Every week, Bill Connelly (the creator of S&P+, the best against-the-spread picker that exists) releases what he calls his “Five Factor Box Scores,” which are the five statistics most significantly correlated with whether a team wins a game. You can read all about that here.
Those stats are:
- Yards-per-play, which functions as a measure of explosiveness.
- Success Rate, which functions as a measure of efficiency. Success Rate is “50% of needed yards on first down, 70% of needed yards on second down, or 100% of needed yards on third or fourth down.