Concentration vs. distribution of production
August 17, 2026 by Paul Würtztack in Analysis
Welcome to Better Box Scores’ coverage of the semi-pro seasons. It is anchored by EDGE, which converts goals, assists, blocks, turnovers, and yards gained into one metric, while accounting for the scoring and turnover environment.
The sports commentariat will often generate clichés along the lines of “big games are won by big-time players,” but as this column frequently likes to underscore (noting its overwhelming attention to individual stats), big-time performances are not well associated with winning. For example, what do you notice in Figure 1, which shows the top EDGE score on each team from this past weekend’s UFA Division Championships?
Having the game’s top producer is not in itself a problem, but it can be an indicator of an actual problem, which is that their team generated fewer breaks. Although Brooks, Decraene, Brock, and Kerr played exceptionally well whenever they had the disc, and their game-high totals don’t result from just having more opportunity, the fact is they did play more points (both O-line and total), reflecting the breaks problem.
The other manifestation of getting more breaks is that the overall distribution of EDGE-O within a team is often less concentrated across the whole team. Now you can have a very flat distribution of production and not win anything, but more than any other team, Minnesota seems to revel in winning without leaderboard stand-outs, and probably love the shape of their curve in Figure 2.
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