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The hockey board I frequent has some top notch stuff in the fanposts and fanshots. The Cubs blog I frequent is, um, well, different.

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You - or really anyone else on here - is more than welcome to use Rakes as a larger sounding board. SBNation gives us some really fun tools to work with that don't get nearly enough work. If you want to go that route - and cut out the middle man of me awkwardly fumbling trying to explain the numbers - just sign up, let me know what your username is and I'll give you author access.

Maybe I should make up a blog or something dumb like that sometime.

It's all very interesting, is there a site you write for or something I can cite so everyone is clear that I did not do the research? I know Jay doesn't want too many outside links to this board so it doesn't go kablooie or I'd just link back to here.

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I looked at seven core stats, which I thought would most relate against TOP. They were Yards/Carry, Rush/Game, Rush Yards/Game, Completion Percentage, Yards/Attempt, Attempts/Game, and Passing Yards/Game. I looked at each stat offensively and defensively and calculated correlation against TOP. I threw in offensive pace (time per play) for good measure.

Recall that correlations with an absolute value above are viewed as "meaningful" and a negative correlation means that as the stat increases, TOP decreases.

In order, the stats ranked as:

Def Rush Att/G: 0.675
Offensive Pace: 0.630
Off Rush Att/G: 0.456
Off Rush Yar/G: 0.395
Def Rush Yar/G: 0.349
Off Pass Att/G: -0.328
Off Pass Yar/A: 0.295
Def Pass Comp%: 0.240
Off Rush Yar/C: 0.232
Off Pass Yar/G: -0.185
Def Pass Yar/G: 0.182
Def Rush Yar/C: 0.148
Def Rush Yar/C: -0.133
Off Pass Comp%: 0.108
Def Pass Att/G: 0.091

Basically, the overwhelming factor in TOP is primarily Defensive rush attempts per game (so Jay was right). Reduce the number of opposing carries and you're more likely to win the TOP. It's even more important than Offensive Pace.

It's interesting to see that your ability to win the rushing battle on a play-to-play basis is actually unimportant to TOP.