Better Box Score Metrics: Raunig Takes to the Skies [AUDL Week 1, 2023]

Atlanta, Seattle, and Oakland each had standout performers in week 1.

May 2, 2023 by Paul Würtztack in Analysis with 0 comments

BBSM is back for another AUDL campaign, offering a weekly review of standout performances using metrics not included on the AUDL’s stats page (but thoroughly reliant on and grateful for the AUDL’s extensive statistical compilations).¹

For the new season, let’s mix things up and start with defense for a change. This might be the last week any team tries throwing in Brett Hulsmeyer’s direction, as he recorded a nice season’s worth of blocks with six in just one game, Atlanta’s victory over Indy. Only twice last year did a player record six blocks in a game, once each by Ben Green and Noah Coolman. On the value of all those blocks, Hulsmeyer ends up fourth on the EDGE leaderboard this week.

But, also, good luck throwing elsewhere against the Hustle: Dean Ramsey and Mike Kobyra each also had a pair of blocks. What’s weird about all those blocks against Indy is that last year, Indy nearly led the league in not having their passes blocked, just behind the Hustle it so happens. Indy also led the league by a wide margin in D-line conversion rates last year. So what happens against Atlanta? They record the worst DLC of the week, 25 percent.

But that was just one game. One thing we have two-game evidence for is that Seattle gives up a lot of yards, at least on the road. Both Salt Lake and Oakland racked up more than 2000 yards of offense against Seattle, and nine of the 10 largest individual throwing totals, and all seven of the largest EO100 totals, came from those two games.

But Seattle can also dish it out, and young Zeppelin Raunig has turned the spotlight squarely on him. After an excellent game with 415 yards, six scores, and two turns against Salt Lake, for a top 30 EDGE score of 2.81, he effectively doubled that output against Oakland in posting the week’s highest EDGE: 379 receiving yards, 203 throwing yards, seven scores, two hockey-assists, a block, and 0 turns. Last year, a few Seattle players put up some impressive numbers early in the season but just weren’t able to play in a number of the Cascades games; let’s hope we get to see plenty of Raunig.

For just offensive production, Oakland newcomer Mac Hecht led the weekend in EDGE-O, largely on the strength of his 701 total yards and nine assists.

Here are the leaders in Week 1 EDGE.

Defensively, the top seven on the EDGE-B leaderboard are not all Hustle players.

Week 1 D-Line Recognition Award

The weekly D-Line Recognition Award is for the most net production for a majority D-line player, but this week it hinges on a technicality. It’s pretty clearly Hulsmeyer, even if technically he only played as many D-line points as O-line points (11), not more. If we wanted to strictly limit it to a majority D-line player, then the honor goes to Seattle’s Khalif El-Salaam for his game against Oakland. Although there too, Leaf played 13 offensive points, which was more than anybody on the Empire’s O-line.

The E100 stats will soon sort out production on a rate basis other than per game, but we will wait to crank those up until after a sizable number of players have more than 30 possessions.

Full Week 1 Stats

Legend
OPP: Offensive points played
DPP: Defensive points played
POS: Offensive possessions
BlkOpp: Block opportunities, i.e. the number of offensive possessions by the opponent
ThrYds: Throwing yards (net forward – backward yardage)
RecYds: Receiving yards (net forward – backward yardage)
TotYds: Total yards
AST: Assists
GLS: Goals
SCR: Scores (AST+GLS)
HA: Hockey assists
T: Throwaways
S: Stalls
D: Drops
C: Callahans
QEInc: Quarter-Ending INCompletions, which are excluded from statistical calculations.
TRNS: Turnovers (Throwaways, Stalls, Drops)
BLK: Blocks
Cmp: Completions
OEFF: Team scores per possession when player is on the field (min 20 possessions)
MP: Minutes played
AvgGmSE: Average scoring efficiency of all teams in games in which the player has played
EDGE-O: TotYds* 0.007 (Approx) + (AST+GLS)* 0.18 (Approx) – TRNS*GameSE. Measured in Goal Equivalents. Actual coefficients depend on league averages.
EDGE-B: Blocks*GameSE. Measured in Goal Equivalents
EDGE: EDGE-O + EDGE-B. Measured in Goal Equivalents
NS_GE: NetStats in Goal Equivalents. A simple estimate of EDGE when yardage data not available: (hockey assists + conventional plus/minus)/2
EO100: 100*(EDGE-O/Possessions); Offensive Goal Equivalents per 100 possessions
EB100: 100*(EDGE-B/BlockOpp); Block Goal Equivalents per 100 possessions
E100: EO100 + EB100
+/-: Conventional plus/minus metric. Considering renaming AH+/- for Anti-handler +/-.
HI: Handler index (Throwing yards/Total yards)
DLI: D-line index (DPP/total points played)

1. We try to put this together by Monday, which means that we’ll be using the real-time stats from the Advance Stats page that often contain errors and are later fixed, such as the fact that Sunday’s data shows Houston with 124 more throwing yards than receiving yards. The corrections are reflected in the season totals. I also remove quarter-ending incompletions (and am shortening the label to Qincs). In addition, after two seasons of heavy emphasis on how EDGE works, we’ll be turning that knob down a bit this year and focusing on the highlights. There’s plenty to be found on the whys and hows of EDGE here. ↩