Windy City Gridiron
Last year, I started tracking a stat every week that was inspired by Brian Billick’s “Toxic Differential” statistic that combined explosive play and turnover differential into a single number. My version added sacks to the mix and doubled the value of turnovers. I called the statistic “Toxic Differential Plus” as an homage to Billick’s original idea.
In an effort to make the name a little more intuitive, I’m rebranding Toxic Differential Plus to STEP Differential. STEP stands for Sack + Turnover(x2) + Explosive Play Differential. As I have said many times, there are no perfect statistics, so please don’t mistake this for trying to be that. However, I think it provides an incredibly interesting view into overall team health and tells an interesting story as we navigate another NFL season.
I’m using Infogram again this year:
The Rams, Colts, Packers, and Bills are off to a hot start while the Bears, Panthers, Titans, Vikings, and Dolphins are struggling. The Vikings and the Bears in the bottom 5 despite playing each other in Week 1? Yeah, that’s how bad both of their Week 2 games went. I’ve added color coding with records on the stack to the right. It takes awhile for the statistic to stabilize fully, but maybe the Giants are a bit unlucky to be 0-2 at +5 while the Bucs have two dramatic comeback wins despite being at -4.
I have kept the previous end of year data going back to 2020 on the slides. I have a spreadsheet that goes back much further and at some point, I’ll write up a long analysis. For right now, I think it’s most interesting to think of this as an interesting data point to keep in mind as we try to sort out contenders and pretenders.
