Bleacher Report - Articles by Eric J

Why Does Peyton Manning Take So Few Sacks?

Eric J — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 13:15:03 -0400

“You throw the ball so fast,” Shaun Phillips said to Peyton Manning after a play in Week 12 of the 2008 regular season.

Phillips should know what he is talking about being both a player with at least seven sacks in each of his previous four seasons and a player who has failed to sack Peyton Manning in four consecutive games from 2007 to 2008 despite 190 pass attempts from Manning.

Another player who should know a thing or two is Jared Allen, who has had at least 7.5 sacks in each of his five seasons in the league, including three seasons with at least 11, and only has one sack in two games against Manning in 2007 and 2008 despite 74 pass attempts from Manning.

When asked to rate the toughest to sack quarterbacks in the league in 2007 by the Kansas City Star, Allen said of Manning: “He just gets rid of the ball so fast. Not only are you rushing against a tackle, you're rushing against him.”

Perhaps by coincidence or not, both of these players faced Manning in the 2007 regular season during a three-game stretch in which the Colts offense was plagued by injuries of ridiculous proportions.

During that stretch, the Colts played with as many as two or even three starting offensive linemen unable to play due to injury, which included both offensive tackles, Tony Ugoh and Ryan Diem. Adding insult to injury, one or both of the primary backups at offensive tackle, Charlie Johnson and Daniel Federkeil, were unable to play due to injury as well.

Making things even worse, the Colts were without wide receivers Marvin Harrison and Anthony Gonzalez—even tight end Dallas Clark at one point—and a backup wide receiver Roy Hall as well. This forced the Colts to go to the practice squad to sign players to run patterns with Reggie Wayne and lowly backup wide receiver Aaron Moorehead.

Manning’s numbers certainly suffered as a result of the barrage of injuries, including an infamous six-interception game against the Chargers, and only picked up upon Anthony Gonzalez’s return in the last of the three games—but how often was he sacked?

Manning was only sacked eight times over the three-game span in 128 drop backs (pass attempts + sacks) for a sack rate of 6.3 percent. Compare that to the league average sack rate in 2007 of 6.1 percent while considering the injuries to the Colts offensive line and receivers. Also consider that two of the three defenses faced were ranked in the Top 10 for sacks that season and had a pass rusher with at least 12.5 sacks on the season.

The Colts offensive line was also hit hard to begin the 2008 season. The Colts were without three and even four starters on the offensive line in the first three weeks of 2008.

To make matters worse, the Colts were sending out two rookies, Jamey Richard and Steve Justice, they had just drafted in the sixth and seventh rounds to pick up the bulk of the playing time. Richard and Justice both played in all three games, with Richard starting two and Justice starting one.

Unfortunately, it was during these three games that the Colts faced Pro Bowl defensive linemen Tommie Harris, Kevin Williams, Pat Williams, Jared Allen, and John Henderson.

With the additional problem of Manning still being in the process of recovering from multiple knee surgeries late in the offseason, his numbers certainly took a hit—but even playing underweight and hobbled, how often was he sacked?

Manning was only sacked five times over the three-game span in 125 drop backs for a sack rate of 4.0 percent. Compare that to the league average sack rate of 5.9 percent in 2008 while considering the injuries to the Colts offensive line and the lack of experience of their backups in addition to the list of Pro Bowl defensive linemen faced.

You won’t see sacks accounted for in passing yards, touchdowns, completion percentage, yards-per-attempt, or quarterback rating, but it is a crucial part of the passing game of which the quarterback plays a much larger role than most people realize.

There is a reason why Peyton Manning takes so few sacks season after season despite turnover caused by free agency and severe injuries like in the cases of 2007 and 2008. It’s not the luck of being the only quarterback in the league with consistently brilliant pass protection season after season regardless of circumstance; it’s because as Phillips and Allen said, he gets the ball out so quickly.

You can’t sack a quarterback if he doesn’t have the ball in his hand.

Remember those relatively low sack rates of Manning in those three-game stretches of severe injuries to the Colts offensive line in 2007 and 2008.

Consider how the Colts sack rate suddenly fell to 3.7 percent in Manning’s rookie season from 10.6 percent, 7.4 percent, and 10.1 percent in the three seasons preceding Manning’s arrival.

Manning continued the trend throughout his career with personal sack rates of 2.6 percent, 3.4 percent, 5.0 percent, 3.7 percent, 3.1 percent, 2.5 percent, 3.6 percent, 2.5 percent, 3.9 percent, and 2.5 percent from 1999 to 2008.

Consider how that consistently low sack rate survived the losses of key offensive linemen like Adam Meadows, Rick DeMulling, Jake Scott, and Tarik Glenn over the years to free agency and retirement, as well as the recent injury losses of Ryan Diem for six games in 2007, Jeff Saturday for four games in 2008, and Ryan Lilja for 16 games in 2008.

Consider the cases of quarterbacks like Rob Johnson and David Carr, who share a reputation for taking too long to get rid of the ball. Johnson had a 14.2 percent sack rate in four seasons with the Bills from 1998 to 2001. The other quarterbacks on the Bills during those same seasons had a combined sack rate of 4.3 percent.

Carr had a 10.7 percent sack rate in five seasons with the Texans from 2002 to 2006. When Matt Schaub replaced him as the team’s starter however, he had a sack rate of only 5.5 percent in two seasons from 2007 to 2008. Sage Rosenfels, who backed up Carr in 2006 and Schaub in 2007 and 2008, had only a 3.4 percent sack rate in his three seasons with the Texans.

Another, perhaps more noteworthy, example is Ben Roethlisberger, who has a career sack rate of 9.2 percent in five seasons.

Some will fault the Steelers offensive line for Roethlisberger’s high sack rate, but Roethlisberger does have a reputation for holding onto the ball too long. He is often able to get away with doing so because of his size and athleticism, and the strategy does often lead to big plays because his receivers have more time to get open down the field—but it does lead to more sacks.

Roethlisberger’s offensive line hardly looks great now, but he did have three Pro Bowl offensive linemen on his line in the first three seasons of his career: Alan Faneca, Jeff Hartings, and Marvel Smith.

The three linemen combined for six Pro Bowl selections as well as four first-team All-Pro selections in those three seasons. Faneca also chipped in another Pro Bowl and first-team All-Pro selection in 2007 as well before leaving the Steelers in free agency.

We would certainly expect to see a sharp contrast in Roethlisberger’s sack rate with those guys protecting him, but we don’t. Roethlisberger had a sack rate of 8.8 percent in his first three seasons in the league with that trio compared to a 9.6 percent sack rate in his past two seasons, with no Hartings in either season, no Faneca in 2008, and Smith missing four games in 2007 and 11 games in 2008.

In fact, Roethlisberger’s 8.9 percent sack rate in 2008 without Faneca and with Smith missing more games was actually better than his 10.4 percent sack rate in 2007.

Furthermore, in three seasons from 2001 to 2003 before Roethlisberger’s arrival, Tommy Maddox and Kordell Stewart combined for a sack rate of 6.5 percent.

So why are sacks so important to the passing game if they are not accounted for in individual passing yards or quarterback rating?

Sacks have a tendency to kill drives. Taking a sack on first or second down generally puts the offense in a tough position to convert downs and move the chains.

From 2001 to 2008, including all regular season and playoff games, sets of downs were converted at a rate of 63 percent when there was no sack involved. However, a single sack dropped the average success rate for converting downs all the way to 19 percent.

A second sack dropped the success rate to under 5 percent and not a single set of downs was converted after three straight sacks. Overall, that makes for an 18 percent success rate when one or more sacks were involved on a set of downs versus a 63 percent success rate with no sacks.

From the perspective of drives as a whole, drives without sacks averaged 1.85 points while drives with at least one sack averaged only 0.88 points per drive, i.e. less than half as many.

Avoiding sacks, and the fumbles that can often accompany them, is one of the most underappreciated aspects of playing the quarterback position in the NFL.

We know about all the yards and touchdowns Dan Marino threw in his career, and about how Peyton Manning is busy climbing those career lists, but it’s really their career sack rates that we should be talking about.

Consider how Dan Marino and Peyton Manning’s 3.1 percent and 3.3 percent career sack rates compare to some others.

Tom Brady has a career sack rate of 5.3 percent and Joe Montana had one of 5.5 percent. Brett Favre had a career sack rate of 4.8 percent and John Elway had one of 6.6 percent. Troy Aikman had a career sack rate of 5.2 percent and Steve Young had one of 7.9 percent. Jim Kelly and Warren Moon both had career sack rates of 6.3 percent.

Was Michael Vick a Worthy NFL Starting QB Even Before Going to Prison?

Eric J — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 12:33:14 -0400

Michael Vick’s release from prison sparked a great deal of conversation on the topic of whether he is still capable of being a starting quarterback in the NFL. After being away from the game for two years, many see him as only a backup quarterback, Wildcat quarterback, or wide receiver at this point.

However, all the conversation about Vick after prison made me think about Vick before prison.

Even before he left the game for two years, just what kind of NFL starting quarterback was he? Had the Michael Vick experiment already failed before we ever even heard a single word about dog fighting?

After posting a passer rating of 81.6 and throwing twice as many touchdowns as interceptions to earn a trip to the Pro Bowl in his first year as a full-time starter in 2002, Vick’s passing regressed rather than progressed.

Vick missed most of the 2003 season due to injury. Upon his return to health from 2004 to 2006, Vick’s interception rate climbed and his production through the air declined instead of improved—which means Vick is still waiting to have his first season with at least 3,000 passing yards.

Vick’s passer rating fell to 78.1 in 2004, and then fell again to 73.1 in 2004 before improving somewhat to 75.7 in 2006 to perfectly match is career passer rating through six seasons in the NFL.

Now obviously there has always been a lot more to Vick’s appeal than his passing, and he did manage to rush for 902 yards in 2004 and 1,039 yards in 2006.

However, I think it is fairly clear that Vick never developed into the passer that the Falcons had hoped he would. After all, they traded the first- and second-round picks used by the Chargers to draft LaDainian Tomlinson and Drew Brees for the right to draft Vick first overall in the 2001 NFL Draft.

Vick’s defenders will naturally argue that the Falcons never gave Vick enough quality receivers to succeed as a passer.

That defense doesn’t quite sit right me however, knowing that Vick had a four-time Pro Bowl tight end in Alge Crumpler and that the Falcons used two first-round picks to draft wide receivers to catch passes from Vick.

Roddy White in particular has had over 80 receptions and over 1,200 yards in each of the two seasons after Vick left the team, which earned him a Pro Bowl selection in 2008.

Vick’s defenders will argue that it was just unfortunate for Vick that White did not develop into a quality wide receiver until after he was gone, making sure to mention that Vick was not at fault for White’s lack of production in his first two years in the league.

It’s certainly not uncommon for wide receivers to take some time before exploding on the stat sheet. After all, White’s fellow 2005 NFL Draft classman Braylon Edwards didn’t break the 80 reception and 1,200 yard threshold until his third year in the league.

Roy Williams and Lee Evans, who entered the league the year before White and Edwards did, didn’t hit those marks until their third season in the league either.

As the proverbial coup de grace, Vick’s defenders will point out that Michael Jenkins’ production never really improved all that much as he only managed 50 receptions and 777 yards even with Matt Ryan throwing him passes in 2008 (compared to bests with Vick of 39 receptions in 2006 and 508 yards in 2005).

In other words, if Vick was holding his wide receivers back, why didn’t Jenkins improve significantly too?

However, to better understand the situation with the wide receivers in Atlanta before and after the whole dog fighting thing, we need to take a closer look at the career progressions of Jenkins and White.

While the increase in Jenkins’ receptions from 36 and 39 in 2005 and 2006 to 53 and 50 in 2007 and 2008 might seem minor to some, the real improvement can be found in Jenkins’ catch rate.

A receiver’s catch rate is the percentage of passes thrown to him that he catches. It is an important statistic to consider since it is unrealistic to expect a receiver to be as productive with fewer passes thrown to him because he is not the primary option or spending more plays on the bench.

A receiver’s catch rate in reality belongs to both he and his quarterback just like a quarterback’s completion percentage is shared between him and his receivers. Whether a pass falls incomplete because of a dropped pass or a poor throw, it is an incompletion.

In three seasons with Vick, Jenkins had catch rates of 35.0%, 50.7%, and 47.0%. In two seasons after Vick, Jenkins had catch rates of 62.4% and 61.7%.

So did Jenkins develop in his fourth season into a wide receiver who could finally hang onto passes? Or did Jenkins find himself going after passes that were more accurately thrown?

In two seasons with Vick, White had catch rates of 42.6% and 46.9%. In two seasons after Vick, White had catch rates of 60.6% and 59.5%.

Is it just a coincidence that both of Vick’s starting wide receivers saw their catch rates increase dramatically the very season after he left? Or does Vick’s reputation for struggling with accuracy down the field come into play here?

Vick’s defenders will certainly be quick to remind me of the career progressions of Braylon Edwards, Roy Williams and Lee Evans that I already mentioned earlier.

The problem is Edwards, Williams, and Evans didn’t see such dramatic increases in their catch rates, meaning their increases in production had more to do with an increase in passes thrown to them.

Edwards’ catch rate of 52.3% in his third season, when he caught 80 passes for 1,289 yards, was only 3.5% higher than his catch rate the year before (48.8%) and actually lower than his catch rate during his rookie season (54.2%).

Similarly Evans’ catch rate of 59.9% in his third season, when he caught 82 passes for 1,292 yards, was only 4.1% higher than his catch rate the year before (55.8%) and lower than his catch rate during his rookie year (64.0%).

Williams’ catch rate of 54.3% in his third season, when he caught 82 passes for 1,310 yards, was better than in either of first two seasons in the league, but he only saw an improvement of 6.4% over his prior best of 47.9%.

White and Jenkins saw improvements of 13.7% and 11.7% respectively in 2007 compared to their prior bests with Vick. Remember that was the season when Joey Harrington, Chris Redman, and Byron Leftwich quarterbacked the Falcons by committee.

Has the dramatic increase in catch rate experienced by White and Jenkins been something fairly common?

I decided to dig deeper by looking at the first four seasons of every wide receiver drafted in the first round from the 2000 NFL Draft to the 2005 NFL Draft.

That gave me 25 wide receivers in all (20 of which were not already mentioned) after throwing out five wide receivers who busted out too quickly for them to be relevant in this context.

Out of those 25 wide receivers, there was only one wide receiver other than White and Jenkins who saw his catch rate increase by 10% or more in his third or fourth season compared to his prior best: Peter Warrick.

Warrick’s catch rate increased to 63.9% in his third season by 12.8% over his prior best of 51.1%, which he achieved the year before. His catch rate held at that level for two more seasons (64.2% and 64.7%) before falling to 47.8% in his sixth and final season in the league.

What’s interesting about Warrick, and where he differs from White and Jenkins, is that he actually caught fewer passes in his third season in spite of his significantly higher catch rate.

Warrick caught 70 passes with his catch rate of 51.1% in his second year before catching 53 passes with his catch rate of 63.9% in his third year.

Warrick was thrown 137 passes in his second year but only 83 passes in his third year. Why?

Well in 2001 (Warrick’s second season), Chad Johnson was a rookie who only started three games and saw 60 passes thrown his way.

The following year, Johnson saw 137 passes thrown his way, which he turned into 69 receptions and 1,166 yards.

So did Warrick get better at hauling in passes in his third year, or was he simply more efficient in a secondary role with Johnson taking the best coverage away from him—and perhaps some of the desperate and forced passes quarterbacks usually reserve for their most trusted target?

The only other wide receiver out of the 25 to come close to the 10% improvement threshold was Freddie Mitchell. He saw an improvement of 9.3% in his third season right before seeing a decline of 9.3% in his fourth and final season in the NFL.

It seems to me that the improvement White and Jenkins saw in their catch rates just as soon as Vick left was rare at that stage in their careers.

To be fair to Vick however, catch rates, like completion percentages, are not just about how accurately passes are thrown and how consistently they are held onto, but also the pass selection.

A more conservative passing game built on shorter and safer passes will produce a higher catch rate than a more aggressive passing game built on longer and riskier passes.

White and Jenkins did see their receiving yards per pass (the equivalent of YPA for quarterbacks) increase after Vick, but not by unheard of amounts.

Jenkins’ yards-per-pass average in 2007 of 6.3 was actually lower than his best season with Vick (7.2), though higher than his final season with Vick (5.3) and his first season with Vick (6.0).

Of course with Matt Ryan’s arrival in 2008, Jenkins’ yards-per-pass average rose to 9.6.

I didn’t want to rely completely on comparing Vick’s top wide receivers before and after his departure given the lingering doubt introduced by the possibility of rare but not impossible career progression from both White and Jenkins and the potential issue of passing style.

I decided to compare how Vick’s receiving corps as a whole, including tight ends and backs, fared with Vick and his backups in the same seasons.

If Vick was truly held down by poor receivers, then at the very least we should expect to see him prove himself against his backups by making the most of what they had in common.

In 2002, the Falcons receivers had a combined catch rate of 54.9% and yards-per-pass average of 7.0 with Vick. They had a 64.9% catch rate and 7.9 yards-per-pass average with his backup, Doug Johnson.

In 2003, the Falcons receivers combined for a catch rate of 50.0% and 5.9 yards per pass with Vick. They had a 56.0% catch rate and averaged 6.8 yards per pass with Johnson.

In 2004, Vick managed to get the best of his new backup, Matt Schaub, with the Falcons receivers posting a 56.4% catch rate and 7.2 yards-per-pass average with him compared to a 47.1% catch rate and 4.7 yards-per-pass average with Schaub.

However, it must be mentioned that Matt Schaub was a rookie in 2004.

The following year in 2005, Vick produced a higher catch rate from the Falcons receivers (55.3% vs. 51.6%), but Schaub clearly beat Vick when it came to producing yards per pass from the Falcons receivers (7.7 vs. 6.2).

In 2006, Schaub easily bested Vick in both categories, with the Falcons receivers catching 66.7% of the passes from Schaub compared to 52.6% of the passes from Vick and averaging 7.7 yards per pass from Schaub compared to 6.4 yards per pass from Vick.

Overall from 2005 to 2006, Schaub beat Vick in both categories after his rookie season based on a collective catch rate of 56.0% and a yards-per-pass average of 7.7 on his passes compared to ones of 53.9% and 6.3 on Vick’s passes over the two-year span.

It’s also worth noting that in 2007, both Harrington and Redman produced catch rates and yards-per-pass averages for the Falcons receivers that met or exceeded those with Vick in the previous two seasons (61.8% and 59.7%, and 6.4 and 7.2 respectively).

The catch rate on Leftwich passes was very Vick-like (55.2%), but the yards-per-pass average was truly awful (4.8).

I think that together, all of this information points rather clearly to Vick not being a very good passer regardless of the level of talent around him.

Not only did his top wide receivers seem to improve rather dramatically just as he was taken out of the picture in an abnormal way, but his receiving core as a group consistently did better with Vick’s backups so long as the backup wasn’t a rookie.

Now I completely realize that Vick’s value as a quarterback in the NFL goes well beyond his passing ability. Beyond even his individual rushing statistics, there is the impact he has on opposing defenses in terms of how he forces them to account for him.

The problem is that impact is supposed to open up things for himself in the passing game, so I can only wonder what Vick would look like as a passer without that scrambling ability of his.

I’ve long believed that scrambling for the sake of scrambling is not a formula for long-term success in the NFL. Scrambling has its place as a supplement to the throws a quarterback makes, but not as a replacement.

Quarterbacks who leave the pocket to buy more time can enhance their passing with their legs, but those who opt to tuck it and run time after time will not enjoy long term success regardless of their 40 time.

There may be some short-term success as opposing defenses scramble themselves a bit to react to unseen speed at the position, but they will figure out how to handle it soon enough.

I took a look at the Falcons’ scoring from season to season, and that seemed to confirm my thoughts.

Before Vick assumed full-time starting duties, the Falcons ranked 23rd in points scored for the 2001 season with Vick starting only two games.

In 2002, the Falcons ranked 5th in points scored during Vick’s first season as a full-time starter.

In 2003, Vick missed all but 4 starts and the Falcons ranked 20thin points scored.

Vick’s initial impact during his first Pro Bowl season in 2002 seems evident. However, the Vick difference in 2003 would be severely exaggerated using these rankings alone.

The Falcons averaged 19.5 points per game in Vick’s four starts in 2003 and they averaged 18.4 points per game in their other 12 games that season.

If the Falcons were ranked separately that season with and without Vick, they would have held their 20th raking for points scored without Vick, and they would have only moved up three spots to 17th place with Vick.

Furthmore, excluding touchdowns scored by defense and special teams, the Falcons offense specifically actually averaged more points per game with Vick's backups (17.3) than it did with Vick (16.3) in 2003.

The Falcons were never able to get back into the top 5 or even top 10 for scoring with Vick, ranking 16th, 14th, and 25th from 2004 to 2006.

In 2007, the Falcons fell farther to 29th under the direction of the Harrington, Redman, and Leftwich committee, but is falling from 25th to 29th really all that significant considering?

Also consider that the Falcons rushing game (excluding rushes by quarterbacks) lost over 400 total yards and 0.5 yards per carry in 2007 compared to in 2006 after doing just fine back in 2003 with Vick out for most of the season.

The absence of the Vick factor might have had something to do with that in all fairness, but while the total yards and yards-per-carry average of lead rusher Warrick Dunn dropped off quite a bit (from 1,140 and 4.0 to 720 and 3.2), the total yards and yards-per-carry average of backup extraordinaire Jerious Norwood held up rather well (from 633 and 6.4 to 613 and 6.0).

Keep in mind that Dunn turned 32 at the end of the 2006 season.

So was Vick a worthy NFL starting quarterback...even before he left the game for two years to spend his days in a prison cell? I suppose that depends on your opinion of the wide array of quarterbacks who seemed to do about as well or better than Vick in his place.

One can certainly make an argument for the worthiness of Matt Schaub, but then again Schaub’s career was built on how well he filled in for Vick in limited action.

One also has to wonder how well Schaub would be playing without the services of Andre Johnson, why his former backup Sage Rosenfels seemed to consistently match him, and even how David Carr might have fared if only he could learn to release the ball before he found himself on his back.

What the Talking Heads Are Not Saying about The Colts

Eric J — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 18:14:19 -0400

Whether you have been following the NFL offseason by watching television, listening to the radio, or reading articles via print or the Web, if you have heard anything about the Indianapolis Colts, there is a good chance it was about one member or another of the coaching staff leaving or Peyton Manning being upset with the aftermath.

However, there is a lot more going on for the Colts during the offseason as they prepare for the 2009 season than who is missing or coming back in a reduced capacity. The following are five storylines I will be watching closely based on their potential impact on the Colts' 2009 season.

We have heard all about the retirement of Tom Moore and his diminished role as a consultant from the mass media, but how much has been said about his replacement at offensive coordinator, Clyde Christensen?

Clyde Christensen came over to the Colts from Tampa Bay along with Tony Dungy in 2002 and has been the wide receivers coach ever since. The Colts have a reputation for continuity on offense, and Christensen’s promotion lines up perfectly with that philosophy.

Peyton Manning made a point of mentioning that Christensen was already involved with play calling during the 2008 season for third down and red zone situations. Needless to say, the Colts offense led the league in both categories.

The Colts' biggest problem in 2009 involving Moore and Christensen may actually wind up being ensuring that Christensen does not feel like Moore is looking over his shoulder. Since Moore himself has referred to the term “consultant” as another word for someone who second guesses everything, I think he will have a strong appreciation for Christensen’s situation and best interests.

Another Colts assistant we have not heard much about from the mass media is their new defensive coordinator Larry Coyer, who was brought on board after tenures with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and Denver Broncos to replace the departed Ron Meeks.

Coyer brings a very different track record to the position than Meeks. While the Colts defense under Meeks has often struggled against the run and to get off the field on third down, Coyer’s last stint as a defensive coordinator, with the Broncos from 2003 to 2006, indicates that he knows how to address those areas.

During Coyer’s four seasons as the Broncos defensive coordinator, the Broncos defense finished in the top five against the run twice and in the top ten in all but one season. The Broncos defense ranked 12^th that year, which is still higher than the Colts defense has ever ranked against the run under Ron Meeks.

Under Coyer, the Broncos defense ranked in the top five on third down twice and never ranked any worse than 14^th. The Colts defense ranked worse than 14^th in all but two seasons under Meeks, during which they ranked 12^th.

Problems with stopping the run and getting off the field on third down translate into a defense spending too much time on the field, which limits both the quantity and quality of opportunities for its offense to put points on the board.

Since 2002, when Ron Meeks took over as defensive coordinator of the Colts, the Colts defense has ranked last in time of possession-per-drive.

In more recent years, since 2005, the Colts defense has ranked last in time of possession-per-drive by a disconcerting amount. The difference between the Colts defense and the second-worst defense during that span is greater than the difference between that 31^st-ranked defense and the 20^th-ranked defense.

Under Coyer from 2003 to 2006, the Broncos defense ranked 2^nd in time-of-possession-per-drive.

While word of adding new “wrinkles” to the Colts defense has excited players and fans alike, Coyer’s experience working with the Tampa 2 system as a member of the Buccaneers' coaching staff should ensure a smooth transition.

Perhaps tied to some of those new wrinkles being added by Coyer is linebacker Phillip Wheeler, who is projected to start on the strong side in 2009.

Considered by scouts to be one of the best blitzing linebackers in the nation when he entered the 2008 NFL Draft, Wheeler seemed like somewhat of an odd choice in the third round for a team that blitzes about as often as most people see their third cousin.

Perhaps Coyer has plans for utilizing Wheeler’s pass rush capabilities as an important part of a revamped Colts defense. Perhaps the drafting of Wheeler a year ago indicated an eventual move in this direction even before the current offseason.

Otherwise, the Colts will just have to make do with the raw athleticism of Wheeler that caused his college teammates at Georgia Tech to compare him to another teammate, Calvin Johnson.

During the 2007 regular season, the Colts defense played well en route to leading the league in points allowed. However, losing Dwight Freeney for the season to injury and an injury suffered by Robert Mathis down the stretch combined to have a profound effect on the Colts defense in the postseason.

With Freeney sidelined and Mathis limited by his injury, the Colts defense simply could not find their pass rush against the San Diego Chargers during the divisional round of the 2007 postseason.

Even though the Colts defense managed to injure the Chargers starting quarterback, Philip Rivers, by eventually pushing one of his offensive linemen onto his leg in the second half, the Colts defense had no answer for the Chargers passing game that day.

Rivers and his backup Billy Volek combined in that game for a 137.2 passer rating and 13.6 passing yards per attempt.

Even before injuries exposed the Colts lack of depth behind Freeney and Mathis, the fourth quarter collapse of the Colts against the Patriots midway through the regular season showed that this was a serious issue.

The Colts defense managed to put the seemingly invulnerable Patriots offense on the ropes for three quarters in that game specifically because of the pass rush Freeney and Mathis provided, but they eventually tired out. That allowed the Patriots to score two late touchdowns to come back from a ten point fourth quarter deficit and win the game.

During the game, both Freeney and Mathis could be seen spending plays on the sideline gasping for air. When they left the game, guys like Jeff Charleston took their place.

Colts president Bill Polian took notice and addressed the issue by drafting Marcus Howard in the fifth round of the 2008 NFL Draft and signing Curtis Johnson as an undrafted rookie free agent after the draft.

Howard has drawn comparisons to Robert Mathis due to his lean build and jaw-dropping speed off the edge. Johnson has earned comparisons to Joey Porter.

Unfortunately, Colts fans did not get to see very much of Howard and Johnson during the 2008 season beyond the preseason, special teams, and a meaningless regular season finale.

Still, the duo impressed in the limited time that they had, combining for 3.5 sacks during the preseason and 2.5 sacks in the regular season finale.

A bevy of defensive linemen on the Colts training camp roster could mean that one or both of these situational edge rushers will have a hard time even making final roster cuts this season.

The word from Polian is that both Howard and Johnson still have a lot of work to do in terms of developing their technique in order to be effective against bigger NFL offensive linemen.

But is Polian tipping his hand, or just throwing opponents off the scent?

Certainly one of the Colts team’s biggest problems during the 2008 season was its running game. The Colts ranked second to last in rushing yards per game and last in rushing yards per carry in 2008.

It was a performance that C Jeff Saturday and the rest of the offensive line consider an embarrassment, and their responsibility to fix in 2009.

Jamie Thomas, whom the Colts selected in the seventh round of the 2009 NFL Draft, is a new member of the offensive line who might just bring something new to the table. Listed at 331 pounds, Thomas is anything but a typical Colts interior lineman.

Charlie Johnson was the heaviest player to play on the Colts’ interior line in 2008 at 305 pounds. The only offensive lineman on the Colts roster during the 2008 season who even comes close to Thomas in weight is right tackle Ryan Diem at 320 pounds.

Like Diem, Thomas is listed as a tackle on the Colts’ roster, but he has not played tackle since high school and said that he has been working mostly at the guard position so far with the Colts during the offseason.

The Colts also signed Cornelius Lewis as an undrafted free agent after the 2009 NFL draft. He is listed at 324 pounds and as a guard on the Colts’ roster.

The Colts may have decided to get bigger on the offensive line. It is unlikely that either Thomas or Lewis will be starting in 2009 barring a rash of injuries, but we might just see them play key situational roles when the Colts need to pick up short yardage on the ground.

Is Roethlisberger More Clutch Than Brady and the Rest of the NFL?

Eric J — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 12:04:06 -0400

Ben Roethlisberger’s game-winning touchdown pass to lift the Pittsburgh Steelers over the Arizona Cardinals in Super Bowl XLIII has sparked debate over whether Ben Roethlisberger is more clutch than Tom Brady and, in fact, the most clutch quarterback in the NFL.

After all, Ben Roethlisberger already had more game-winning drives in the fourth quarter or overtime than any other quarterback since he joined the league in the 2004 season.

As a fan of neither, I’m more than happy to watch from the sideline as Steelers and Patriots fans duke it out, but I’ve long believed two things about being clutch in the NFL.

A one-game performance, regardless of its importance, does not make player clutch. A player's total body of work makes him or her clutch.

Two, the classic game-winning touchdown-drives statistic is an incredibly flawed measure.

The most obvious flaw with game-winning touchdown drives is that it does not account for a player's success rate. I would much rather see a quarterback succeed in four out of five opportunities than succeed in five out of 10.

If you play in more close games, you will have more opportunities whereas if you blow out teams and/or find your own team getting blown out, you will have fewer opportunities.

Another problem with game-winning touchdown drives is that quarterbacks get punished when their kicker misses a field goal, or their defense is unable to sustain a last-minute lead (think Brady and Kurt Warner in the last two Super Bowls).

Finally, game-winning touchdown drives fail to discern between successful drives when a touchdown was required and when a field goal would have sufficed. It’s much more difficult to lead a successful game-winning drive when your opponent knows you need a touchdown.

Given the unavailability of a sufficient measure for clutch quarterback play, I decided to create my own.

The first and most important thing is that this new measure must be a success rate, rather than a tally of successes. Therefore, I not only considered successes but also failures.

Next, I defined what it means to succeed and fail. Remember, I pointed that simply pulling out the win is not a sufficient definition of success.

So, rather than looking at the final score of the game, I focused on the result of individual drives. Considering that game-winning drives are harder to engineer when a touchdown is required, drives were considered in two distinct categories.

Did the quarterback lead his team to a field goal attempt or a touchdown when tied or trailing by three or less points?

Did the quarterback lead his team to a touchdown drive when trailing by four to eight points?

If a quarterback leads his team to a field goal attempt when trailing by four to eight points or scores a touchdown without a successful two-point conversion attempt when trailing by eight points, the drive was considered a half-success.

In order to be fair to quarterbacks, any drives that ended on a failed run (not performed by the quarterback) of one yard or less were thrown out. Additionally, any drives that ended as a result of another player's fumble were discarded.

Moreover, to be fair, any drive beginning with under a minute remaining on the clock was thrown out.

In order to separate clutch drives from plain old regular drives, I had to determine a clutch period of the game. The fourth quarter and overtime is a popular time period, so I decided to use that timeframe.

I would have liked to narrow the time period down further to later in the fourth quarter, but it would have led to an insufficient sample size.

In order to consider the drives when a touchdown is required along with the drives when a field goal will suffice, I used the following method.

A quarterback’s success rate in each category was compared based on how far above or below the league average it was.

Using relative success rates put each category on equal ground and allowed them to be used to create a single success rate by averaging them together.

I weighted the relative success rates according to each category’s percentage of total clutch-drive opportunities for the individual quarterback.

As for the scope of the data, I used all regular season and postseason games played in the past four seasons from 2004-2008, which is Ben Roethlisberger’s career.

I set a minimum standard for which quarterbacks could be included based on sample size. In order to be counted, a quarterback must have had at least 10 clutch-drive opportunities when tied or trailing by three or less points and at least 10 clutch-drive opportunities when trailing by four to eight points.

That standard left me with 37 quarterbacks.

The top-five quarterbacks in combined success rate were Peyton Manning, Brady, Eli Manning, Brees, and Roethlisberger.

Peyton Manning received the No. 1 ranking based on having the best success rate when a touchdown was required to tie or take the lead and the third-best success rate when a field goal was enough.

Brady received the No. 2 ranking based on having the second-best success rate when a field goal was enough to tie or take the lead and the fourth-best success rate when a touchdown was required.

Eli Manning received the No. 3 ranking based on having the second-best success rate when a touchdown was required to tie or take the lead and the seventh-best success rate when a field goal was enough.

Brees received the No. 4 ranking based on having the fourth-best success rate when a field goal was enough to tie or take the lead and tying for the sixth-best success rate when a touchdown was required.

Roethlisberger received the No. 5 ranking even though he was the only top-five quarterback to rank outside of the top 10 in either category with only the eleventh-best success rate when a touchdown was required because he had the best success rate when a field goal was enough tie or take the lead

Jay Cutler and Philip Rivers both made the top 10, ranking sixth and

10^th, respectively. Both ranked much better when a field goal was enough to tie or take the lead than when a touchdown was necessary.

The seventh, eighth, and ninth positions in the top ten were occupied by some rather unlikely quarterbacks. Aaron Brooks, Brian Griese, and David Carr filled those spots, respectively.

There were some notable quarterbacks with combined success rates below the league average.

Jason Campbell, Chad Pennington, Tony Romo, David Garrard, and Dante Culpepper were within five percentage points below the league average.

Brett Favre was within ten percentage points below the league average.

Kurt Warner, Jeff Garcia, and Donovan McNabb were more than ten percentage points below the league average.

For full details, see Table A at the end of the article.

In order to see if early drives in the fourth quarter were possibly turning the clutch measure into merely a measure of scoring, I compiled the numbers again excluding any drives that started with four or more minutes left in the fourth quarter.

As I mentioned earlier, shrinking the window of qualifying drives in the fourth quarter dropped the sample size, especially in the case of some quarterbacks.

To keep all the right people (e.g. Brady), I was forced to accept any quarterback as long as he had at least three drives when tied or trailing by up to three points and two drives when trailing by four to eight points. This gave me 46 quarterbacks.

Peyton Manning maintained his No. 1 ranking, and Brady, Eli Manning, and Roethlisberger all stayed relatively firm—though Roethlisberger did slide just outside the top five to sixth place.

Just as before, Roethlisberger was much more successful when a field goal was enough to tie or take the lead than when a touchdown was required. In fact, the difference became even stronger.

Roethlisberger was successful on 10 out of 12 drives when a field goal was enough to tie or take the lead, which maintained his first-place position in that category.

However, Roethlisberger was only successful on one out of seven drives when a touchdown was required to tie or take the lead. That gave him a success rate that was below the league average, ranking him 31 out of 46 eligible quarterbacks.

Perhaps the Cardinals should have gone for two with a lob to Larry Fitzgerald. While the Steelers wound up scoring enough points to win the game either way, there is no telling what affect that one extra point might have had on the drive considering the numbers presented here.

Rivers jumped all the way to second place, and the unlikely Griese moved up into the top five thanks to a 100-percent success rate on three drives when a touchdown was required to tie or take the lead.

Garrard moved out of below-league average territory and just missed the top 10 at 11^thplace, while Cutler dropped out of the top 10 but remained reputable and in the top 15 at 14^th place.

Brees plunged all the way from fourth place to 31^stplace with a combined success rate below the league average.

Carr and Brooks fell out of the top 10 to 18^th and 20^th place, respectively, while Favre moved up to just slightly below average with his combined success rate.

Warner, Pennington, Romo, Campbell, Garcia, Culpepper, and McNabb all remained below the league average.

McNabb was ranked particularly poorly, though, ranking above only Alex Smith, Damon Huard, and Trent Dilfer despite retaining a fairly decent sample size of ten drives when a field goal was enough to tie or take the lead and six drives when a touchdown was required.

Matt Hasselbeck and Carson Palmer, who were top-15 quarterbacks resting above the league average when using the entire fourth quarter, joined the others below the league average.

For full details, see Table B at the end of the article.

Are there any conclusions we can make?

Roethlisberger, Brady, and Eli Manning are indeed clutch enough to warrant the reputations won by their Super Bowl heroics, though Roethlisberger seems to lose quite a bit of that “clutchness” when his opponent knows he has to score a touchdown.

Peyton Manning, Rivers, and Cutler are underappreciated in this regard. They are clearly not just quarterbacks who can be counted on to pile up pretty stats; they can also play well with the game on the line.

On the other hand, some other notable quarterbacks like Warner and Romo do seem to deserve their reputations for being able to put up the numbers but not being able to win close games.

I would say that McNabb and Garcia haven’t earned themselves a strong reputation for being either particularly clutch or particularly likely to blow it with the game on the line, but according to both variations of this measure, they belong in the latter category.

Brees, Palmer, and Hasselbeck are harder to define. Which data set do we believe? Did early-fourth quarter drives inflate their success rates with drives that didn’t really belong in clutch territory? Or did throwing out those drives leave us with too little of a sample and unfair results?

Palmer had eight drives when trailing by four to eight points after the early fourth quarter drives were excluded, and he failed to succeed on every single one of them, so he probably can’t cry foul.

Hasselbeck had fourteen drives when a field goal was enough to tie or take the lead and seven drives when a touchdown was required. That seems like enough opportunities to think that the second data set is more telling of his performance in the clutch.

Brees’ huge drop all the way from the top five to below the league average should give us plenty of reason to tread carefully with him.

Still, Brees had a fair number of drives when a field goal was required to tie or take the lead with eight and performed below average in that category. He didn’t have many drives when a touchdown was required with only three, but he actually performed above average in that category.

So is Brady more clutch than Roethlisberger after ranking ahead of him in both versions of the measure? Is Peyton Manning the most clutch quarterback in the league after finishing first with both varieties? I don’t expect this measure to definitively answer those questions, but I think it gives us a better basis for discussion.

While the Super Bowl heroics of Brady, Eli Manning, and Roethlisberger seemed to merely make more obvious what we should have already known about them, there is still a big danger in relying on one memorable drive to judge players.

If the Cardinals had merely taken longer to score their go-ahead touchdown, would we all be talking about Warner's clutchness?

After all, he too would have two Super Bowl rings, and his performances in both of his prior Super Bowls were certainly better than Roethlisberger’s performances in his first Super Bowl.

Yet, Kurt Warner ranks below the league average according to the numbers presented here.

Certainly, the point that success rates are more important than the aggregate number of successes cannot be stressed enough.

After all, Hasselbeck had more successful drives than Brady both when all fourth-quarter drives were included and when fourth-quarter drives that began with four or more minutes left on the clock were disregarded.

Peyton Manning had about twice as many successful drives as Brady in both of those variations of the measure, but obviously the success rates of these two quarterbacks were much closer than that.

To put this all into context, though, the idea held by many that a quarterback's fourth-quarter performance is all that matters is absurd.

I somehow doubt the Eagles are going to want to dump McNabb for Griese.

The remaining pages include the complete details of both variations of the measure for the top-15 quarterbacks in each variation. I wanted to provide all quarterbacks, but the tables won't display properly. I had to split the top-15 lists into groups of five due to display problems as well.

Everytime the article gets edited, these tables get screwed up and I have to reinsert them, so please no more edits.

Table A – All eligible 4th quarter and overtime drives included

		Trailing by 0-3 Points				Trailing by 4-8 Points				Combined
Rk	QB	Att	Suc	Suc %	∆ Avg	Att	Suc	Suc %	∆ Avg	Att	∆ Avg
1	P.Manning	35	23	65.7%	20.2%	17	10.5	61.8%	33.9%	52	24.7%
2	T.Brady	17	12	70.6%	25.1%	12	5.5	45.8%	18.0%	29	22.2%
3	E.Manning	29	18	62.1%	16.6%	21	11.5	54.8%	26.9%	50	20.9%
4	D.Brees	25	16	64.0%	18.5%	19	8.5	44.7%	16.9%	44	17.8%
5	B.Roethlisberger	24	17	70.8%	25.4%	27	9.5	35.2%

Matt Cassel: Buyer Beware (of YAC)

Eric J — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 18:08:59 -0400

As you may have already heard, the Kansas City Chiefs just signed Matt Cassel to an extended six-year contract worth over 60 million dollars, with 28 million of that guaranteed.

Signing a still relatively unproven quarterback with Matt Cassel’s less than prestigious background is enough to throw up warning flags for most. Others will argue that at least he’s proven more in the NFL than rookies like Matt Stafford and Mark Sanchez.

However, I am not here to talk about big contracts for backups with one nice year (like David Garrard and Derek Anderson from 2007) or compare them to rookie quarterbacks who are given monster contracts before they even have their first practice in the NFL.

There is another large reason for concern with Matt Cassel beyond the obvious.

Matt Cassel had the third most passing yards after the catch in 2008 even though he only had the eighth most passing yards and the ninth most completions.

If you look at the top ten quarterbacks in the league for passing yards after the catch in 2008, Matt Cassel sticks out like a sore thumb.

Yards after the catch (YAC), accounted for a whopping 57.3 percent of his total passing yards. The closest to that were Jason Campbell (52.0 percent) and Brett Favre (51.2 percent).

Even the league’s top two quarterbacks for YAC, Drew Brees and Kurt Warner, paled in comparison to Cassel with YAC comprising 47.3 percent and 47.4 percent of their total passing yards respectively.

Now compare Cassel’s 57.3 percent YAC to that of Jay Culter, Aaron Rodgers, and Peyton Manning—they averaged 41.6 percent, 40.9 percent, and 40.7 percent respectively.

Another way of looking at how Matt Cassel was shielded by YAC is the whopping 6.5 yards gained after the catch per completion by Cassel’s receivers in 2008. The closest quarterbacks were Philip Rivers (5.9) and Drew Brees (5.8).

Compare Cassel’s 6.5 yards after the catch per completion to that of Jay Culter, Aaron Rodgers, and Peyton Manning—they averaged 4.9, 4.8, and 4.4 yards after the catch per completion respectively.

Top ten NFL quarterbacks for yards after the catch in 2008

QB	YAC	Yards	YAC%	Comp	YAC/Comp
D.Brees	2398	5069	47.3%	413	5.8
K.Warner	2173	4583	47.4%	401	5.4
*M.Cassel*	*2116*	*3693*	*57.3%*	*327*	*6.5*
J.Cutler	1881	4526	41.6%	384	4.9
P.Rivers	1840	4009	45.9%	312	5.9
D.McNabb	1805	3916	46.1%	345	5.2
B.Favre	1779	3472	51.2%	343	5.2
J.Campbell	1686	3245	52.0%	315	5.4
A.Rodgers	1652	4038	40.9%	341	4.8
P.Manning	1627	4002	40.7%	371	4.4

Some may be wondering what the big deal is with yards after the catch. The issue with yards after the catch is that that yardage gained after the catch has a lot more to do with the ability of the receiver to evade and/or bulldoze through tacklers than the quarterback’s passing ability.

It is true that an accurate pass will allow a receiver to make the most of his opportunity by catching the ball in stride. It is also true that a poorly thrown pass will force the receiver to wait for the ball or even worse reach back for it, allowing tacklers to close the gap before the receiver even gets started.

However, I have seen multiple statistical studies that have compared YAC gained by receivers with their starting quarterback and their backup quarterback, and they all concluded the same thing after discovering a very high correlation between the two: YAC says more about receivers than it does about quarterbacks.

Wes Welker, Matt Cassel’s number one target in 2008, is a perfect example of this. Welker caught 75 percent of the 150 passes thrown in his direction in 2008 for 111 receptions and 1,165 yards. In 2007, Welker caught 77 percent of the 145 passes thrown in his direction for 112 receptions and 1,175 yards.

Needless to say, Wes Welker led all wide receivers in both YAC and YAC percentage in both 2007 and 2008, gaining the majority of his yards after the catch in both seasons (54.5 percent in 2007 and an insane 62.2 percent in 2008).

No, Matt Cassel was not as good in 2008 as Tom Brady was in 2007, but in Wes Welker’s specific case, it didn’t really matter.

You may be asking yourself why YAC should be a reason to be concerned about Cassel if it wasn’t a reason to question Brady after the 2007 season. There are two reasons for that.

The obvious one is that Brady still has Wes Welker picking up all those yards for him after the catch, as well as Randy Moss drawing away coverage to clear out space underneath for Welker to operate in, and the Patriots’ tight ends and offensive line clearing away tacklers. Matt Cassel won’t.

The other, less obvious, reason is that Tom Brady did well with other types of passes and Matt Cassel…well…

On passes that traveled through the air 10 yards or less, Matt Cassel completed 71.6 percent of his passes with 14 touchdowns and 4 interceptions for a passer rating of 98.7.

On passes that traveled through the air more than 10 yards, Matt Cassel completed 40.4 percent of his passes with 7 touchdowns and 7 interceptions for a passer rating of 63.4.

If the Chiefs cannot provide Matt Cassel the same screen game in 2009, don’t expect to see the same Matt Cassel.

Bears and Colts: The Importance of Staying on and Getting off the Field

Eric J — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 12:07:49 -0400

There are plenty of reasons to link the Chicago Bears and Indianapolis Colts.

Both teams are currently headed by Tony Dungy disciples, and both teams have been under the Dungy influence either directly or indirectly for the past several seasons.

Both teams are located in the Northern Midwest region of the country. In fact, before the Colts rolled into town to give the state of Indiana a professional football team to call their own, many in the state rooted for the relatively close by Bears (and many still do).

The Bears and Colts have even faced each other fairly recently in the Super Bowl at the end of the 2006 season; and it was the Bears who this past season gave the Colts their first loss in the month of September in four years.

However, the common thread that gives me reason to talk about the Bears and the Colts now is both teams having spent a peculiar amount of time on the field per drive, resulting in an abnormal number of drives in recent years for both teams.

The only difference really is that these two teams lie on completely opposite ends of the spectrum. To take a closer look, I will use the last three seasons (2006-2008).

The Colts have had the fewest offensive drives in the league for each of the past three seasons. That not only gave them the fewest offensive drives over the past three seasons, but it gave them the fewest offensive drives by a wide margin.

The Colts had 52 fewer offensive drives than the team with the next fewest offensive drives over the past three seasons. That was the same difference between the team with the second fewest offensive drives and the teams tied for the 24th fewest offensive drives.

The Bears on the other hand have had the most defensive drives in the league for each of the past three seasons, which gave them the most defensive drives over the past three seasons by a similarly wide margin.

The Bears had 43 more defensive drives than the team with the next most defensive drives over the past three seasons. That was the same difference between the team with the second most defensive drives and the team with the 23rd most defensive drives.

To take a closer look at just how “out there” the Colts and Bears were, I will rely on cumulative normal distribution probability. Cumulative normal distribution probability can tell us, based on the assumption of a normal curve, the likelihood of another team having as many or fewer drives.

The Colts 450 offensive drives from 2006-2008, which varied from the league average (i.e. mean) of 537 by 3.4 standard deviations.

Cumulative normal distribution probability tells us that there was only a 0.03 percent chance of a team having as few or fewer offensive drives over three seasons given a mean of 537 and a standard deviation of 25.5.

The Bears had 616 defensive drives from 2006-2008, which varied from the league average (i.e. mean) of 537 by 3.1 standard deviations.

Cumulative normal distribution probability tells us that there was only a 0.09 percent chance of a team having as many or more defensive drives over three seasons given a mean of 537 and a standard deviation of 25.2.

So how do we explain the oddities that are the drive totals of the Bears and Colts?

It all comes down to how well offenses can stay on the field and how well defenses can get off the field.

Over the past three seasons, the Colts have averaged both longer offensive drives and longer defensive drives than any other team in the league.

Congratulations would be in order for the Colts, except that long drives are a bad thing for defenses.

The more clock a defense allows an opposing offense to eat up, the fewer opportunities its own offense is going to have to score; and the better rested the opposing defense will be.

Way over on the other side of the spectrum, the Bears have averaged the shortest offensive drives and second shortest defensive drives in the league.

No offense has done a worse job of staying on the field to give its defense rest than the Bears' offense, and only the Ravens' defense has done a better job of getting off the field quickly to give its offense a better opportunity to score than the Bears' defense.

Just as no offense wants to face a well rested defense, no defense wants to be gasping for air when it goes back out on the field.

Just as no offense wants fewer opportunities to score points, no defense wants more opportunities to give up points.

It's the juxtaposition of having one unit being so good on the issue of time of possession and its counterpart on the other side of the ball being so bad that has led to such extremes in terms of the number of drives for the Bears and Colts.

The most extreme of the four units involved in this discussion is clearly the Colts defense.

It averaged nearly 15.5 more seconds per drive than the next worst defense over the three year span, which was roughly the same difference between the second worst defense and the 20th worst defense.

Needless to say, the probability of a defense taking as long or longer to get off the field per drive is rather small (0.13 percent).

To give you an idea of how important staying on the field is for an offense and how important getting off the field is for a defense, we can look at the net of offense and defense.

The team with the worst net average drive duration—the Detroit Lions—just so happens to have the worst record over the past three seasons in the league.

The team with the second best net average drive duration—the New England Patriots—just so happens to have the best record over the past three seasons in the league.

The team with the best net average drive duration was the Baltimore Ravens in case you are wondering.

Only one team in the top ten for net drive duration—the Washington Redskins—has a losing record over the past three seasons.

Only one team in the bottom ten for net drive duration—the Carolina Panthers—has a winning record over the past three seasons.

The Colts are the only team ranked in the bottom 10 for defensive drive duration with a winning record over the past three seasons. Except for the .500 Denver Broncos, all of the other nine teams in the bottom 10 have a losing record over the past three seasons.

The offensive side of the ball is not quite as bleak since the Carolina Panthers and Tennessee Titans share with the Bears the distinction of having a winning record over the past three seasons despite placing in the bottom 10 for offensive drive duration.

This may be sheer coincidence, it may indicate that a defense that can get off the field is more important than an offense that can stay on the field, or it may tell us that unless you are without quality play from the always elusive quarterback position, there really is no excuse for a good team being this bad in either area.

However, fear not Bears and Colts fans; there is reason for hope in 2009 and it comes in the form of yet another common thread. Both the Bears and Colts will be featuring former Broncos who might just give them exactly what they need.

The Broncos offense has been above average in the past two seasons with Jay Cutler as their full-time starting quarterback, ranking 12th in offensive drive duration during that span. That’s not great, but I’m sure the Bears' defense will be more than happy to take it.

Say what you want about Jay Cutler, but he is absolutely a huge step up from Rex Grossman and Kyle Orton.

There is absolutely no reason to think that the Bears' offense won’t be able to do a better job of staying on the field in 2009 with Jay Cutler under center.

Where has the great Bears' defense gone?

Perhaps if we see a little bit more of the Bears' defense on the sideline, we will start to see a little bit more of the great Bears' defense on the field.

The Colts' offense has even more reason for excitement.

The Broncos' defense ranked second behind only the Ravens in defensive drive duration from 2003-2006 with Larry Croyer as their defensive coordinator.

If the Colts' offense managed to remain highly productive with so few drives against so well rested defenses up until Manning’s preseason knee injuries pushed them down to a “mere” top five offense per drive in 2008, what will they be able to do with more drives against less rested defenses?

Will Larry Croyer be the Colts’ answer? Was Ron Meeks the Colts’ problem? The Colts had better hope so, and the Panthers had better hope not.

A team that ranked only 28th in offensive drive duration over the past three seasons can't afford to fall into the below average range for defensive drive duration.

In Today's NFL, Why Do We Still Expect To See No. 1 Seeds Prevail?

Eric J — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 19:18:10 -0400

Since 2000, the NFL has had nine Super Bowl champions and eighteen number one seeds from the two conferences. However, we’ve only seen one number one seed win a Super Bowl in that time.

Even that lone number one seed, the 2003 New England Patriots, wasn’t really supposed to be a number one seed if you ask me; that was supposed to be the Kansas City Chiefs.

However, after starting the season 9-0, the Chiefs imploded and went 4-3 the rest of the way, including dropping two games in the final four games of the regular season.

Instead of flopping in the postseason like a good little number one seed should, the Chiefs got started early and thus allowed the Patriots to become the only exception to an otherwise alarming trend this decade.

The probability of only one number one seed winning the Super Bowl in nine seasons is not exactly large.

Even if we give every team in the playoffs equal odds, there is only about a 28 percent chance of seeing so few number one seeds come out on top if we were picking Super Bowl champions with a roulette wheel.

Factor in better odds for the number one seeds and lesser odds for the wild card teams, and you can imagine how dramatically the probability drops.

What makes this trend even more alarming is how we have seen three teams come out of the wild card round and win four consecutive playoff games to raise the Lombardi Trophy in just the past four seasons.

What’s even more alarming still is the realization that until Ben Roethlisberger threw a dagger in the collective heart of the state of Arizona, it was about to be four teams in four consecutive seasons.

Even if we gave the Steelers, Colts, and Giants even odds for winning each of their individual playoff games, the probability of winning four consecutive playoff games would be just over six percent.

Maybe these teams were simply God’s chosen teams. Maybe they were the anointed ones.

But to see a specific handpicked team in each season win four consecutive playoff games for three seasons in a row? Even with those even odds in each individual game, we are talking about a probability of about 0.02 percent.

If the Cardinals had beaten the Steelers and made it four consecutive seasons, then we’d be talking about a probability of about 0.0015 percent, assuming even odds in each individual game.

Maybe God simply took an ill-timed bathroom break?

Even so, just seeing the Cardinals win the three consecutive playoff games it took to put them in that Super Bowl in the first place combined with three consecutive Super Bowl Champions in the three seasons prior represents a probability of a mere 0.003 percent.

Now imagine the probability if we gave the anointed teams less than even odds to properly reflect their underdog status.

Even if we gave these anointed teams great odds of winning each game—let’s say 75 percent—we’d still be looking at the improbable. We’d still be talking about less than a 32 percent chance in any given year and not much more than a 1 percent chance of seeing these teams win the Super Bowl three times in a row and make it to a fourth Super Bowl.

However, if we are simply talking about any one of the eight teams in the wild card round each year winning the Super Bowl, the odds will increase dramatically.

Knowing that four teams will always remain after dust settles in the wild card round and merely expecting any one of them to win the Super Bowl makes the outcome far more likely.

In fact, if we assume that each of the remaining eight playoff teams has an equal chance of winning the Super Bowl, then we are talking about a 50 percent chance of seeing one of the four wild card weekend survivors win the Super Bowl since they collectively represent half of the remaining teams.

It’s clear to me that something other than extraordinary improbability is at work here, and I don’t think it is divine influence. Certainly the NFL has been working diligently to train us to expect the unexpected.

So in today’s NFL, why do we still expect to see number one seeds prevail?

Given the prior three seasons, was it really all that shocking that the Cardinals made it to the Super Bowl or was it almost more surprising that they failed to beat a team with a first round bye in that Super Bowl and complete their “improbable” run?

Is it really fair for us to talk about heavily-favored number one seeds choking in the playoffs the way I described the should-have-been 2003 Chiefs earlier in this article?

Should we be relying on regular season records so heavily in making our postseason predictions? Is the best team in the league in any given season the team with the best regular season record? The team that wins the Super Bowl? Or not necessarily either?

Does the best team in the league prove itself in the playoffs, or are we tuning in to watch a very expensive production of a crap shoot?

Not knowing what to expect, but expecting the unknown, certainly does seem to boost broadcast ratings.

At what point do prospective number one seeds start throwing games? Well, it didn’t seem to work for the 2003 Chiefs; but did it work for the 2006 Colts?

After all, they started the 2006 season 9-0 before limping into the playoffs with a 3-4 record to finish the regular season.

Maybe the 2003 Chiefs should have lost one more game?

In the NFL, Is Great Defense Just about Investing More of Your Draft on Defense?

Eric J — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 12:40:06 -0400

Defense wins championships. This is a tried and true axiom of the NFL that is accepted by virtually everyone, but in the context of evaluating quarterbacks, seemingly applied by relatively very few.

When defending a quarterback like Peyton Manning (feel free to insert the name of another quarterback like Drew Brees, Carson Palmer, Jay Cutler, or Dan Marino), a proponent will naturally bring up the issue of a lack of defensive support.

Sometimes that lack of defensive support means losing in the playoffs (Manning and Marino), and sometimes that lack of defensive support means not making the playoffs in the first place (Brees, Palmer, and Cutler).

Either way, a lack of defensive support can hardly be blamed on a team’s quarterback, right? Well, right or wrong, quarterbacks often do get blamed for their lack of defensive support.

Probably the most common manifestation of this blame is the accusation that their defense would be much better if only they were willing to sacrifice resources spent on offense to build a better defense.

Let’s test the validity of that argument using the Colts and their quarterback, Peyton Manning.

The Colts have long had a reputation of being an offense-first team when it comes to the draft, and presumably their lack of strong defensive support in the postseason stems from that philosophy.

Conversely, the Steelers, Patriots, and Eagles all have reputations for being defense-first teams when it comes to the draft, and presumably their strong defensive support in the postseason follows from that philosophy.

In other words, the perception is that the Colts sacrifice defense in the draft in order to puff up their offense, while the Steelers, Patriots, and Eagles more prudently spend their draft picks on defense in order to win in the postseason.

In order to test this assumption, I used the same draft value chart commonly used by NFL teams in the draft to put a quantifiable value behind each team’s draft strategy.

The first overall pick in the draft is valued at 3,000 points, and each subsequent pick is assigned an ever-decreasing value after that.

Naturally, these values diminish fluidly, so the drastic difference often perceived between a late first round pick and an early second round pick does not exist.

More value is lost dropping from the first overall pick to the second overall pick (400 points) than dropping from the bottom of the first round to the top of the second round (10 points).

I compiled the numbers for every draft selection made by the Colts, Steelers, Patriots, and Eagles in 10 consecutive drafts from the 1999 Draft through the 2008 Draft.

I considered including the 2009 Draft as well, but I decided against it since those players have yet to play a single down for their teams, and thus have no bearing on wins and losses at this point.

My original thought was to start with the 2000 Draft in order to use the beginning of the decade as a natural starting point.

However, I decided to include the 1999 Draft to ensure that Edgerrin James’s fourth overall selection was counted “against” Peyton Manning. I certainly don’t want to give anyone an excuse to cry foul.

I excluded quarterbacks from the offensive totals, since it hardly seems fair to penalize Ben Roethlisberger and Donovan McNabb for their own selections considering that Peyton Manning was drafted before the designated draft period.

Likewise, it hardly seems fair that Tom Brady should get credit for being drafted in the sixth round.

Also, the draft value spent on backups for these quarterbacks hardly seems relevant in terms of answering the question of drafting offensive support or defensive support for these franchise quarterbacks.

After compiling the numbers for offense (without quarterbacks) and defense, one of the teams really stood out from the other three.

While three of the four teams spent more of their draft value on defensive support, one of the teams clearly spent more on offensive support. For every draft value point spent on offensive support, that team only spent 0.86 points on defensive support.

Was it the Colts?

No, it was the Steelers.

The Colts actually ranked third out of the four teams in terms of the proportion of their draft value spent on offensive support relative to defensive support. They spent 1.32 draft value points on defensive support for every one spent on offensive support.

The Patriots were second and the most balanced team of the group, spending 1.18 draft value points on defensive support for each point spent on offensive support.

The Eagles were the most defensively minded team of the group, spending 1.47 draft value points on defensive support for every point spent on offensive support.

The Eagles easily spent the most on backup quarterbacks (McNabb’s injury history likely played a role there), so the results would have been a bit different had I made the decision to only exclude the franchise quarterbacks.

In terms of raw total draft value points spent on offensive support, the Steelers spent 8,021.3 points, the Patriots spent 7,368.25 points, the Eagles spent 6,196.4 points, and the Colts spent 6,121.4 points.

As for raw total draft value points spent on defensive support, the Eagles spent 9,126.1 points, the Patriots spent 8,724.6 points, the Colts spent 8,106.9 points, and the Steelers spent 6,901.3 points.

So, there you have it.

Not only did the Colts invest more on defensive support than offensive support, but they also invested a greater proportion of their draft value on defensive support than the offense-crazy Steelers (did you ever think you’d hear that said?) and the Patriots.

In terms of raw total draft value points spent on offensive support, the Colts spent the fewest of the whole group, even behind the Eagles.

Is it surprising that the Colts wound up third in the proportion of points spent on offensive support relative to defense and fourth in total points spent on offensive support?

Is it surprising that the Steelers wound up as the only team investing more on offensive support than defense with 31 percent more draft value spent on offense than the Colts?

You know what they say about assumptions.

The Indianapolis Colts' Offense in the Postseason: Albatross or Savior?

Eric J — Tue, 12 May 2009 23:00:09 -0400

Much has been made about the Colts' 7-8 playoff record in the past decade. Despite the Colts' offense and its quarterback being among the most consistently prolific in NFL history, the blame for this record has been placed squarely on their shoulders by popular opinion.

It does not matter if the Colts are the only one out of the four teams with a double digit number of playoff games since 2001 to not field a consistently strong defense. It does not matter that the Colts defense has given up two touchdowns in the first three drives of three different playoff games.

It does not even matter that the Colts have fielded one of the most consistently poor special teams units in recent memory—a unit that blew two field goals in the postseason that would have sent one playoff game to overtime and won another one in overtime, and is the only one in NFL history to allow a kickoff return for a touchdown on the opening drive of a Super Bowl.

Popular opinion has decreed that the Colts offense, and namely its quarterback, simply did not do enough to win.

Using the data made available through the NFL’s Game Books, which currently go back to the 2001 season, I examined this popular opinion more closely using all playoff games since the 2001 playoffs.

Of the 14 offenses with at least half a dozen playoff games since 2001, the Colts offense actually scored the second most points per game (23.2) behind only the Steelers offense (25.1).

Keep in mind that I am only referring to points actually scored by offenses, which excludes any points scored on returns by defense and special teams.

While this fact alone would be impressive enough for many, consider that the Colts offense scored those points despite averaging the fewest drives per game (10.6) of any of those 14 offenses (drives ending in kneel downs were excluded).

It being easier to score more points with more drives may be more or less common sense, but it bears mentioning that the only other offenses to average less than 11 drives per game out of the 14 offenses both averaged under 20 points per game, ranking 11th and 12th out of 14.

By some apparent coincidence, both of these offenses are from New York. Both the Giants and Jets averaged 19 points per game on 10.6 and 10.7 drives per game respectively.

On the other end of the spectrum, the Steelers offense, who ranked first in points per game, tied for second in drives per game with 12. The Ravens offense also averaged 12 drives per game and the Packers offense was first with 12.1 drives per game.

As you may already be expecting, the Colts offense averaged the most points per drive (2.19) of any of the 14 offenses.

The Steelers offense ranked second with 2.09 points per drive, and the Rams offense ranked third with 2.01 points per drive. The remaining 11 offenses averaged between 1.02 (Ravens offense) and 1.95 (Patriots offense) points per drive.

An additional consideration when putting scoring into context is field position. The smaller the distance an offense has to move the ball to score, the better their chances are of scoring.

The Colts offense had the worst average field position of the 14 offenses (29.1) and was one of only two offenses to start behind the 30 on average (the other being the Chargers offense at 29.4).

Perhaps not so surprising, the same Steelers offense that ranked first in points per game and second in points per drive ranked first in field position (33.9).

Similarly, the same Patriots offense that ranked fourth in both points per drive and points per game (21.7) ranked third in field position (32.1).

The Rams offense that ranked third in both points per drive and points per game (22.8) did not have great field position, ranking eighth out of the 14 offenses (31.2), but they were still at least in the middle of the pack.

Interestingly enough, the same Jets who ranked so poorly in drives per game ranked second in field position (32.1).

If you consider all 29 of the playoff teams since 2001 without regard for the number of games played, the top four offenses in points per game (Browns, Raiders, Cardinals, Steelers) were also the top four offenses in field position in almost the same rank order (Browns, Raiders, Steelers, Cardinals).

The Saints offense was the only one in the bottom four for field position out of all 29 offenses (Saints, Dolphins, Bengals, and Cowboys) to average more than 17 points per game (20.5) with the Bengals, Cowboys, and Dolphins averaging 17, 13.3, and 6 points per game respectively.

So in spite of having the fewest number of drives and worst field position of any of the 14 offenses with at least half a dozen playoff games since 2001, the Colts offense scored the second most points per game and the most points per drive of those 14 offenses.

So if the Colts offense has been doing an excellent job of putting points on the board, why have the Colts been losing roughly half of their playoff games?

The obvious answer is of course that the Colts defense has been giving up too many points, but this answer defies popular opinion, which holds that the Colts defense has actually been the more reliable unit in the postseason while the Colts offense has been the team’s albatross.

By all accounts, the Colts defense did play well during the team’s championship run in the 2006 playoffs after playing rather poorly during the 2006 regular season to become one of the worst ranked defenses to win a Super Bowl in NFL history.

Apart from that championship postseason, however, the Colts have posted a 3-6 record since 2001, which naturally begs the question: How did the Colts defense play in the postseason apart from that one year?

Excluding the 2006 postseason, 13 defenses have played at least half a dozen playoff games since 2001. The Colts defense ranks dead last among those defenses in points allowed per drive, and by a rather fair margin.

The Colts defense allowed 2.42 points per drive, which was 0.31 more points than the next-worst defense (Giants). As a matter of perspective, that is larger than the difference between the next-worst Giants defense and the eighth ranked defense (Chargers).

The Colts defense did not have the greatest field position with which to work—only three out of the 13 defenses had worse field position—but remember that the Colts offense had the very worst field position of any offense with at least half a dozen playoff games since 2001.

That is a clear indication that the Colts offense was not the unit chiefly responsible for the team’s poor field position; however, this is made even more evident after examining yards per drive.

The Colts offense averaged the most yards per drive (34.5) of any offense with at least half a dozen playoff games since 2001.

On the other hand, the Colts defense allowed the most yards per drive (34.1) of any defense with at least half a dozen playoff games since 2001, excluding the 2006 postseason.

Remember those Steelers and Patriots offenses that ranked first and third in field position? They only ranked 12th and sixth out of 14 offenses in yards per drive respectively.

Clearly the Colts offense did everything it could to earn good field position, but it was saddled with the worst anyway.

For a more direct comparison of the Colts offense and Colts defense’s roles in the team’s 3-6 playoff record since 2001 apart from their 2006 championship run, I looked at the points scored and yards per drive by offenses again without the 2006 postseason.

As you probably already expected, the Colts offense held its first-place rankings among teams with at least half a dozen playoff games, but what makes the analysis interesting is that the Colts offense’s margin over the next best offense in each category grew 80 percent for points per drive and 70 percent for yards per drive.

So while the Colts offense scored the most points per drive and accumulated the most yards per drive of any offense with at least half a dozen games, and the Colts defense allowed the most points per drive and yards per drive of any defense with at least half a dozen games in those non-championship years, popular opinion blames the team’s offense.

I guess that tells you what popular opinion is worth.

Needless to say, defense plays a vital role in postseason success.

The top five defenses in terms of the fewest number of points allowed per drive in at least half a dozen games have combined to win seven out of the nine Super Bowls in the current 2000s decade (Note: the Ravens' 2000 championship postseason is not included in the available data).

These top-five defenses have also combined for 18 conference championship game appearances this decade, which is half of the total number of conference championship game appearances. At least one of those five teams appeared in a conference championship game in every single season this decade.

Clearly the Ravens, Buccaneers, Eagles, Steelers, and Patriots are on to something.

As for the Colts and Giants—the only two Super Bowl winners from this decade not on that list—even public opinion knows how those defenses came through in those postseasons, with both defenses allowing the fewest points per game in their respective postseasons.

At least popular opinion has something right.

A Colts Fan Strikes Back (At the Cost of McNabb's Offensive Support)

Eric J — Thu, 07 May 2009 17:33:57 -0400

A recent article from a fellow Colts fan addressed the popular notion that Peyton Manning is an underachiever who has been surrounded by unsurpassed talent that he has simply failed to maximize.

The article went on to win POTD and sparked a vigorous follow up article from an Eagles fan that sought to point out just how good Peyton Manning has had it by using Donovan McNabb as a frame of reference.

That Eagles fan was willing to admit that McNabb's offensive line has been very comparable to what Manning has had, but he chose to focus on the starting skill positions (wide receivers and running backs) to emphasize a disparity in offensive support.

One thing is certainly clear, the starting wide receivers and running backs Manning has played with have certainly out produced those who have played with McNabb.

However, several people commented on the article to question how much of that difference was actually due to a disparity in talent at the quarterback position rather than the wide receiver and running-back positions.

I can certainly point to how players who started their careers without Manning saw a noticeable increase in production with Manning while others who left the Colts saw a noticeable drop off to corroborate this idea. I can also point to how well Jeff Garcia was able to step in for Donovan McNabb in 2006.

However, this article is about one thing specifically, the cost of each quarterback’s offensive supporting cast.

Would it surprise anyone to know that while the Colts spent $43,639,030 in cap space (39.7 percent of their total cap spending) on offensive support for Manning in 2008, the Eagles spent $43,567,560 (38.6 percent of their total cap spending) on offensive support for McNabb themselves?

Now is the team with a reputation for overpaying their star players to stay with the team simply shrewder with their spending?

Is the team hit with the highest salary cap figure of any wide receiver in the league for a player who digressed into only their fourth best receiving option getting the best bargains?

Or is Peyton Manning simply getting more bang for the buck?

While the total spending on offensive support was eerily similar, the breakdown of that spending is like night and day.

The Colts spent $20,706,877 (18.9 percent of total cap spending) on wide receivers, $3,200,421 (2.9 percent) on tight ends, $2,945,644 (2.7 percent) on running backs, and $16,786,088 (15.3 percent) on offensive linemen.

The Eagles spent $9,164,687 (8.1 percent of total cap spending) on wide receivers, $5,913,345 (5.2 percent) on tight ends, $5,690,913 (5.0 percent) on running backs, and $22,798,615 (20.2 percent) on offensive linemen.

The Colts clearly outspent the Eagles on wide receivers while the Eagles outspent them on tight ends, running backs, and offensive linemen. That’s a product of both the Eagles emphasizing different positions as well as depth.

So yes, McNabb has been making due with significantly less invested in the wide receiver position, but Manning and his unit have been outperforming McNabb and his unit with the same investment in offensive support.

Interestingly enough, the Eagles cap distribution is fairly similar to that of another team with a quarterback often compared against Manning. This team just so happens to be the best team in the league in the past decade: the Patriots.

The Patriots spent $42,614,146 on offensive support (40.2 percent of total cap spending) in 2008 with $13,245,291 (12.5 percent) on wide receivers, $1,928,614 (1.8 percent) on tight ends, $8,584,324 (8.1 percent) on running backs, and $18,855,917 (17.8 percent) on offensive linemen.

Very similarly to the Eagles, and in deep contrast with the Colts, the Patriots chose to emphasize offensive linemen above wide receivers and put a priority on depth.

So before Eagles fans decide to cry foul, know that your team’s distribution of resources has made a lot of sense. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the Patriots and Eagles each represent the most consistent postseason teams in the past decade in their respective conferences.

I don’t think it’s a coincidence that Randy Moss and Terrell Owens are still without championship rings either.

As for Peyton Manning, my hope is that the release of Marvin Harrison and drafting of Donald Brown will result in a more sensible cap distribution for offensive support that will lead to greater dividends on Jim Irsay’s investment in the postseason.

Is Peyton Manning Really Responsible for the Colts' Poor Playoff Record?

Eric J — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 12:20:28 -0400

In many circles, there’s one thing almost certain to come up first when Peyton Manning is mentioned.

It’s not him being the quarterback with the highest career points-per-game average as a starter.

It’s not his record nine seasons with at least 4,000 passing yards or his record six consecutive seasons with at least 4,000 passing yards.

It’s not his record 11 consecutive seasons with at least 25 touchdown passes, his record 13 consecutive games with at least two touchdown passes, or his record five consecutive games with at least four touchdown passes.

It’s not his record four career games with a perfect passer rating or his record 121.1 single-season passer rating either.

It has something to do with winning, but it isn’t his record six consecutive seasons with at least 12 wins or record seven seasons with at least 12 wins.

It has something to do with the playoffs, but it isn’t his record six career playoff games with at least 300 yards passing or his record two playoff games with at least 400 yards passing. It’s not even his record 360 passing yards in the first half of a playoff game.

It isn’t his record two career playoff games with at least 30 completions or his record seven consecutive playoff games with at least 20 completions either.

It has something to do with being a clutch performer, but it isn’t him having led the biggest comeback in conference championship game history. Nor is it his numerous fourth-quarter comebacks and comebacks from deficits of two touchdowns or more during the regular season.

It’s the Colts' 7-8 playoff record with him at the helm.

So is the Colts 7-8 playoff record really Peyton Manning’s fault?

Many a supporter of Peyton Manning and other quarterbacks like him have argued that defense, run support, and special teams play a huge role in a team’s postseason success. In other words, the better team wins, not necessarily the team with the better quarterback.

Peyton Manning’s detractors have argued that the Colts' playoff record rests on Manning’s shoulders because he simply hasn’t been able to get it done with the season on the line.

So just how much does the rest of the team matter?

I compiled playoff statistics from the 2005 season through the 2008 season to create a base line with 44 playoff games.

Quarterbacks won over 75 percent of the time when posting a passer rating of at least 90 with a combined 22-7 record.

On the other hand, Peyton Manning has lost all three of his playoff games since the 2005 playoffs in which he posted a passer rating of at least 90 (3-3 in his career).

Teams that rushed for at least 125 yards won over 74 percent percentof the time with a 20-7 combined record. The Colts have gone undefeated when they rush for at least 125 yards with Manning at the helm, posting a 4-0 record in Manning’s career.

Teams that allowed a passer rating of 90 or more won less than 25 percent of the time with a 7-22 combined record. The Colts have won more than 33 percent of the time with Manning at the helm when allowing a passer rating of 90 or more with a 2-4 record in Manning’s career.

Teams that allowed 125 rushing yards or more won less than less than 26 percent of the time with a 7-20 combined record. The Colts have won more than 28 percent of the time with Manning at the helm when allowing 125 rushing yards or more, with a 2-5 record in Manning’s career.

If that last comparison seems too close, that’s because six out of those seven games involved the Colts allowing at least 165 rushing yards.

Teams that allowed 165 rushing yards or more lost every single time with a combined record of 0-11. The Colts have won over 16 percent of the time with Manning at the helm when allowing 165 rushing yards or more with a 1-5 record in Manning’s career.

With the Colts winning more than normal in these various situations with Manning at the helm, but far less even when Manning posts a passer rating of at least 90, one has to wonder what the Colts' playoff record might look like with Manning under center if they were more successful at running the ball and stopping the opposing offense.

So maybe the fact that the Colts have been outrushed by at least 100 yards in five out of their eight playoff losses with Manning leading the way doesn’t fall squarely on Manning’s shoulders.

You see a team has only been outrushed by 100 or more yards in eight out of the 44 playoff games since 2005—which is less than 19 percent of the time compared to over 33 percent of the Colts playoff games with Manning at the helm during his career—and not a single one of those eight teams on the wrong end of the stick won those playoff games either.

We have already established that teams that allow an opponent passer rating of 90 or more don’t win very often either, so maybe the fact that the Colts allowed an opponent passer rating of over 90 in two out of those remaining three playoff losses for the Colts in Manning’s career don’t fall squarely on Manning’s shoulders either.

After all Manning posted a passer rating of over 90 in both of those games himself even though his team was outrushed by over 50 yards and he was facing two defenses that combined to limit their other playoff opponents in their respective years to ratings of 67.4, 66.4, 67.8, 53.5, and 66.4.

I can’t remember the last time I’ve seen another team essentially lose a game to a punter, or for that matter think of another quarterback off the top of my head who has lost twice in the playoffs with missed field goals at the end of regulation or in overtime.

When’s the last time a team opened a playoff game by giving up a kickoff return for a touchdown on the very first play of the game? When’s the last time a team almost wasted 32 second half points by giving up 231 kickoff return yards in a playoff game?

Don’t worry special teams, I didn’t forget about you—though many have.

So has Peyton Manning simply failed to perform, or has he managed to perform better than normal given tougher than normal circumstances?

Has Manning not done enough to meet expectations, or are the expectations simply set much too high?

The Indoor Colts and the Outdoor Patriots: "Domefield" Advantage?

Eric J — Sat, 21 Mar 2009 18:16:28 -0400

Much has been made about domes and stadiums with retractable roofs that can be closed whenever the weather is less than desirable. Common thinking suggests that playing indoors provides a huge advantage to offenses while naturally putting defenses at somewhat of a disadvantage.

The idea is that being shielded from cold, rain, wind, and snow creates a pristine environment that inherently favors offense over defense. But is this commonly held belief actually true? What do the numbers say?

I will admit that at first glance, the case seems quite compelling for advocates of this idea. Quarterbacks from indoor and outdoor teams alike both seem to fare much better indoors than outdoors.

Indoor quarterbacks have a striking disparity between home and away games, while outdoor quarterbacks tend to demonstrate far greater consistency, some even doing better away than at home. But is that all there is to it? Or is there a better explanation for the phenomenon?

I will investigate this issue by using two prime candidates for each type of home venue, the Colts and the Patriots. The Colts are well-known for the comforts of their previous home, the RCA Dome, and their current home, Lucas Oil Stadium, and its retractable roof.

The Patriots play their home games outdoors in bitter New England weather at Gillette Stadium. It’s not exactly Lambeau Field, but certainly comparing quarterbacks Tom Brady and Peyton Manning makes for a compelling story.

Since poor weather is the offered as reason for why offenses are presumably at an advantage over the defenses they face indoors, let’s start by looking at how Tom Brady has fared in various weather conditions.

Brady has a career rating of 89.8 in cold weather games (21-40 F) and a career rating of 93.8 in mild weather games (41-60 F). That certainly seems like an indication that cold hurts Brady and thus offense in general, but then again Brady’s career rating in warm weather games (61-80 F) is 86.1.

Looking at YPA (yards per attempt) tells a similar story. Brady has a career average YPA of 7.2 in both cold and mild weather games and a career average YPA of 6.8 in warm weather games.

If we were to conclude that cold weather hurt Brady based on these numbers, we’d have to conclude even more so that warm weather hurt Brady.

Windy games tell a similar story. Brady has a career average rating of 89.7 and a career average YPA of 7.0 in windy games. Both are below his warm weather numbers. Games with precipitation (rain or snow) do signal a drop in Brady’s rating (83.5), but they also give Brady a higher YPA (7.3) than cold, mild, warm, or windy games.

At any rate, with only 10 precipitation games in his career, this category cannot offer us very much in the way of a reasonable sample and certainly does not have a tremendous affect on Brady’s overall career numbers.

Peyton Manning’s more limited sample of outdoor games in various weather conditions tells a similar story. His career average rating in cold weather games (86.9) is higher than his career average rating in mild weather games (83.0).

His career average YPA in cold weather games (7.7) is higher than in mild (6.9) or warm (7.3) weather games.

In fact, Manning’s career 83.0 career rating in mild weather games is lower than his 83.1 career rating in windy games and 84.1 rating in precipitation games. His mild weather career average for YPA (6.9) is actually lower than in precipitation games (7.0) and only marginally higher than in windy games (6.8).

It should be noted that Peyton Manning has only played in 6 career precipitation games and 10 career cold weather games. Obviously the small samples found with both quarterbacks in each situation create large margins of error that render virtually all these differences insignificant.

So if it’s not exactly the weather, then what is it? While Manning has fared fairly consistently in various forms of outdoor weather, his numbers are clearly better indoors (100.4 rating and 8.0 YPA).

The same can be said for Tom Brady in his more limited set of 10 indoor games (104.7 rating and 8.3 YPA). Those numbers alone tell us that something is going on.

Tom Brady is the simpler of the two to answer, so let’s start with him. Brady has played in 10 indoor games in his career—though really only nine since one came in his rookie season with only two pass attempts.

Of those nine real games, five came against defenses ranked 26th or worse in opponent quarterback rating allowed. Only two out of those nine games came against defenses ranked above average in opponent quarterback rating allowed (fifth and third).

One of those two defenses, the Minnesota Vikings in 2006, ranked only average or poor in two other important passing categories. The Vikings tied for last in the league in passing yards allowed and tied for 12th with three other teams in YPA allowed.

The other one of those two defenses, the Indianapolis Colts in 2007, forced 25 percent of Brady’s interceptions in that season and gave him one of his worst rated games all season long. His 95.2 rating in that game was still impressive by his career standards, but it was well below his 117.2 rating on the season.

Did Brady just get lucky with so many weak pass defenses? Well, not exactly. You see indoor teams tend to build for offense instead of defense.

Take a moment to think of some indoor teams across the league and see if that sounds about right to you. Obviously, quarterbacks are expected to do better against weaker defenses than they are against average or stronger ones.

Take the 2008 season for example. Of the 9 teams who play at home in a dome or retractable-roof stadium, not a single one cracked the top 10 in opponent quarterback rating allowed.

Five of the nine teams did make the bottom 10 however. The average ranking in 2008 for these indoor teams was 22.6. Some would take this as evidence that indoor venues do put defenses at an inherent disadvantage, but I will address that idea more directly later in the article.

With all that said about weaker indoor defenses, Brady interestingly enough actually wound up with a lower indoor than outdoor rating in three of his seven seasons as a starter (encompassing four out of the nine indoor games).

The real reason why Tom Brady’s career indoor rating is so much higher is not because he has always done better indoors but because of three monster games, two of which came back in 2001 against 28th and 30th ranked defenses (opponent quarterback rating).

Tom Brady did put up one of those huge games (140.4) against a 17th ranked Falcons pass defense in 2005, but he also recorded a 67.4 rated game against the 30th ranked Lions defense back in 2002.

If you look at it from the perspective of season by season and game by game, the presumed indoor advantage, even against weaker defenses, doesn’t look quite so compelling after all with the Tom Brady example.

Obviously weaker indoor defenses don’t quite explain Peyton Manning’s significantly higher rating indoors since he plays the majority of his indoor games at home against all types of defenses across the league.

However, it is with an indoor quarterback like Peyton Manning that we can finally get to the heart of the matter and determine if playing indoors really benefits offense over defense.

It’s clear that Peyton Manning does better at home indoors than he does away outdoors. However, if we were to take this as evidence that playing indoors inherently favors offense over defense, then we would expect to see the Colts defense struggle more at home in those same supposedly anti-defense conditions.

I was able to pull together the points scored and allowed by the Colts at home and away in Peyton Manning’s career. The Colts scored 27.1 points per game indoors at home and 25.0 points per game away. On the other hand, the Colts gave up 19.4 points per game indoors at home and 23.3 points per game away.

So it turns out that not only does the Colts defense do better at home indoors, but that it does dramatically better, and much more so than the Colts offense. The Colts gave up 3.9 fewer points per game at home while the Colts scored only 2.1 additional points per game.

That’s nearly twice the difference for the defense. That’s a 20.6 percent change for the defense compared to a 7.7% change for the offense: more than 2.5 times the rate of change.

Since homefield is supposed to be an advantage for a defense regardless of venue because of issues like crowd noise, we can can control for the homefield aspect of indoor games for the Colts by looking at indoor games played on the road.

Unfortunately, that produces a very small sample similar to Brady's indoor sample. Regardless, the Colts gave up an average of 23.4 points in outdoor road games and an average of 22.7 points in indoor road games.

That's not as big of a difference as seen when comparing home and away games, but the Colts defense still did better indoors than outdoors even when throwing out home games.

More important than the Colts having given up fewer points away indoors than away outdoors though is the fact that they did not give up more points. If playing indoors really did put defenses at an inherent disadvantage, then you would expect the Colts to give up more points in indoor away games than outdoor away games, not less.

In case anyone is wondering, I checked the points scored rankings of the opposing offenses in this small sample and saw that they came out average overall. In that regard the sample is representative though most of those games came against the same division-rival Houston Texans.

Obviously the Colts defense is not at a disadvantage indoors, and clearly it is the Colts team as a whole that is at an advantage indoors, not specifically the offense. Why? Well, because while playing indoors does not favor offense over defense, it does favor speed over size.

Turf enhances speed and thus favors teams built for speed over those built for size. On the other hand, poor muddy field conditions neutralize speed and thus favor teams built for size over those built for speed. Simply put, teams built to play indoors are at an advantage indoors and teams built to play outdoors are at an advantage outdoors.

If you are having a difficult time trying to understand how a defense could possibly benefit from playing indoors, consider the Colts defense as the perfect example. Would the Colts speedy edge rushers be at a greater advantage playing somewhere where their speed is enhanced or neutralized?

I’ve heard games played in Indianapolis referred to as track meets for Dwight Freeney and Robert Mathis. They get that extra burst off the snap, but do those opposing offensive linemen really back peddle any faster while trying to block them?

Similarly, the Colts undersized but speedy linebacker core can flow to the ball and gang tackle more efficiently with enhanced speed on turf to account for what they give up in size. Little Bob Sanders gets that much more velocity behind the wallop he packs from the secondary with that turf underneath him.

So why are indoor teams (and thus their quarterbacks) so less consistent than outdoor teams at home and away if both play best in the situation for which they were built? The answer is not really so hard to find if you think about it: more than two-thirds of the teams in the league call outdoor venues home.

This means that when an indoor team plays at home, it is more often than not playing against an outdoor team that was not built to play indoors. On the other hand, when the same indoor team plays away, it is mostly likely playing outdoors against a team built to play outdoors.

Conversely, outdoor teams, whether at home or away, are more often than not playing outdoors against another team that is also built to play outdoors.

If you’re having trouble seeing what overall team performance has to do with individual quarterback ratings, consider the most dramatic splits for Manning and Brady.

Brady has a career average rating of 101.3 in wins, but he has a career average rating of 65.1 in losses. Similarly Manning has a career average rating of 105.0 in wins but a career average rating of 77.1 in losses.

Tom Brady vs. Tom Brady: All Homerism Aside

Eric J — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 23:39:11 -0400

Tom Brady has been compared against just about everyone. He’s been pitted against Peyton Manning in about a million different ways. He’s been matched against Ben Roethlisberger as of late. He’s even been measured against his own boyhood hero Joe Montana, with proper reverence of course.

I figured it’s about time Tom Brady was compared against an entirely different quarterback: himself.

To me, a natural break in Tom Brady’s career thus far is readily apparent, allowing me to cleanly split it into two segments. I’ll forgo his rookie 2000 season spent on the bench and his 2008 season almost spent on IR for obvious reasons.

For the remainder of this article, I will speak of Tom Brady from 2001-2004 and Tom Brady from 2005-2007 as two distinct quarterbacks, referring to them as the young Tom Brady and the prime Tom Brady respectively.

Let us first compare their regular season passing statistics.

The young Tom Brady completed 61.6% of his passes and averaged 6.9 yards per attempt. He averaged 3,480 yards, 24 touchdowns, and 13 interceptions per season with a quarterback rating of 87.5.

The prime Tom Brady completed 64.7% of his passes and averaged 7.7 yards per attempt. He averaged 4,148 yards, 33 touchdowns, and 11 interceptions per season with a quarterback rating of 99.7.

Obviously the prime Tom Brady is the clear winner here, winning out in every category mentioned here.

Next let us compare their regular season victories.

The young Tom Brady produced two 14 win regular seasons out of four and an overall winning percentage of .750, which included setting a record for consecutive victories in back-to-back seasons. He took his team to the playoffs in three out of four seasons.

The prime Tom Brady produced the league’s first and only 16 win regular season and an overall winning percentage of .792. He took his team to the playoffs in all three of his seasons.

This one is closer, but the prime Tom Brady wins this category as well.

Next let us compare their postseason victories.

The young Tom Brady led his team to a perfect nine for nine in the playoffs, leading his team to three Super Bowl Championships in four seasons.

The prime Tom Brady led his team to a 5-3 record in the playoffs, leading his team to a Super Bowl berth but no championship in three seasons.

This one goes to the young Tom Brady in a landslide.

Finally, let us compare their postseason passing statistics.

The young Tom Brady completed 62.5 percent of his passes and averaged 6.4 yards per attempt. He averaged 217 yards, 1.2 touchdowns and 0.3 interceptions per game with a quarterback rating of 88.9.

The prime Tom Brady completed 62.5 percent of his passes and averaged 6.9 yards per attempt. He averaged 250 yards, 1.9 touchdowns and 1.1 interceptions per game with a quarterback rating of 87.2.

This one is harder to judge since they each do some things better than the other. The young Tom Brady boasts an 11:3 touchdown-to-interception ratio and an astonishing interception rate of less than 1 percent.

On the other hand the prime Tom Brady boasts more yards per attempt and more yards per game. The young Tom Brady holds the overall advantage in terms of quarterback rating 88.9 to 87.2 though, so I’m going to give him the victory in this area.

Yards per attempt is the single passing statistic that correlates most with winning, but the young Tom Brady’s touchdown-to-interception ratio and interception rate are too impressive to pass up. Besides, it was the young Tom Brady whose team actually won in the playoffs.

So each quarterback takes two of the four categories, and each takes one rather convincingly with the other being much closer. Who is the better quarterback?

Those who prefer to go by passing statistics will undoubtedly choose the prime Tom Brady.

Those who prefer to go by championships will undoubtedly choose the young Tom Brady.

Others will ask the question of who played the more important role for their team and displayed the greater value, making the most of their surroundings.

Did the young Tom Brady whose defenses toppled the great Rams and Colts offenses in the playoffs en route to three championships have more help along the way, or did the prime Tom Brady who had Randy Moss and Wes Welker catching passes from him and three Pro Bowl offensive linemen blocking for him?

The young Tom Brady came through when his team needed him, leading two game winning field goal drives in two of his Super Bowl appearances, while the prime Tom Brady came up empty with the game on the line in his three playoff losses, including key interceptions in two of the three games.

On the other hand, the prime Tom Brady won the league’s Most Valuable Player award in 2007 and placed third in balloting for the same award in 2005, earning a first all-pro team and a second all-pro team selection along the way.

The young Tom Brady did win Super Bowl MVP awards in 2001 and 2003, but he never won the league’s MVP award and never made the first or second all-pro teams.

So rather than attempt to answer this question, I’ll simply ask you: who is the better quarterback?

A Closer Look at The Career Quarterback Ratings of Peyton Manning and Tom Brady

Eric J — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 23:15:35 -0400

Since the 2007 season, a lot has been made by many of Tom Brady’s fans about career quarterback rating. It is no coincidence of course that career quarterback rating suddenly became meaningful to the conversation after Tom Brady’s jumped from 88.4 to 93.0 in the course of a single season (currently 92.9 after 11 pass attempts in 2008).

Suddenly, Brady’s career quarterback rating of 92.9 looks a lot more similar to Peyton Manning’s career quarterback rating of 94.7.

After all we are now talking about a relatively marginal difference of 1.8 rating points. While I, as a Colts fan, am willing to admit that the difference of 1.8 rating points isn’t a very big margin, I do feel that those career averages are quite misleading for a number of reasons.

Before I get into those reasons though, let me say up front that I do not consider quarterback rating to be a very good rating system to begin with since it does not take sacks or fumbles into consideration and in my opinion places too much emphasis on completion percentage at the expense of better statistics like yards per attempt.

So why would I argue that Brady and Manning’s career quarterback rating averages can be misleading?

Well for starters, Peyton Manning started from day one as a rookie while Tom Brady had the luxury of learning from the bench for a year before getting thrown to the wolves. Clearly, the difference between a rookie quarterback and simply first year starter is tremendous.

Just ask guys like Carson Palmer, Phillip Rivers, and Aaron Rodgers, who had very strong numbers in their first years starting after benefiting from years of experience on the sideline.

I remember people being extremely impressed with big first years from true rookie quarterbacks like Ben Roethlisberger and Matt Ryan, but I don’t recall the same kind of acknowledgement and wonder when it came to Palmer, Rivers, and Rodgers.

There’s a reason for that obviously: one is much rarer and difficult of an accomplishment than the other.

While Manning did set a handful of rookie passing records including those for completions, passing yards, and passing touchdowns, obviously his 71.2 quarterback rating as a rookie is not representative of his career.

If you’re still not convinced, consider that Brady’s QB rating remained very consistent for his first three seasons as a starter (86.5, 85.7, 85.9) while Manning’s skyrocketed in his second and third year (71.2, 90.7, 94.7).

Thinking a player like Manning, who has such a reputation for film study and preparation, would not have benefited from an extra season to learn on the sideline is just preposterous.

Manning’s career veteran quarterback rating is 97.3 compared to his own career quarterback rating of 94.7 and Brady’s career veteran quarterback rating of 93.0.

Another problem with career quarterback rating, which becomes even more troublesome when comparing players from entirely different eras, is the realization that league averages for QB rating change over time.

One notable point in recent history has occured since the 2004 season.

It was during the offseason prior to the 2004 season that the league’s referees were asked if they had been enforcing the rule about no contact with a receiver past five yards any differently as of late.

A drop in offensive production was noticed and the league’s officials admitted that they were not enforcing the rule the same way as they have in the past, which included after the rule was similarly re-enforced in the 1990's.

The rule was re-enforced and 2004 became a banner year for passing with quarterbacks benefiting from the re-enforcement ever since.

Another such trend goes back to the 2007 season and continues through the present. Offensive holding penalties have been called significantly less since the 2007 season compared to seasons prior.

The reason for this according to the league’s referees is that they are now only calling offensive holding on plays that according to their judgment are ones in which the infraction would have affected the outcome of the play.

There are plenty of other minor changes that affect statistics across the league, such as new balls being used on every kickoff reducing the distance of kickoffs, but the point is that statistics change over time so it is unfair to penalize one player for playing a greater percentage of his career during more difficult times.

Manning’s career quarterback rating since 2004 is 103.5 while Brady’s since 2004 is 98.0.

Since narrowing the selection to since 2004 increases the concentration of Brady’s time with Randy Moss while decreasing the concentration of Manning’s time with a productive Marvin Harrison, it almost seems counterintuitive that Manning’s relatively narrow 1.8 point advantage in career QB rating would more than triple to a 5.5 point advantage since 2004.

Additionally, if we narrow the selection to prior to 2004, Manning’s we still see an increase in Manning’s advantage from 1.8 to 2.2 even with his rookie season included.

It might seem odd that Manning could have greater advantages in both splits than he does overall, but that is the odd effect that Brady having played a larger percentage of his career since 2004 creates.

Another issue with career quarterback rating is the fact that Brady’s record setting 2007 season represents a significantly higher proportion of his career rating than Manning’s record setting 2004 season does for his career rating.

While I’m sure both sides would love to think that their quarterback is going to produce another such season, most likely neither will ever come close to reaching those statistical heights again.

Statistically speaking, those special seasons are really just outliers. While removing those special seasons from each quarterback’s career QB rating should hurt Manning in the sense that his 2004 season was rated 3.9 points higher than Brady’s 2007 season, it is clearly not the case. Manning’s more marginal 1.8 point advantage in career QB rating more than doubles to an advantage of 5.1 points.

Manning’s quarterback rating excluding 2004 is 92.4 while Brady’s excluding 2007 is 88.3.

The final issue with career quarterback rating that I will discuss once again deals with proportion. While Manning’s two best seasons of 2004 and 2005 were also the two seasons with the fewest pass attempts in his career, Brady’s best season of 2007 was the season with the second most pass attempts in his career.

Additionally, two of Manning’s worst seasons, his rookie season of 1998 and 2002, were the two seasons with the most pass attempts in his career.

Should Peyton Manning’s rookie season account for a greater proportion of his career quarterback rating than either of his best seasons of 2004 and 2005?

Does it make sense that Peyton Manning’s career quarterback rating should drop because the Colts sent in his backup Jim Sorgi when Manning’s success put games and the season away early?

I don’t believe either of those to be valid reasons.

To address this issue, I will weight each full season of Peyton Manning and Tom Brady’s careers evenly. Obviously Brady’s 2000 and 2008 seasons will just be thrown out since he played less than a quarter in each (both season ratings are below his career average anyway).

Manning’s evenly weighted career QB rating is 95.2 while Brady’s is 92.6.

So to summarize the various issues we explored, it seems sensible to combine some of these different ways of looking at Peyton Manning and Tom Brady’s quarterback rating.

We can exclude Manning’s rookie season while accounting changes in rule enforcement since 2004 and evenly weight full seasons to create what I consider to be a more relevant and representative quarterback rating for each player.

Manning’s evenly weighted QB rating since 2004 is 103.8 while Brady’s is 97.5.

Furthermore, we can throw out each quarterback’s special record breaking season and compare their ratings since 2004 without them and of course evenly weighted.

Manning’s evenly weighted QB rating since 2004 with his 2004 season excluded is 99.5 while Brady’s with his 2007 season excluded is 90.9.

That’s a difference of 8.6 rating points. That’s obviously quite different than a difference of 1.8 rating points.