HOW TO READ THE DRIVE TRACKER
The Drive Tracker is not a box score. It's a drive-by-drive breakdown of what actually happened in a game — not who scored, but what each possession contributed, what it cost the other team, and where the game was really decided.
This guide walks through each section of the interface. If you haven't opened the tool yet, start here and read along.
// NAVIGATING TO A GAME
Free tier note: Free members see the most recent Green Bay Packers game and a text-only drive list. Paid members get all games, all teams, full charts, and CSV export.
// THE DRIVE LOG
The main panel lists every drive in the game. Each row shows:
// THE PLAY LOG
Click any drive row to expand the play-by-play log. Each play shows:
- Down & distance — the situation before the snap
- Play description — what happened (pass complete, rush, penalty, etc.)
- Yards gained
- EPA for that play — positive (green) means it helped; negative (red) means it hurt
The play log is where you find the actual turning point in a drive. A 15-yard pass on 3rd-and-14 shows up green with a large positive EPA; a 12-yard pass on 3rd-and-14 shows up red (it's still a punt). Yards lie. EPA doesn't.
// THE EPA CHART
The EPA chart (paid tier) shows cumulative EPA across all drives, plotted by drive number. Green bars = positive drives (the offense generated expected value). Red bars = negative drives (punts, turnovers, and three-and-outs that hurt).
Use this to identify which team dominated possession quality, not just possession time. A team can run 40 plays and generate negative EPA on most of them — they ran the ball, took time off the clock, and went nowhere. Another team runs 25 plays and has a consistently positive EPA bar chart. That second team is probably winning.
// THE WIN PROBABILITY CHART
The WP chart (paid tier) shows the win probability curve for the game — the home team's probability from kickoff to final whistle. Look for:
- Big spikes — turnovers, long TDs, or failed 4th downs that swing the game dramatically
- Sustained upward/downward trends — a team slowly grinding the other side into submission
- Flatlines near 50% — a genuinely competitive game where neither team has a clear advantage
- Late-game cliff drops/spikes — where the game was actually decided, often a single play
// CSV EXPORT
Paid members get an [↓ EXPORT_CSV] button in the game header. The export is a flat play-by-play CSV — one row per play, with drive metadata repeated per row. Useful for building your own analysis in Excel, R, or Python.
Ready to use it? The Drive Tracker has data for every NFL game since 1999. Start with a game you remember and see if the numbers match your recollection. They usually don't. That's the point.
[OPEN DRIVE TRACKER →]