NYG rank 4th in offseason improvement index

this is from a writer on substack named Kevin Cole who was previously a data scientist at PFF. his full article is linked below but behind paywall. I'm grabbing some of what he's posted on twitter.

before anyone gets hot and bothered with the numbers, here's what Kevin says about his methodology - if you click over to his post there are also links to more detailed explanations of his +/- stats and below this post i've linked to google where you can find older posts of his on PFF explaining it that may not be behind paywalls. https://unexpectedpoints.substack.com/p/2024-nfl-offseason-improvement-index

Quote:

** Numbers updated through March, 27th Five years ago, I developed the Improvement Index — a way to quantify the value gained and lost by each team in the offseason. The index is built on the rigorously researched NFL Plus/Minus metric, which translates player values into intuitive, concrete and position-agnostic currency of points added or lost. The index is the point differential gain or loss each team during the offseason, beginning with the first signing of released players. The model behind the Improvement Index projects the numbers of snaps and per-play efficiency for each player in every facet of offensive and defensive play: passing, rushing, receiving, blocking, pass rush, run defense and coverage. These models were trained on years of historical data, going back to 2006. The model incorporates player- and team-level assumptions based on each player’s prior performance, team coaching tendencies, forecasted opponents, and championship odds. These features help the model estimate the likely allocation of snaps among each position group and the likely points-added/lost per snap for each player based on that usage and historical trends. Some teams will move on the improvement index even if they haven’t added or dropped an influential player, as the total point differential gains must net to zero, i.e. one team’s point differential gains must be offset by others’ losses, and vice versa. Also, the team losing a player will not have the opposite point-differential gain/loss as the team gaining a player, as different quality of players will be gaining and losing snaps on those teams, e.g. the Raiders gain as more points by signing Gardner Minshew than the Colts lose, because the upgrade from Aidan O’Connell to Minshew is projected to be greater than the drop-off from Minshew to Anthony Richardson (seen as a flat move - for this year, at least). Each day, the Improvement Index plot below will be updated, along with a table of all the players joining a new team, with estimates for points-added above a replacement-level player at their positions. It’s important to remember that the points above replacement level number will not match the team gains, as the latter will mostly be based on snaps shifting between better than replacement-level players. Here is the movement in the index, generated by the confirmed transactions, through 4:30 p.m. Wednesday, March 27th. The full list of player movement and value added is available on the Unexpected Points subscriber Google sheet. Below the main plot of value shifts by team, there are tables for each division with the exact numbers by division.

separately as a bit of a proof of concept, here was his improvement index from last offseason, which similarly predicted that the eagles had lost more than they had gained back. He didn't bat 1.000 was the model did pick up that Houston had added a lot more value than conventional wisdom realized.




https://www.google.com/search?q=plus+minus+pff - ( New Window )