Tutoring a Ram Fan

[mathgeek]

Hi there,

I am tutoring a statistics course to a St. Louis Rams fan, (btw she is a really nice individual, and has been a family friend for a few years.) I am trying to make statistics more approachable to her. As she is a huge fan of the St. Louis Rams, I was hoping to use NFL statistics to make Statistics more interesting to her.

I have several questions, that I am really hoping that one of you will answer.
1) Are there any commonly used measurements / metrics / stats used in the NFL?
2) Where can I go to find these statistics?
3) As I am more of math geek, and have a tiny bit of football knowledge, (I know the Steelers suck, and they haven't made steel in Pittsburg for ten years), is there a website that gives basic football for dummies information.

Thank you!
I appreciate your patience, and thank you.

[RamsFanSam]

For the numbers, try Pro-Football-Reference.com - Pro Football Statistics and History.

[TekeRam]

As with just about every sport now, everything is turned into statistics. The big ones off the top of my head mostly revolve around yards, such as yards per attempt/completion or number of 300 yard passing games for a quarterback, as well as completion percentage, yards per carry for running backs(also yards after 1st contact which will be good for Rams' back Steve Jackson), and yards per reception and yards after catch for recievers and running backs, as well as number of 100 yard games for both. General offensive statistics would be passing yards per game, rushing yards per game, and points per game.

On the defensive side, you should look at passing and rushing yards given up per game, opposing QB completion percentage, and points given up per game. A pretty advanced one would be negative pass play percentage, which would be the percentage of passing plays that end in a sack or interception.

You can use QB rating both offensively and defensively, and that in turn uses statistics to come up with the number, but it can get pretty confusing even for someone knowledgable in football, but as a "math nerd" you could probably understand it conceptually pretty well and use it for an advanced lesson.

As for a place to find those statistics, either NFL.com or Sam's link above would probably be best.

Hope this helps!