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Originally Posted by Anonymous1
I dug into the play-by-plays of these two teams and this is what I found.
Baltimore's offense has scored a decent amount of points, but my eyes tell me that their defense might actually have been a big factor. On top of that, I've also had the impression that Baltimore's offense is reliant on deep passes. Ray, Ray, chuck it, so to speak. To test these theories, I went through the drive log of every Baltimore game checking for the following:
50+ yard, 7+ play TD drives
-50 yard TD drives and defensive TDs
50+ yard, -7 play TD drives
7 is somewhat arbitrary, but it felt right to me and ends up being very useful after crunching everything. On top of that, I checked for 40+/- FG drives, thinking that a FG drive of less than 40 yards is less a credit to the offense and more the defense and special teams. I included missed FGs into these numbers to get the most accurate picture of how the offense performed. This gave me 5 categories:
Long TD drives, Defense credited TDs, Big play TD drives and Long/Short FG drives. Here are the results for Baltimore:
Baltimore
Long TD: 17
Defensive: 11
Big Play: 11
Long FG: 21
Short FG: 13
Interesting, but not informative without anything to relate it to, so here is NE:
Patriots
Long TD: 38
Defensive: 7
Big Play: 15
Long FG: 23
Short FG: 7
Now, it really isn't fair to only compare offenses to NE (or GB/NO) so we need another one. I settled on Pitt since they are similar in efficiency to Baltimore, per DVOA, as well as having an offense geared around big plays.
Pittsburgh
Long TD: 21
Defensive: 6
Big Play: 12
Long FG: 29
Short FG: 4
Pitt's problems in generating turnovers really jumps off the page when you view it from this perspective. Only 10 short scoring drives all season.
Based on this exercise, it appears that my suspicions were correct. Despite trailing NE 26-34 in total takeaways, Baltimore had 4 more defense related TDs. The FG numbers are even more dramatic. 33% of Baltimore's scoring drives were less than half the length of the field, neither Pitt or NE was over 15%.
Big plays accounted for 40% of Baltimore's long TD scores, compared to 36% for Pitt and 28% for NE. The distribution further illuminates Baltimore's reliance on the big play. Here are the plays-per-short-drive for all three teams:
Baltimore
3, 2, 3, 3, 4, 5, 3, 1, 3, 4, 3
Pitt
1, 6, 2, 5, 1, 6, 3, 1, 5, 2, 4, 3
Patriots
6, 1, 4, 5, 6, 5, 4, 6, 6, 1, 4, 5, 2, 6, 5
As I wrote before, the 7 play mark was arbitrary, but still illuminating. Baltimore didn't have a single 6 play 50+ yard TD drive all season, and only one lasting 5 plays. By contrast, Pitt and NE (especially NE) have more even distributions that would alter the numbers considerably had I chosen a different seperation point.
Even further, I randomly chose a couple 7 or 8 play "longer" TD drives to see if a big play still made an appearance, ignoring NE due to their obvious lack of reliance. Of the three chosen for Baltimore, two had plays of 35+ yards. By comparison, the only big plays in the Pitt selections were a fake punt and a 26 yarder that is specifically denoted "pass short" in the PBP.
So what does all this mean for Sunday?
The odds of Baltimore cracking the 20 point barrier without short fields or big plays is minimal. This is why this game ultimately comes down to pressure. NE is going to use their Marshall Faulk circa 2001 plan to take away Rice, while having a deep safety at all times to stop the long ball. Whether Flacco can make the intermediate plays is all a matter of time, because there will be receivers open.
On the flip side, NE isn't going to rely on the run too much to end up with 3 RB fumbles, so Baltimore going to need to get their turnovers via interceptions. Receiver fumbles are also possible, of course, though less likely to lead to short fields since the pass must have already been completed. This receiver corps is too good for Brady too have time and still feel the need to force the issue.
Pressure. The QB hit the least walks off victorious.
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2Likes
Interesting drive stats analysis
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