Methodology and resources

WEPA and adjusted metrics

Weighted Expected Points Added (WEPA) is CFBD's family of opponent-adjusted efficiency metrics. It is intended to answer a practical question: how strong was a team's or player's performance after accounting for the quality of the opposition?

WEPA is a season-level adjustment, not a play-level value and not a win probability. Use PPA when the unit of analysis is an individual play.

How the adjustment works

The model evaluates offense and defense together across the FBS schedule. It uses regularization to separate the performance of the unit being measured from opponent strength and home-field context while limiting extreme estimates from small or unbalanced samples.

That process is applied to several metric families, including PPA, success rate, rushing-line measures, and explosiveness. Player passing and rushing outputs use the same general opponent-adjustment approach for players with a sufficient qualifying sample.

WEPA is proprietary. Exact fitted coefficients, regularization settings, sample thresholds, and training artifacts are not published.

Reading team values

The team response includes adjusted offense and defense-allowed views:

epa and epaAllowed include total, passing, and rushing efficiency.
successRate and successRateAllowed include overall, standard-down, and passing-down splits.
rushing and rushingAllowed include line, second-level, open-field, and highlight yards.
explosiveness and explosivenessAllowed measure value on successful plays.

Higher offensive values generally indicate better performance. Lower allowed values indicate that the defense conceded less adjusted production. Compare like fields within the same season rather than treating different metric families as one common scale.

Player WEPA

The passing and rushing endpoints return a player's adjusted wepa value and the number of qualifying plays behind it. The number is intended for season-level comparison among players in the same role and metric family.

Opponent adjustment reduces one major source of schedule bias, but it does not isolate a player from scheme, teammates, game state, or every selection effect. Sample size still matters.

Kicker PAAR

Points Added Above Replacement (PAAR) evaluates field-goal results against the expected value of the attempts. It is published with the WEPA endpoints but is a related, distinct metric rather than an opponent-adjusted rushing or passing measure.

Positive PAAR indicates that a kicker produced more value than the comparison baseline across the included attempts. attempts provides the sample behind the rating.

API access

See Metrics and definitions for the component metrics used in the response.

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Last modified on August 8, 2026

Win probability Elo ratings

How the adjustment works

WEPA is proprietary. Exact fitted coefficients, regularization settings, sample thresholds, and training artifacts are not published.

Reading team values

The team response includes adjusted offense and defense-allowed views:

epa and epaAllowed include total, passing, and rushing efficiency.

successRate and successRateAllowed include overall, standard-down, and passing-down splits.

rushing and rushingAllowed include line, second-level, open-field, and highlight yards.

explosiveness and explosivenessAllowed measure value on successful plays.

Player WEPA

Opponent adjustment reduces one major source of schedule bias, but it does not isolate a player from scheme, teammates, game state, or every selection effect. Sample size still matters.

Kicker PAAR

Positive PAAR indicates that a kicker produced more value than the comparison baseline across the included attempts. attempts provides the sample behind the rating.