Brisbane Broncos Flips Elite Seminole’s 2025 Defensive Edge.
Another month, another opportunity to provide an update on each NRL team’s offensive and defensive performance for the 2023 campaign.
Previously, I would characterize a team’s performance in relation to its projected points as either over or performing. However, after considering some feedback from the April update, I realized that an explanation based on attacking and defensive efficiency metrics is preferable to focusing only on overall performance.
I had been sort of doing that by sorting teams into efficient and inefficient buckets based on real scoring and comparing expected points with actual scoring, but this would just be taking it a step further. The study remains unchanged, with the same charts and outputs shown; however, the conclusions will now be discussed in terms of team efficiency.
For those who are unfamiliar with the site, there is an extensive explanation explaining the specifics of the expected point model (ETXP) that I employ in this research. In summary, each play location, tackle number, and ball are assigned a point value determined by the likelihood of a point being scored from that place.
Teams that control possession will do better in this area because, as one might anticipate, possession nearer the try line has a larger possibility of scoring. Nevertheless, because some teams play better than others and because not all teams are average, there isn’t much of a relationship between tackles inside the 20 and scoring points. The West Tigers’ dismal performance in this place is well known to readers of my earlier posts from March and April.
Now that we have cleared it up, let’s look at the stats following Round 14, which ends at the end of May.
To see where teams stand based on their on-field results, we start with a plot of actual points scored against actual points conceded per game.
