Subscribers to The Fabulous Peltoncast may have noticed they got a condensed version earlier — the Huskies section only was accidentally added to the RSS feed. Here’s the full version, should you want to hear the entirety of this week’s podcast.

In this week’s extended episode of The Fabulous Peltoncast, your hosts discuss today’s momentous return of the Rainier R to its rightful place on the Old Rainier Brewery, Kevin‘s visit to the ESPN campus in Bristol, remember Don James after his death, discuss the state of the Washington football program, preview the Seahawks’ Monday Night tilt at St. Louis and look at the results of last week’s bet on their fantasy matchup.

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Contents

Intro – The return of the Rainier R and Tristan waxes poetic on Rainier
12:00 – How the ESPN campus is like (or not like) “This is SportsCenter” commercials
19:00 – Remembering Don James as the Dawgfather
33:00 – The state of this year’s Huskies after losing three in a row (listen to just the Husky/James sections)
43:00 – Previewing the Seahawks at St. Louis, who is missing injured QB Sam Bradford, plus Percy Harvin‘s possible return (listen to just the Seahawks section)
56:00 – Tailgating/fantasy football, including the outcome of last week’s fantasy bet, this week’s late-night tailgate and waiver claims

This Week’s Links

– Restore the R Details
– George Karl a regular at Mecca
– The famous Dawgfather poster
– Seth Kolloen on Don James’ philosophy

It’s a special, bonus edition of the Fabulous Peltoncast! Your hosts break down the Seahawks’ 34-22 win over the Arizona Cardinals on Thursday Night Football, highlighting the performance of the linebacking core, the defensive line, Kam Chancellor, Brandon Browner — really the whole defense — and looking at the roles played by Sidney Rice and Zach Miller in the passing game.

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First, some big news: we have a logo!

After discussing that, in this week’s jam-packed Peltoncast your hosts discuss Kevin’s computer (and its Knicks projection) becoming a news story, talk about Seahawks pessimism and the team’s third-down issues, preview their Thursday night visit to Arizona, relate the feeling of helplessness created by Marcus Mariota, grade the Huskies at the midpoint of their season, study the meaning of their penalty woes (see below), make this week’s NFL’s picks, recap last week’s special Gameday tailgate and finish up by comparing the Kansas City defense to the ’85 Bears in terms of fantasy value.

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INTRO: Kevin’s famous computer
9:00 Seahawks: are people too worried about a 5-1 team? Plus investigating third-down issues and looking ahead to Thursday’s game at Arizona (listen to the Seahawks section)
24:00 Huskies: recapping Saturday’s loss to Oregon, midseason grades, penalty study (listen to the Huskies section)
42:00 NFL picks
45:00 Tailgating: Getting up early for Gameday and cream cheese takes our tailgate to the next level (listen to the tailgating section)
54:00 Fantasy – A friendly wager on this weekend’s Peltoncast showdown and comparing the Chiefs defense to the ’85 Bears

This Week’s Links

– Explaining SCHOENE’s prediction for the Knicks
– New York Post: “Knicks scoff at computer’s 37-win prediction”
– Why Kobe ranks so low in #NBArank
– Kevin on the Mix-Minus Podcast
– Jerry Brewer on the Seahawks’ issues and high expectations
– Football Outsiders FEI Ratings

2013 NCAA Penalty Research

In the analysis of the first half of the Huskies’ season, we discuss the role of penalties. Washington has been called for the second-most penalties per game in the nation and leads all FBS teams in penalty yardage.

The research with which I’m familiar on penalties and team success has been conducted in the NFL. In Pro Football Prospectus 2007, Aaron Schatz and Bill Barnwell found that  a small negative correlation (-0.31) between offensive penalties and wins (that is, teams with more penalties perform worse) but little relationship between defensive penalties and wins.

Using data from Sports-Reference.com, I quickly studied the relationship between penalties and yardage — both adjusted per 140 team plays on offense and defense to mitigate the effect of fast-paced offenses like UW’s that lead to more plays per game — and success and found a slightly positive correlation (0.15) between both and Sports-Reference.com’s Simple Rating for each team. Here’s how that looks graphically:

Note that the three teams in the country that have been penalized most frequently — UCLA (9.1 per 140 plays), Florida (8.7) and UW (8.6) are all top-20 teams. But really, the data from this limited sample show very little relationship between penalties and team success in the NCAA this season.

In case you were curious, despite the reputation for overofficiating (and the Bruins and the Huskies drawing laundry by the load), the Pac-12 doesn’t lead the nation in penalties per 140 plays (including non-conference games). That honor actually belongs to the new American Athletic Conference:

Conference Pen/G   Yd/G   Pen140 Yd140
--------------------------------------
American    6.9    58.8    6.8    58.5
Sun Belt    6.6    54.4    6.5    53.3
Pac-12      6.8    57.8    6.3    53.5
Big 12      6.4    56.4    6.1    53.1
ACC         5.8    47.2    5.8    47.1
SEC         5.6    45.3    5.8    46.5
MAC         5.6    49.5    5.6    49.4
CUSA        5.5    45.8    5.4    44.9
Big Ten     5.5    48.1    5.4    47.2
MWC         5.3    50.0    4.8    45.9

Average     5.9    50.4    5.8    49.1

Blame Arizona State: The Huskies’ opponent on Saturday is at the opposite end of the spectrum, committing 3.4 penalties per 140 plays, the nation’s seventh-lowest average. So if you see a flag during the game, assume it will go against Washington.

Since the inaugural Peltoncast, Seattle sports (at least football) had been riding high. Not anymore. In similar games — both featuring controversial replay reviews — both the Huskies and Seahawks fell from the ranks of the unbeaten last weekend in difficult road games. Kevin and Tristan recap those games, plus look ahead to Oregon Week and a visit by the Tennessee Titans using advanced stats to scout both opponents. Later, they compare their top five tailgating condiments. Also, remembering Vladimir Radmanovic‘s Sonics career as he heads to retirement, the NFL pick of the week, fantasy football advice.

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This week’s contents:

Intro: Remembering Vladimir Radmanovic‘s Sonics career
6:30: Recapping Husky/Seahawks losses, plus thoughts on refereeing (and Land Clark)
18:00: Previewing the Huskies vs. Oregon (Listen to just the Husky portion)
28:00: Previewing the Seahawks vs. Titans, plus Sidney Rice‘s poor catch rate (Listen to just the Seahawks portion)
43:00: Tailgating and ranking our top five tailgating condiments (Listen to just the tailgating portion)
49:00: Fantasy analysis

This week’s links:
– Vladimir Radmanovic’s 8 3-pointer game against the Lakers (YouTube)
– Vlade sings the praises of a nice, warm fleece blanket (YouTube)
– Football Outsiders FEI and S+ P rankings
– ESPN Stats & Info QBR rankings
– Football Outsiders DVOA and Catch Rate for WRs
– FoodSpin’s condiment rankings

The Fabulous Peltoncast is back and improved with a new theme song (“Slick Watts” by the Blue Scholars). This week’s episode features extending discussions of the Seahawks’ comeback win at Houston and the Washington Huskies’ win over Arizona, plus previews of this weekend’s games at Indianapolis and Stanford, respectively. Kevin and Tristan also recap a rainy afternoon of tailgating and take a look at fantasy football quarterbacks.

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Also new this week, we’ve split out the main topics into individual audio files if you don’t want to listen to the whole thing:

Intro (A little Philadelphia 76ers talk, plus why we’re pushing our Nothing Was the Same discussion until next week)
Huskies (Highlights from Saturday’s win, plus how UW matches up with Stanford and a reader question on how noise affects no-huddle offenses)
Seahawks (Sunday’s comeback, a look ahead at the Colts plus Bruce Irvin’s return and Tristan takes Kevin to task)
Tailgating (Update on last week’s Coors Light debate poll)
Fantasy football (This week’s waiver claims, plus a look at top QBs)

This week’s links:

– Tony Wroten is the ‘star of the day’
– Jeff Sagarin‘s college football ratings
– Seattle Times on Travis Coon’s excellent game

In this week’s edition of the Fabulous Peltoncast, we discuss the Huskies and Seahawks combining for their largest margin of victory on the same weekend ever, a Sounders draw at L.A., preview the Seahawks’ big game at Houston this weekend, debate the merits of Coors Light and look at this week’s options on the fantasy football waiver wire.

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The Fabulous Peltoncast is also now on iTunes! Download it to your devices and listen on the go.

This week’s topics:
3:00 Huskies/Seahawks combined blowouts and UW recap/preview
9:30 Seahawks vs. Jaguars recap
17:30 Seahawks at Texans preview
29:00 Coors Light debate and fall beer reviews
37:30 Fantasy football

Biggest combined margin of victory

The Huskies (56-0) and Seahawks (45-17) combined to win by 84 points this weekend. Previously, the largest combined margin Tristan found was the Huskies beating Kansas State 56-3 and the Seahawks beating Indianapolis 31-3 for a combined 81-point margin on Sept. 28 and 29, 1991. Alas, that still falls short of UW’s 120-point margin in a 120-0 win over Whitman on Oct. 25, 1919.

This week’s links:
– The Game wearing a Shawn Kemp jersey before punching Brandon Jennings
– Larry Stone on how losing to Arizona caused Steve Sarkisian to adapt an up-tempo offense
– Seahawks-Jaguars box score on pro-football-reference
– Football Outsiders playoff odds
– NFL rushing leaders through three games