Tuesday, December 14, 2010

Some Ravens Numbers

In our email discussion thread, Craig made some commentary around analysis of certain situations. I've been watching the Pens/Flyers game tonight and decided to cut up some data during the game, to take a look at various situations to satisfy my own curiosity.

This is only partial data. As a Football Outsiders game charter, I've charted 20 of the Ravens 54 + 3 (OT) quarters across 8 of their 13 games. All data comes from their charting sheets and my personal charts.

One would have to assume that this data is representative of the whole, but I don't see a whole lot of reason to think it isn't. The only reason I could see is that of the 10 halves I've charted, six are first halves and four are second halves. Otherwise I don't think there's much to indicate this isn't representative.

- The Ravens run the ball a little over 55% of the time on first downs (last year they ran 53% of the time on first down). Their success on run vs. pass plays are pretty similar. They average 4.5 ypp on the pass, 4.2 on the run. But 53% of the pass attempts resulted in 0 or negative yards, while 17% of the run plays did.
- They run the ball 47% of the time on second downs, regardless of distance. On second and short (defined as 3 or fewer yards), they run 78% of the time.
- On 3rd and short, they run the ball only 33% of the time! They were in shotgun nearly 50% of the time, and had a 3+ WR set 67% of the time. Flacco has completed only 43% of all attempts (includes sacks) on those passing plays, 14% of those completions did not pick up the first down (sample size very small, so may not be truly represntative). Thus, the Ravens pick up the first down on third and short less than 40% of the time when they throw the ball. This, as compared to a 63% first down pick-up rate when they run on third and short.
- In the red zone, they run 60% of the time, though they run 76% of the time in the red zone on short yards to go situations. Inside the 3 yard line, they run ~60% of the time, the same percent of first/second down plays.

The bullet on 3rd and short is representative of why Ravens fans are generally frustrated with the coaching / offensive play calling. I've got an article brewing in my head breaking down the Ravens season thus far, and what's "wrong" with the team. I use the term "wrong" lightly, given they have four losses thus far...only so much can be wrong with such a team. Part of it is, in my belief, the coaching. There will be more around this in the coaching section I think.

In the mean-time, if there are any other particular stats anyone can think of they'd like to see, I'm happy to post them.

5 comments:

  1. Interesting about your 63% run-rate for success on 3rd and short, correlates well with TMQ's 65% quoted rate on running 2-pt tries.

    naj

    ReplyDelete
  2. Is that success on 2-pt tries, or success on 2-pt running play tries?

    The success rate doesn't surprise me at all. What surprises and irritates me is how much more successful they are at running than throwing on third and short, yet they pass twice as often as they run in those situations.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Chris,

    Nice work here. It would be interesting to see how these numbers compare to other playoff contending teams.

    Cheers,

    TL

    ReplyDelete
  4. Thanks Tony. I may try cutting that up at some point as I have some of the data available for all teams. But it's all split apart and would take a good bit of work to compile it all. Maybe, we'll see if/when I have time to do so.

    ReplyDelete
  5. 65% success on 2-pt tries where the Offense runs the ball.

    ReplyDelete

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