We’re excited to share our #BigDataBowl entry: Pass Break-up Ability! A tool to see who’s got more skill at breaking up than Kim K! https://www.kaggle.com/brown331/analyzing-pass-breakup-ability-using-xcompletion

We focused on breakup ability at the catch because it should be a skill independent of scheme, pass rush, or other players. Because it’s a replicable, transferable skill, decision makers can use it to evaluate a player on any team without having to consider any outside variables.

We first created a model of the expected probability of completion at ball arrival, xCOMP. Our model consists of things like nearest defender speed and distance to the receiver at ball arrival. Thus, we’re able to control for everything we found important up until ball arrival.

Our model accurately predicted if a pass was completed 82% when evaluated on testing data. Our lowest xCOMP pass is this:

To determine the best defenders, we took the nearest defender and subtracted xCOMP minus 1 if completed or 0 if not completed. We summed for time a defender was targeted to determine Total Score and then calculated score per target.

Total Score tells us the completions a defender prevented that an average player would have given up. Score per target tells us what percent more likely a player is to break up the pass. For example, Justin Coleman prevented 7.395 more completions than an average defender would.

Adrian Phillips is 17.1% more likely to break up the pass than an average defender in his spot at ball arrival. Phillips, in 2018, was one of the best at laying big hits while also ripping his hand through the ball.

We can then look at overall team defense. Although teams that are good at breakups tend to be good at preventing passing yardage, there are exceptions. This is an indicator that the Browns had bad D because the players weren’t in position, not because they were bad at breakups.

I’m so thankful to have gotten to work with such a creative and smart team. @ArmanKafai , @ATJoshBrown , and @erinpsajdl were absolute superstars and we had a blast putting this together.