 against the Patriots, where the Colts went for 9.71 yds/play.  

After the jump you'll see the offensive and defensive numbers for each team, as well as Win/Loss records when going above/below the league average.  Click on the headers to sort.  UPDATE: Here's a link to the last 5 years worth of data.  The Colts are the only team to be undefeated (27-0) when both the offense and defense perform above average.

Here are the Offensive Numbers:

Here are the Defensive Numbers...

Here are the Win/Loss records of teams when they go above/below average:

And finally, Win/Loss records when the offense is above average, and the defense holds the other team below average (you'll have to click the link to see it, as I've hit my limit of characters).