Malks, Roy, Kerr lead teams to next round

Jonny Malks, Andrew Roy, Jordan Kerr: these were the leaders in EDGE in their respective opening round playoff games from this past weekend. One is tempted to make a grand statement about the importance of a great handler having a good game in the playoffs, but it’s clearly more than that, as for example, Jordan Rhyne and Alex Thorne combined for 847 throwing yards and just one turn for Philly, and Kerr in fact had relatively few throwing yards.

As it usually is, the story is more about depth. Summing up just the EDGE values on this list, DC and Salt Lake do indeed outpace their opponents by three to four goal equivalents, but the difference for Minnesota comes deeper in the lineup, as their top three scores total less than Indy’s.

The tricky wind conditions for the West Division game helped generate more turnovers (53) than in the other two weekend games combined. The frequency of those turns lowered their value in EDGE by more than 30 percent compared to each of the other games, and to look at an example of that effect, Goose Helton had a Yards/Scores/Blocks/Turn slash line of 343/6/0/3, while Michael Tran’s was 104/3/2/1. Goose’s line in either of the other two playoff games would have generated a lower EDGE than Tran, but in a game where Goose’s three turns were still only 11% of the team total, his production relative to the value of those turns produced a higher value. Similarly, Delrico Johnson’s three blocks in DC’s win over Philly (in which there were only 13 blocks total) produced a higher EDGE-B than Sean McDougall’s four blocks in the block-fest in Salt Lake. Table 1 shows the top 21 from the playoff weekend (with full roster results and expanded metrics at the end).

With only two majority D-line players on the list — Chad Yorgason and Xavier Payne — it’s useful to look at an expanded list of D-line performances instead of simply naming the D-Line Player of the Week. Table 2 shows the top 14 in total EDGE among majority D-line players.

Throughout the regular season, I avoided single-game efficiency numbers, since low sample sizes can skew everything. However, for the playoffs, let’s remove the minimum threshold requirement in the spirit of highlighting those making the most of their moment. In this regard, one might note not only Stefan Samu’s high spot on the leaderboard, but that he is one of only two players from the highly inefficient West Division game to make it.

Legend OPP: Offensive points played DPP: Defensive points played POS: Offensive possessions BlkOpp: Block opportunities, i.e. the number of offensive possessions by the opponent ThrYds: Throwing yards (net forward – backward yardage) RecYds: Receiving yards (net forward – backward yardage) TotYds: Total yards AST: Assists GLS: Goals SCR: Scores (AST+GLS) HA: Hockey assists T: Throwaways S: Stalls D: Drops C: Callahans QEInc: Quarter-Ending INCompletions, which are excluded from statistical calculations. TRNS: Turnovers (Throwaways, Stalls, Drops) BLK: Blocks Cmp: Completions OEFF: Team scores per possession when player is on the field (min 20 possessions) MP: Minutes played AvgGmSE: Average scoring efficiency of all teams in games in which the player has played EDGE-O: TotYds*.007 + (AST+GLS)*0.2 – TRNS*GameSE. Measured in Goal Equivalents. EDGE-B: Blocks*GameSE. Measured in Goal Equivalents EDGE: EDGE-O + EDGE-B. Measured in Goal Equivalents NS_GE: NetStats in Goal Equivalents. A simple estimate of EDGE when yardage data not available: (hockey assists + conventional plus/minus)/2 EO100: 100*(EDGE-O/Possessions); Offensive Goal Equivalents per 100 possessions EB100: 100*(EDGE-B/BlockOpp); Block Goal Equivalents per 100 possessions E100: EO100 + EB100 +/-: Conventional plus/minus metric. Considering renaming AH+/- for Anti-handler +/-. HI: Handler index (Throwing yards/Total yards) DLI: D-line index (DPP/total points played)

AUDL stats have Kerr and North down for 2, but each had 1 Quarter-Ending Incompletion (QEInc), which distorts the quality-of-play meaning of turnovers; EDGE uses QEInc-adjusted turn totals. ↩

Already have a subscription? Log in

Whether you visit Ultiworld for our reporting, our podcasts, or our video coverage, you can help us continue to provide high quality content with a subscription. By becoming a subscriber, not only do you receive benefits like exclusive articles and full article RSS feeds, you also help fund all of Ultiworld's coverage in general. We appreciate your support!

Paul Würtztack is an Ultiworld analyst.

TAGGED: American Ultimate Disc League (AUDL), Andrew Roy, AUDL, AUDL Awards 2022, Delrico Johnson, EDGE, Jonny Malks, Jordan Kerr, Statistics, Stefan Samu