Havoc: Using big plays to profile 2022's playoff defenses

Data analysis in football is unique. Early in the season, the sample sizes are too volatile to be considered representative. Late in the season, adjustments and attrition have a smoothing effect on uneven data – which is also known as regressing to the mean, every sports podcaster’s favorite phrase. Then, in the postseason, over 1,000 snaps of data are poured right back into single-game samples. 

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Defensively, it's easy to lean back on familiar coaching adages – and for good reason. It’s hard to go wrong with “stopping the run and affecting the quarterback,” as every defense aspires to accomplish both when a trip to the Super Bowl is on the line.

Today, we’re looking at the playoff defenses through the lens of “havoc.” At its heart, havoc represents the negative plays a defense creates. For the purpose of this conversation, havoc combines runs that are stopped for a loss or no gain in addition to passes that are broken up or intercepted.

Havoc is only as valuable as what it's being weighed against – explosive gains for an offense. Think of havoc and explosive gains in terms of margins and ratios — similar to a “plus-minus” statistic in basketball. These two metrics operate independently of each other, but both are reflective of the most important thing in football: big plays.

To add, we measured the havoc ratio against pressure rate and success rate on plays/drives. The conventional thinking is that pressure protects against poor matchups in coverage while defenses need negative plays to succeed possession-to-possession.