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VN: Passing Downs Magic Acts

In my ongoing exploration of old Varsity Numbers pieces, I discovered exactly the thing I hoped to discover in this exercise: an old concept that I had allowed to completely fall by the wayside.

Back in 2008-09, I talked quite a bit about disproportionality -- an offense's ability to consistently bail itself out on passing downs while struggling on standard downs. As the idea went, if your success on passing downs is disproportional to your success on standard downs, it will be hard to maintain that success in the future.

In the 2008-09 offseason, I explored this idea for both sides of the ball.