Fiedler-Feeley air speed...the dreaded OUT PATTERN (warning: in-depth)

[ckparrothead]

This is about the much-talked-about "out" pattern. I'm breaking down the speed of Jay's ball vs AJ's ball.

Here's an intro to my method. Thank you to the DVR, this wonderful invention, otherwise this wouldn't be possible.

Forget stopwatches. The DVR is more accurate. When you pause the game, and hit the fast forward button, it fast forwards through your recording at exactly 1/30th of a second each button push. How do I know this? Because I paused and pushed the fast forward button during actual game play when you can see the game clock's seconds ticking down. From the time the second changes, to the next time it changes, you have to push the button 30 times, each time.

OK, so now you know that my TIMING of the throws is accurate to within 1/30th of a second (thanks to the trusty digital video recorder). What about the accuracy of the distances?

Here are the two throws in question. On Fiedler's first drive, I think it was his second throw attempt, he dropped back just inside of the near hash mark and he hit Marty Booker on the far sideline on a dreaded "out" route to convert a 3rd and 5 or 6. Booker was sitting on his butt when the pass arrived to him.

The Feeley throw in question, was also on his first drive, I forget which throw of his it was. He threw the ball from just inside of the far hash mark, toward the near sideline, on I believe a 3rd and 4 or 5. He hit Chambers more in stride, but the defender was also a LOT closer to Chambers than the defender was on Booker, so after it happened Chambers couldn't run for much YAC even though he had been hit in stride. It drew a "nice throw" comment from the announcers though, probably (and lets be fair) because the defender was so close that the ball was actually a few inches or miliseconds difference away from an interception.

I happen to know football field dimensions extraordinarily well. Well enough to know that the field is exactly 160 feet wide, the the yard numbers (30, 40, 50, etc) start 12 yards from the sideline and are 2 yards in height, and that the hash marks begin 70 feet and 9 inches from the sideline, and are exactly 2 feet in length.

Both quarterbacks threw from relatively the same place on the field, horizontally speaking, because prior to both plays, the ball was placed just inside the opposite hash mark, and both QBs dropped straight back, etc. The hash marks themselves are conveniently placed so that (especially from the side view) you can see pretty much exactly what yardage the ball was released from vertically speaking, and what yardage the ball was caught vertically speaking.

So, what you have is accurate timing (to 1/30th of a second), and accurate VERTICAL distances (to within, say, one foot?). So what is the catch? Unfortunately I had to guestimate the horizontal distance between the WR and the far sideline when they caught the ball. I guestimated Chambers to be about 5 yards from the sideline (knowing that there is 12 yards between the edge of the numbers and the sideline), and I guessed Booker to be 2 yards from the sideline. These could EASILY be in error...but within limits. There's no way Booker was more than 3 yards from the sideline when he caught the ball and no way he was less than 1 yard from the sideline when he caught it.

Chambers' catch, unfortunately, was a little less precise, but judging from his stride and distances, I would say there's no chance that I could be in error anymore than 2 yards either way...and thats a BIG distance to just say could be a margin of error. In case you were wondering, the way I guestimated it exactly, is by watching the replay Chambers stride comes out to be almost exactly 2 yards at the top speed he was running at horizontally, and I could tell this because with his left foot he stepped right at the top of the number "50" and with his right foot he stepped right at the end of the number "50" which, as I've stated, the numbers are exactly 2 yards in height. I counted 2 normal strides and a BIG stride (in which he did a striding one foot leap to get to the ball) after he cleared the number 50...and since that breaks out to 2+2+2+x...I figured about 7 yards from the bottom of the number 50 would do it...which would make him about 15 feet from the sidelines.

Using the good old pythagorean theorem you come up with best judgements of the distance that the ball traveled in both cases.

Here are the exact stats as I counted them.

Fiedler:
Vertically - 33 feet (11 yards) from release point to Booker catch. No margin of error.
Horizontally - 80 feet from release point to Booker's position (Fiedler 74 feet from near sideline, Booker 6 feet from far sideline). 3 foot margin of error.
Time: 1.33333 seconds from release to catch (40 frames at 30 frames per second)
Calculated Straight Line Distance - 86.5 feet the ball traveled.
Calculated Average Ball Speed - 44.3 miles per hour (plus or minus 1.5 mph margin of error)

Feeley:
Vertically - 35 feet (12 yards, minus one foot) from release point to Chambers vertical position. No margin of error.
Horizontally - 71 feet from release point to Chambers' catch (Feeley 74 feet from far sideline, Chambers 15 feet from near sideline). 6 foot margin of error
Time: 1.0 seconds (30 frames at 30 frames per second)
Calculated Straight Line Distance: 79.2 feet the ball traveled.
Calculated Average Ball Speed: 54.0 mph (plus or minus 4 mph margin of error).

MPH Feeley: 54.0 mph (+/- 4mph)
MPH Fiedler: 44.3 mph (+/- 1.5mph)

Take from this what you will. You can think I'm a crack pot or that I've really just found physical proof of what we already THOUGHT we saw, which is to say that Feeley throws that out pattern faster than Fiedler. In both cases, both QBs needed to zip that ball as fast as possible in order to avoid defenders. Neither had any incentive to put any touch on the pass whatsoever.

If I can find more examples as good as these where I can calculate ball air speed of the two QBs, on nearly IDENTICAL throws, then I will let you know.

The reason I did this all was because I THOUGHT I had a revelation. That is to say, at the beginning of the game I saw Fiedler put some real good zip on passes downfield up the middle of the field to Chambers, and I thought to myself, wait a minute...most of the times when I've gotten impressed by Feeley's arm it was on passes down the field...and I realized that due to the camera angle the ball would appear to be moving faster down the middle of the field than it would out to the sidelines. Then I saw both QBs make pretty much the exact same out pattern pass, at about the right same distances.

I thought, to my horror, that what I was ACTUALLY going to prove was that Feeley doesn't necessarily have a better arm than Fiedler, and that he DOESN'T necessarily complete those out patterns any faster.

Thankfully, I proved my "revelation" wrong, and merely showed myself what I already knew.

[Jimmy James]

Tech note: It's 1/30th of a second because TV has 30 frames per second. Film is 24 frames per second.

This is some novel analysis that proves exactly what I think we all pretty much suspected. Great job, man. :p

Seriously, that really is some dedication. Keep us posted on any more fun with TiVo (at least the Dolphins related stuff).

[ZOD]

WOW CK!!

Where's the blowing smoke up your @ss smilie when you need it

Good work, I think.......:escape:

[FIN-IN-RI]

well.. ok then!

proof enough for me!

good job you get a gold star for the day, well make it 5 for effort..



:goodnight

[ckparrothead]

Three trophies for the cheat!

[LIQUID24]

CK, you get an A+ in Professor Liquid's math class. Congrats.

[ckparrothead]

Tech note: It's 1/30th of a second because TV has 30 frames per second. Film is 24 frames per second.

This is some novel analysis that proves exactly what I think we all pretty much suspected. Great job, man. :p

Seriously, that really is some dedication. Keep us posted on any more fun with TiVo (at least the Dolphins related stuff).

Thats what I figured. I tested out the "30 button pushes" thing against the game clock several times at several moments of the game...and it came out to be exactly 30 button pushes each time. So, it really is 1/30th of a second each push even if the game itself is filmed at 24 frames per second. If it wasn't a DVR, and I was using a stopwatch, I wouldn't have even bothered, really.

[Bottle Nose]

Very very nice CK.

[Jimmy James]

Originally Posted by ckparrothead

Thats what I figured. I tested out the "30 button pushes" thing against the game clock several times at several moments of the game...and it came out to be exactly 30 button pushes each time. So, it really is 1/30th of a second each push even if the game itself is filmed at 24 frames per second. If it wasn't a DVR, and I was using a stopwatch, I wouldn't have even bothered, really.

If it is on your TV, it is 30 fps (no matter if it was originally film or what). This may be different with high def, too.

When I say film, I mean actual motion picture films. I don't know if game film works the same way because I don't know what equipment we're talking about.

Just FYI to everybody.

[LIQUID24]

Not to change the subject, but is there a difference between Tivo and DVR? I'm planning on purchasing one soon.

[Dol-Fan Dupree]

Way to go CK. You proved something I have been suspecting for a while now. Plus I have been saying that over and over again. Now I have more proof.

More proof that AJ Feeley can throw the out pass.

[outtawack311]

Wow dude..... You might wanna find a hobby.


Joking aside, thats amazing dedication.

[ckparrothead]

My cable company called these units "DVRs" which is a generic name for TIVO basically meaning "digital video recorders"

They came with my cable package for like 10 bucks a month for two of the puppies, I got one out in the living room and one in my room. You don't have as many options as TIVO by any means, but I've never used tivo before so its good for me to start out on this then kind of figure out if I would need some of the more advanced functions on tivo (like having tivo record shows that it "thinks" you might like, etc...more space to record shows, etc)

[Phinnhedd]

wow... you must've been bored.:smokin:

[MDFINFAN]

Man that was pretty good stuff, reminded me of the theory of parallel lines that I learned while a FA officer.. We use it to lay the direction of the howitzers, then we used distance and other stuff to calculate what was neccessary to shoot a round to hit a target, even moving ones. We could actually tell how long before the round hit the ground once we fired it. You, my man could be a 13Echo anytime...LOL..