Photo by Michael Zagaris\/San Francisco 49ers\/Getty Images <\/p>\n

It’s not because of one person, either. This defense is playing at an extremely high level as a team<\/p>\n

To make this as clean and easy to read as possible, I’m leaving out the giant box score and breaking it down into two articles where I review the offense and defense. The Monday night game threw me out of whack, but here is the data from the 49ers<\/a> debacle of the Browns<\/a>. We’ll start with the defense, as this unit becomes more and more impressive by the week.<\/p>\n

EPA compared to the rest of the league <\/p>\n

As a refresher, here is “expected points added<\/strong><\/a>” defined<\/strong><\/a>:<\/p>\n

The value of any individual play can be calculated as Expected Points Added (EPA), the difference in EP before and after a given play. Having EPA as a currency allows all sorts of different play results and events to be compared apples-to-apples, taking into account the fluctuating value of yards and downs as the other changes. And this allows for really interesting analysis when applied on a holistic level. For example, EPA shows that a “staying ahead of the chains” run of 4 yards on first down is most often a negative play. The rare exceptions include plays at the outer end of field goal range.<\/p>\n

On the season, the 49ers are allowing a success rate for opposing offenses through the air of 32%. That’s 14% above league average. It’s ridiculous how efficient the Niners have been<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Photo by Michael Zagaris\/San Francisco 49ers\/Getty Images It’s not because […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":7292810,"comment_status":"close","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pgc_meta":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[427,91],"yoast_head":"\n