NFL analytics

Can Delaying the Snap Like Peyton Manning Win You the Game?

I was nerdily inspired by Marcus Mosher's Tweet about the amount of time left on the play clock when teams snapped the ball in 2017. You can see that the Super Bowl champion Philadelphia Eagles took the longest to snap the ball. But the Super Bowl runner-up New England Patriots were 29th.

So is there anything to it? Does 'Time on Play Clock at Snap' mean anything about a team's performance? Peyton Manning presumably thinks so:

An NFL Films clip, narrated by the late Steve Sabol, about how long Manning took at the line. 

It's posted to YouTube under "Just Snap the Damn Ball Colts"

To answer this question, I ran a correlation on Time at Snap vs. Winning Percentage in the 2017 season.

A Legend in the Making

I've written before (after his very first regular-season start, in fact) that Carson Wentz is a blossoming star. So I was interested in how Wentz's injury-shortened 2017 season—in which he was on track for NFL MVP before his injury in the 13th game of the season against the Rams—compared to the best QB seasons in Eagles history. Eagles fans know that he set a franchise record for TDs with his 33rd, after tearing his ACL against the Rams!

But I wanted to compare other stats, such as Wentz's yardage, completion percentage, and so on, to the best seasons for Eagles QBs, like McNabb 2004. So Google took me to this Pro Football Reference page. Though it wasn't what I was looking for, I did discover something very interesting...