Defense vs Offense: A Chicago Bears Coaching Transition

In January 2013, the +Chicago Bears  made the largest coaching philosophy transition when they fired Lovie Smith after a 10-6 season and hired Marc Trestman from the CFL.  

How did their back-to-back seasons compare? Check out the viz below for more information.

UPDATE: As pointed out by my brother +Matt Montgomery , there are two other reasons to be excited for the +Chicago Bears that I will try to incorporate into the viz.
1. Top Offenses > Top Defenses via AdvancedNFLStats
2. Offense is more consistent than Defense, year to year via FootballOutsiders

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How Does Your Favorite NFL Team Spend Its Salary Cap?

NFL Teams are allotted a certain amount of money every year to spend on its players; that money is referred to as the salary cap.  A teams spends its salary cap on players base salaries, various bonuses, severed contracts, practice squad players, and penalties to the team.  Each team has to weigh the existing contracts with valued positions and potential contract extensions before hiring and releasing players.  

Use the visualization below to better understand how your favorite NFL spends its salary cap.  You can select a team, a position, or a player to learn more about the respective team expenses.  

Enjoy and feel free to comment below.

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Mike Ditka: A Look Back On A Chicago Bears Legend

With the latest round of commercials of the Super-fans raving about "Dit-ka" and the seemingly never ending stream of advertisements with his face on it, it can be easy to forget how much of a dominant force Mike Ditka was when he was on the field: both revolutionizing playing the Tight End position and coaching one of the most well know Super Bowl teams in the history of the NFL, the 1985 Chicago Bears.

Ditka's triumphs have stood the test of time, and he will be recognized of that on Monday December 9th, when the Chicago Bears organization will retire #89 in honor of his lasting achievements in football.  

While no one post/article/interview can ever quite capture what Mike Ditka meant to the Chicago Bears and the NFL, I have taken an attempt to showcase some of what he has accomplished and how it is still competitive with modern day talents.

To a Chicago Bears legend from a life-long Chicago Bears fan: Thank you!

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Football Outsiders DVOA Visualized

Football Outsiders DVOA Visualized

UPDATE: The visualization has been updated for Week 16.

Football Outsiders is a website dedicated to statistically understanding how different football teams perform when adjusted for the strength of their opponents.  The specifics of DVOA can be found on their site, but in general, the stat shows how a team will perform on each down and whether they will be able to move the ball progressively down the field (or stop the ball on defense).  A positive DVOA is better than a negative DVOA, except on defense where a negative DVOA is better than positive.  

However, a team's performance is not always reflected in their record.  A team (Team A) with few losses may have that record because they are winning close games and playing weak opponents.  On the other hand, a different team (Team B) that has a worse record may have faced tougher opponents but lost close games, but are winning big when they do win.  In this case Team B would probably have a better DVOA than Team A, and would be more likely to beat Team A in a game.

I have taken that data that Football Outsiders has prepared and visualized it in Tableau Public, which allows users to interact with the data to find out more information about their team.  Feel free to select your favorite team and learn more about their performance.

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