The Boredom of the Browns

One of the fun things I started doing last year was becoming a volunteer game charter for Football Outsiders. They have exceptional access to game statistics, and they've put together a nice Excel sheet that allows us to chart every play of every game to capture quite a bit of information. How many RB/WR/TE/OL on each play? Formation? Who put pressure on the QB? Who was the defender on every pass? How many rushers and blockers did each team use? Zone blitz? What was the play design meant to be? Who blew blocks? Who broke tackles? etc...

Naturally I chart the Ravens and they typically ask me to chart half of a Ravens game each week. I just got done charting the first half of the Browns game today. One of the things that stuck out to me in my charting is how absolutely boring the Browns offense is.

Don't get me wrong. "Boring" does not mean "ineffective." The Browns actually showed their offense can be quite effective. Cleveland ran up 304 yards of offense vs. the Ravens, to date the most they've allowed to any team. This included 173 rushing yards, led by Peyton Hillis, a man whom when Dan Patrick asked Terrell Suggs if he'd ever heard of him, Suggs responded "Never heard of him before in my life." (Dan Patrick mentioned this to Josh Cribbs the next day, and Cribbs said "He's heard of him now.") The Browns are not dominating offensive categories or anything. But they are consistently putting up ~300 yards a game and have a 2.9% DVOA and rank #15 in DVOA, top half of the league.

But when I watched them, there's simply no innovation anywhere in that offense. I don't remember a single play with pre-snap motion. We don't track motion, but I didn't see any. As for the formations, the Browns ran 30 offensive plays in the first half, and the formations broke down in the following fashion:

Standard I formation - 9 times
Offset I formation - 7 times
Standard 3 WR set with slot WR - 7 times
All players in tight (2 WR, 2 TE, single back) - 4 times

That leaves three plays. Once they ran trips right. Once ran two TE left on a single-back formation. And once they ran two WRs stacked to one side. Those are hardly innovative formations. As a counter-example, the Ravens used motion more than half the time, and lined McClain out as a TE seven of their 23 offensive plays the first half. Simply by the fact I mention those formations as the more innovative and exciting plays of the Browns offense should show you how boring it is.

Their offensive line is what allows them to run such a boring offense and still be at least somewhat effective. The left 60% of their line - Mack, Steinbach and Joe Thomas - is arguably the best in the NFL. Womak and Pashos are not stars, but they're not horrendous either. The solid play from the line allows them to get away with not trying to confuse anyone with tricky formations or confusing motion to disguise their plays. They simply line up and smash you.

This bears itself out in their run/pass play close-ups. They ran 16 times, passed 14 (no busted passes turning into runs). Of their 16 rushes, only 5 were from a single-back formation and two of those were two TE sets. None of their rushes were draws. Of their 14 passes, only four were thrown more than ten yards past the line of scrimmage; the same number as were thrown at or behind the line. And the longest of those four went 20 yards in the air (two of them). They ran play action only once and had fewer than six blockers only twice, despite the fact that the Ravens blitzed a measly four times.

I don't have the stats like these for the rest of the Browns season. But I would be surprised if they weren't very similar. I've watched of course one full game vs. the Ravens, and bits and pieces of other Browns games, and their offense looks the same from what I've seen. Very vanilla. Very boring.

But effective. And I guess that's all that matters.

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Monday Tidbits

Jets 38 - Bills 14
Bills - Racing toward their version of the big game...what to do with the first pick in each round of the draft.
Jets - This game was so easy, even Shonn Greene got over 100 yards.

Browns 23 - Bengals 20
Bengals - A quote from Terrell Owens post-game presser: "I'd be pissed, but I had 220 yards and a touchdown! It don't matter if we win or lose the game, as long as I get my catches, it's all good!"
Browns - Perhaps now with a win and three close games vs. teams combined for 8-2 the media will start treating the Browns with a little respect. Nahhh.....

Ravens 17 - Steelers 14
Steelers - Roethlisberger relieved at a Steelers loss so Tomlin wouldn't be tempted to actually follow through on his threat to start someone else even when Ben came back.
Ravens - The city of Baltimore breaks their collective necks whirling 180 degrees from panic over Flacco becoming the next Kyle Boller to elation over Flacco becoming the next Peyton Manning. Stay tuned for the next neck breaking whirl!

Broncos 26 - Titans 20
Titans - Why bother winning a football game when you can clearly outplay an opponent but still score fewer points?
Broncos - NFL passing yardage leader Kyle Orton ... that's not a misprint ... has the Broncos off to their usual hot start, playing well above everyone's early season expectations at 2-2.

Packers 28 - Lions 26
Lions - Detroit fans excited about finally only almost losing instead of always just losing big.
Packers - It's getting tougher every week to find ways to lose games to bad teams. They almost pulled this one out, but then blew it at the last second by ramming Kuhn their final drive.

Falcons 16 - Niners 14
Niners - Clemens justifies his $80MM contract with an amazing game-sealing INT, then justifies his "horrendously overpaid" status with an amazing game-get-them-back-in-it fumble. But hey, that Taylor Mays is something else.
Falcons - Matty Ice was very cool throwing the late game INT before leading them down for the real come-back drive.

Saints 16 - Panthers 14
Panthers - Jimmy Clausen despondent after not throwing an INT for a full 60 minute game.
Saints - Saints have entered a contract with the NFL to ensure all games played this year are exciting and will not be decided by more than five points, preferably three or fewer.

Rams 20 - Seahawks 3
Seahawks - Hawks are buying into Pete Carroll's message at home, but not on the road.
Rams - Trailer voice-over for the next sci-fi fantasy movie: "In a world...where the Rams are tied for first in their division, and Mark Clayton touts top 15 receiving stats ..."

Jags 31 - Colts 28
Colts - Fans calling for Peyton Manning's head after leading the team to a start equivalent to the Rams and going 0-2 in the division.
Jags - Jack Del Rio mistakenly thinking that ugly victories count double and thinks he's headed to the playoffs as the only team currently with four wins.

Texans 31 - Raiders 24
Raiders - There's not really a whole lot to say here. They're still a mess.
Texans - Foster decides to protest the next time his team costs him a 200 rushing yard game by skipping more meetings this coming week.

Redskins 17 - Eagles 12
Eagles - It's a strange dynamic in which the Eagles fans cheer their division rival quarterback, and boo their own quarterback.
Redskins - McNabb has the typical game he used to have while playing for the Eagles where he plays both great and awful in the same 60 minute span and the team that isn't the Eagles wins.

Chargers 41 - Cardinals 10
Cardinals - Cards adding $100k to their offer to Warner to come back for every point they lose by. Warner to come back week 8 after becoming the first ever NFL player to receive a one year, $7.4 billion deal.
Chargers - Gates currently on pace to break all of Tony Gonzalez "all time" TE receiving records by week 12. Chargers on pace to look out of the playoff race until the week before they're mathematically eliminated, then go undefeated and sneak into the playoffs.

Giants 17 - Bears 3
Bears - Yep, they are who we thought they were. Their offensive line is really, really bad. And so is Jay Cutler.
Giants - Still elated from dominating a 3-0 team, the reality of it only being the Bears still hasn't set in.

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Tactics

Video from the Ravens weekly show 1 Winning Drive. Original available here:
1 Winning Drive week 3 segment 1
Copyright by the Ravens.

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Good reading

I really enjoy Football Outsiders. They're the best sports analytical site I've found, and their annual almanac is always enjoyable and informative. They also have regular content updates on their site (duh), but this was a particularly enjoyable read.

Mike Tanier is probably my favorite writer for them. He did several chapters in the FO Almanac, including the NFCS teams. The chapter he wrote on Atlanta is one of the best chapters I've read of any book, blending information and entertainment wonderfully. Most of his stuff is "information" with a sprinkling of "entertainment." This article is more the other way around.

When blogger Billy Rios discovered a glitch in the ESPN Fantasy Football site that made it easy to make changes to his opponent's roster, he tested his ability to hack the system by making a fellow owner pick up Grossman. Hilarious. It's like making the computer in "WarGames" start a global thermonuclear war, only worse because it's Grossman.

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Two ways to look at Ravens-Steelers

Patch emailed me something from sbrforum today, an analyst or handicapper looking at the individual players in this Sunday's Ravens-Steelers game. It was very interesting. And it got me to thinking.

There are two distinct ways of looking at this game. And depending on which viewpoint you adopt, it's obvious who should win the game. I mean it's utterly, completely clear who's going to win. What's not obvious is which viewpoint is the correct one. ( I guess it'll be obvious during or after the game, but what fun is that?)

Viewpoint #1: The Steelers are playing well this season, and the Ravens are not.

Pittsburgh is #3 in the FO's ratings this week (#1 in "DAVE"), Baltimore is #18. Some people have the Steelers as the best team in the NFL. They have won all their games, some against good teams, and they have looked like themselves doing it. The D is baaa-aaack; in particular, Troy Polumalo and Aaron Smith. And the running game is back: Rashard Mendenhall is the NFL's 4th-leading rusher. Meanwhile, Baltimore has not played well. Their offense was AWOL the first two games of the season, while Flacco thew 5 INTs. When the offense finally showed a pulse in week 3, the defense got pushed around. The Ravens gave up 173 yards on the ground, to Cleveland. 6.0 yards per carry!

This, then, is the Ravens-Steelers matchup: two teams going in opposite directions. And the best team in the NFL, playing at home, will blow the Ravens off the field.


Viewpoint #2: The Ravens & Steelers are very, very evenly matched, so the significant players who are out will determine the winner.

From 2008 on, the Ravens & Steelers have played 5 games against each other. These have been the final margins:

3 pts (overtime)
4 pts
9 pts (iced by a late 4th Q Polumalu INT return)
3 pts
3 pts

That 2008 AFC Championship game was a 2-pt game with 4 or 5 mins to go, until Flacco threw the pick-6.

Ravens-Steelers games have been exciting, hard-fought – the rivalry has become must-see football, one of the most anticipated matchups in the league. Pittsburgh has won 4 of those games, so they have been better (they were the 2008 SB Champs, after all); but the margin separating these teams has been thin. Distinct, but thin.

So now these two teams line up against each other again, but with some key people out. The Ravens are missing starting RT Jared Gaither, and the Steelers are missing –

Ben Roethlisberger.

!

Now, Jared Gaither is an important player. But, can we all agree that Ben Roethlisberger is miles and miles more important to the Steelers than Jared Gaither is to the Ravens? I mean, it's not close, right?

I know Rashard Mendenhall is a big-time player now, and the Steelers have a new offensive identity that they haven't had in recent years. Fine. But (no matter what it looked like last week against Cleveland) you just can't earn a living running against the Ravens D. It is not going to happen. The difference-maker for the Steelers offense has been Big Ben hanging in the pocket on third down and miraculously keeping drives alive. If he's not there, the Steelers are not going to move the ball, and their biggest threat to score will be Polumalu. Meanwhile the Ravens also have an added dimension on offense, courtesy of Anquan Boldin.

This, then, is the Ravens-Steelers matchup: the usual slugfest, but without Big Ben's miracles. The game will look like a replay of the Ravens-Jets Monday Night season opener: two teams slogging it out, with the home team unable to do a thing offensively, and the Ravens stringing together just enough offense to leave with the win.

~

So. One of those viewpoints is obviously right. But, uh, which?

__________________________________________________

Edit

Chris emailed me me after the post went up: "Jim – No mention of Reed as a pretty important player missing for the Ravens?"

Uh, oops.

I still think the salient part of viewpoint #2 is that Ben Roethlisberger has been the most important difference-maker for the Steelers in their games against the Ravens (more important even than Polumalu), and he's gone. (You could even argue that without Big Ben back there, the Ravens don't need Ed Reed.)

We'll see how it plays out.

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The best thing I've read (recently) about wide receivers

It's been 25 years since John Madden wrote his first book Hey, wait a minute, I wrote a book and entitled a chapter, "Wide receivers are like artists". This might be the most sympathetic/insightful thing I've read about WRs since:

Five Things We Learned From The Ravens 24-17 win
by Kevin Van Valkenburg
Let's remember that, in order to play wide receiver in the NFL, you need a little diva in you. You have to believe you're open every play, because if you lose that edge, it's really hard to get it back. It takes a certain level of minor insanity and tremendous courage to run really fast, get open for a half second, catch a pass and then let your body get hammered by a defender who could potentially seriously injure you on every play. So when we talk about Derrick Mason, let's respect that. His self-confidence is the reason he has been as good as he is for as long as he has.

But it's obvious he's frustrated. It's clear he doesn't like getting three passes a game thrown his way. We don't need to hear him talk to understand it.

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Rumor

To be clear, I haven't heard this anywhere. I am starting this rumor, not passing along anything I know. (Because I know nothing.)

Parcells will be coaching the Giants next year.

It's plausible. He's available now; and Ernie Accorsi revealed in his book that Parcells was interested, and would have been the choice when Coughlin was hired, but the Maras didn't learn of Parcells' interest until Coughlin was already offered. And suddenly Coughlin seems like a good bet not to survive the season.

I dunno, Coughlin is very tenacious, and tends to wriggle out when his back is to the wall. Watch him pull another Super Bowl win out of his hat.

But, Parcells. You heard it here first.

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Da Browns

For a team that sucks – the Browns suck, right? That's the general consensus, that they suck, that they are the weak sisters of the AFC North. They are coming off consecutive seasons of 4 and 5 wins, and they're projected to get stepped on this season as well – for a team that sucks, the Brownies have an awfully good offensive line.

LT Joe Thomas might be the best player at his position in the NFL.
LG Eric Steinbach can play.
C Alex Mack is last year's 21st overall pick, and looks excellent.
RT Tony Pashos may only be solid and reliable, but he is solid and reliable. He's an ex-Raven, and with Jared Gaither out, "solid and reliable" looks pretty good. I wish we still had him.

I don't know anything about RGs Floyd Womack & Shawn Lauvao, but judging by the way the Browns controlled Kelly Gregg & Haloti Ngata, and the way Peyton Hillis (!) ran wild against the Ravens (!!) today, I suspect at least one of them is pretty decent.

O-line is the single most important unit of a football team. (Ok, and QB is the most important single position.) If you have a good O-line, everything else on offense becomes possible. I don't know if the Brownies have their QB question answered: seems like it'll be a while before we know anything about Colt McCoy. But after what I saw from them today, I wouldn't be shocked if everything came together for them very quickly. That O-line might be the best in the AFC North.

Eh, maybe I'm overreacting to one good game. Maybe the Ravens overlooked them, with the Steelers looming next week. The Browns defense looked porous today (to be charitable). And they play in a brutal division.

Still. That unit is much better than the O-line a terrible team should have.

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A quarterback regressing?

Joe Flacco's statistics through two games give some cause for concern:
48% completion rate, 5.2 YPA, 1 TD and 5 INTs
Now, granted it's only two games, and they were on the road, in a six day period and against the #1 and #6 passing defenses from last year. And while I'm far from panicking over whether Flacco is in serious regression, or if it was just a bad streak in a tough situation, there are some signs of true concern that deserve some attention.

The biggest sign has been the media's favorite tag-line of the week. Flacco's mechanics were terrible against Cincinnati, and he was consistently throwing off his back foot. Part of this may have been due to the fact that despite not allowing a sack, the Ravens OL really had a poor game. Flacco was constantly under pressure and forced to either throw on the run, or simply get a throw off with someone in his face or in the process of tackling him.

But there's at least one more concerning possibility. One that I thought about at the time, but didn't know enough about to speak up on. I still don't "know" a ton, but what's a good conspiracy theory if it goes untold?

Last year, the Ravens lost Hue Jackson - Flacco's quarterback coach - to the Raiders. Jackson is an accomplished and respected coach that was credited for helping Flacco develop quickly into a solid QB. There was hope he could replace Cam Cameron as offensive coordinator if he were given another shot as a head coach, before getting the opportunity in Oakland. He was later replaced by the much maligned as a head coach, but seemingly well respected quarterback coach, Jim Zorn. The hire was lauded as an excellent replacement for Jackson to continue Flacco's development.

The concern I have, and had at the time of hire, was that Zorn was never a quarterback known for his mechanics. He was more of an instinctual player. My concern is, how does a guy that plays on guts teach good form?

I don't have a lot other than that. There's no proof. In fact, Zorn coached Matt Hasselbeck from '01 to '07. The difference between his stats in that time vs. the rest of his career are striking:
With Zorn: 61% comp rate, 7.1 YPA, 4.5% TD rate, 2.7% INT rate
Without: 58% comp rate, 6.1 YPA, 3.4% TD rate, 4.0% INT rate

But I'm still not sure about it. And after two games, while it's too small a sample to say the jury's out, I've hardly had my mind put at ease.

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Monday Tidbits - Week 2

Steelers 19 - Titans 11
Titans - Seven turnovers and still had a shot to win at the end. Fans were left wondering how they managed to get the Ravens for their team.
Steelers - After the game, Tomlin announced that he still wasn't sure whether Roethlisberger would be his starting quarterback upon his return, or if he'd simply draft someone out of the stands, as he really doesn't need one to win games.

Packers 34 - Bills 7
Bills - Displaying Marshawn Lynch's talents to the team most likely to pick him up may have backfired.
Packers - Realized somewhere around 7 minutes left in the first period that they really don't need to run the ball anyway.

Bengals 15 - Ravens 10
Ravens - Joe Flacco sends the city of Baltimore into a panic as they wonder whether the spirit of Kyle Boller has somehow taken over his body. Ray Lewis puts everyone's mind at ease by opening himself to a $3.8MM fine blasting the refs.
Bengals - Carson Palmer laments at how bad of a quarterback he is by missing an uncovered Chad Eightfive repeatedly, thanks the refs for bailing him out.

Falcons 41 - Cardinals 7
Cardinals - The harsh, sad reality of Derek Anderson sets in.
Falcons - The uplifting, enjoyable reality of the Cardinals defense sets in.

Chiefs 16 - Browns 14
Browns - Cleveland fans hanging their hat on not having lost to a team with a loss yet.
Chiefs - Realizing they don't need an offense to score points, the Chiefs lobby to be allowed to play nothing but defense and special teams all 60 minutes.

Bears 27 - Cowboys 20
Cowboys - Jerry Jones brags to the media about his paper championship being almost as good as the real thing.
Bears - Cutler is bewildered as he didn't turn the ball over once for an entire game.

Eagles 35 - Lions 32
Lions - Shaun Hill does his best John Elway impersonation leading the Lions back to have a potential game winning drive in the closing minutes. Then on the final drive he does his best Shaun Hill impersonation to close out the loss.
Eagles - Mike Vick was caught preparing his post-game presser on the sidelines in case of a loss with a statement of how if the Eagles had allowed him to play defense all game as well, they'd have won the game.

Dolphins 14 - Vikings 10
Vikings - Minnesota fans realizing that life is nowhere near as fun with Human Favre as it is with Superman Favre.
Dolphins - I've got nothing. Seriously, if this wasn't the most boring win of the week, I don't know what was.

Bucs 20 - Panthers 7
Panthers - Realizing nothing was working, the Panthers decided to try the bold strategy of laying down and doing nothing. This worked well enough to hold the Bucs to only 20 points.
Bucs - Tampa fans unsure of what to think of the fact that they seem to have a legitimate quarterback.

Broncos 31 - Seahawks 14
Seahawks - Pete Carrol realizing that things are hard when the other teams are allowed to pay their players too.
Broncos - Xander working on a petition to be allowed to play terrible teams at home every week in the hopes of going .500 on the year.

Raiders 16 - Rams 14
Rams - Sam Bradford can play a little. Too bad the rest of the team can't.
Raiders - Cable has a violent flashback at half-time of life with Jamarcus Russell and benches his starting QB, not realizing it's Jason Campbell. Upon that realization, is relieved to find he hasn't benched anyone with actual talent.

Jets 28 - Patriots 14
Patriots - Justin Bieber asks Tom Brady to style his hair differently after the game cause he's not living up to its expectations.
Jets - Rex led away in handcuffs after trying to steal the Lombardy, yelling to onlooking media "Did you see what we just did? We're gonna own that thing anyway, I was just trying to save everyone the time!"

Chargers 38 - Jaguars 13
Jaguars - Jags announce their intentions of remaining a tease and renew their vows to scrape out close wins against bad teams and get thrashed by mediocre ones.
Chargers - Norv dials up a 50 yard pass play after fearing 8 minutes may be enough for an anemic Jacksonville offense to ring up 25 points and threaten a come-back.

Texans 30 - Redskins 27
Redskins - McNabb suffers violent delusions of angry fans claiming he didn't do enough defensively to help them win the game. Calms himself by realizing he's no longer in Philadelphia.
Texans - Gary Kubiak caught in post-game handshake with Shanahan saying "Hey dude, thanks for coming up with that brilliant idea of taking a time out right before the FG attempt!"

Colts 38 - Giants 14
Giants - Brandon Jacobs forcibly restrained from removing his pants and throwing them in the stands after doing so with his helmet.
Colts - Big brother erases all doubt about who the real NFL quarterback is.
Both teams - Rest of the non-Manning rosters ready to pull hair out after hearing "Manning Bowl" for 18,243rd time.

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