BradyManny

It may be obvious by now, but I consider efficiency per possession a very telling statistic.

I was challenged in another thread to look beyond per possession - what came up was: the question of who is to blame for the Patriots being 27th in Time of Possession? The theory patsfaninpittsburgh posited was that the Patriots hurry-up offense did the team no favors in the battle for time of possession, which maybe sounds like it had a ring of truth to it. So I wanted to look closer.

Just how much was the offense and defense responsible for poor time of possession? All of this doesn't take into account whether this matters at all, anyway, but that's for another post...

So, I took those drive stats, mangled together some numbers and tried to draw some conclusions from them. I'll sum up those numbers here and go into detail in another post.

Let me introduce two stats I cobbled together. They are simple Time per Drive (amount of time per possession the given unit was on the field) & Points Per Minute (both for offense and defense). Because of offense and defense, it's really four stats, and I think two of them don't matter at all (I'll explain later).

I'll give the caveat that all of these numbers are rounded, and based upon statistics I'm finding online, that I am assuming are valid. They all seem to add up when I do the math, so I'm assuming it's right.

Your 2011 New England Patriots:
Offensive points per drive: 3rd
Offensive yards per drive: 2nd
Time per offensive drive: 14th
Points per minute: 1st

Defensive points per drive: 21st
Defensive yards per drive: 32nd
Time per defensive drive: 30th
Points yielded per minute: 13th


The league average for Time per Drive was about 2:32. The Patriots offense averaged 2:38 per drive. The Patriots defense averaged about 2:53 per drive.

So, on average, when the Patriots offense took the field, it had the ball for six more seconds than league average. When the Patriots defense took the field, it had the ball for twenty one more seconds than league average.

A lot of this means a whole lot of nothing, but I find it interesting, and I think it definitively makes it clear that the Patriots woes in time of possession last year are obviously due to the defense not being able to get off the field. It isn't Earth-shattering, but I found it at least noteworthy.

Some larger observations to follow...

BradyManny

My follow-up...

It would take someone with some actual background in statistics and a greater intelligence than I to cull something truly earth-shattering from this, but I do think it introduces some interesting questions.

We've long heard about wanting offenses that sustain long drives to keep the opposing offense off the field. We heard this when we went up against the high-powered Colts offense in the prime of Manning's era; and we hear this when teams gameplan for the explosive Brady-led offense.

Look, I'm no stat major. I haven't done math in ages. So if you know more than me about this subject, please jump in now. BUT...

To me, the reason why I stress the POSSESSIONS as so important is this: the more possessions in a game, the higher the sample size on all of these efficiency metrics, and, I'm guessing, the more likely that these efficiencies will bear out.

In short, the better your team, all around, the better off you are lengthening the game (more possessions).

On the other hand, if you are facing an opponent which you feel is, overall, better than you, you are better off shortening the game (less possessions) and hoping things do not trend to norm.

SB46, sadly, continues to be a disturbing reminder of why I take these statistics seriously: if you look at the Patriots offense from after the safety up until the final hail mary drive, it averaged 46.6 yards per drive, and 2.43 points per drive. So for a big chunk of the game, the team was efficient: the yards are above it's average (which points to field position woes) and it's points are down, but not dramatically so (still would've put it at 4th in the league).

Two thoughts: 1) More possessions likely means that points per drive goes up. One touchdown makes a big difference, obviously, and more cracks at it means it likely trends to its norm. 2) One mistake, the safety, and it's all thrown off. That mistake, combined with a defense that could just not get off the damn field did us in.

Speaking of not getting off the field: the defense, excluding a kneeldown, averaged a whopping 4:38 per drive in SB46, two minutes more than league average.

Bottom Line: The Patriots offensive efficiency is right there at the top of the league. In fact, I found out they score more per minute than any team in the league, and they are third in points per drive - so the more they get the ball, the more they are scoring.

Folks can cite bend don't break and say we don't give up a lot of points. That's fine. That's all good. I know the object of defense is to not let them score. But I can't see that - at least statistically - it's deniable that the Patriots are much better off with a defense that gets off the field quickly and increases the amount of total possessions per game. There are not a lot of teams that can hang with this Patriots team when that is the case. You get aberrations (Bills game last year), but more often, this team will win.

Avenger

Excellent write up, it confirm what I've been thinking but I hadn't put the research in to confirm, thank you for your time that you put into this.

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KontradictioN

You're really stating the obvious here. Of course there's a huge chance that you score more points when you have more possessions. Of course you get more possessions when your defense isn't getting systematically driven on. Of course the offense has more opportunities when the opposing offense has less T.O.P. Sadly, some folks (and most of these "folks" think that the defense was just fine last year), don't understand the obvious. I suspect that this obvious fact that was spewed over and over and over again last year by those of us who had actually seen the mid-2000's New England Patriots dynasty era defenses play and know what a quality Pats defense actually is was also seen by Bill Belichick, hence some of the wholsale changes on the defensive side of the ball over the offseason.

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CREDIT - Sicilian

BelichickFan

I have also moved on from the "only points matter" theory for a much more obvious, less statistical basis. I don't want to revisit that last game we played but their punter killed us putting punts inside the 20 - largely because he has a great day and largely because he wasn't punting from inside his 30 after a 3 and out. I'm not interested in hearing how decent our defnse is because they forced a stop at our 40, allowed the punter drop it inside the 20 and we start our drive on, say, the 8 yard line when a good defense would make him punt, say, 20 yards earlier and give us the ball at the 30 yard line.

Yards may not be on the scoreboard but they do matter.

RelocatedPatFan

I was goign to put together some analysis about yards per possession a few weeks ago, but never really got around to it. I found it interesting that our offense/defense per possession, but I figured there'd be ore context needed to back up the oddities.

Based on ToP and yards per posession, it seems to indicate we gave up yards quickly (though we'd haveto see yards per play on offense/defense to get a better picture).

Still, my take-away was that getting to the middle of the pack for the defense would make the offense that much better (more possessions, fewer yards to go). Though, our D gave up middle of the road in points and excelled at generating turneovers.

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Deus Irae

Just to add to the OP:

The Patriots defense faced 405 rushing attempts and 619 passing attempts (w/ 386 completions). That means that there was probably a higher rate of plays leading to clock stoppages, just because of pass incompletions, than there would be if they'd faced more balanced pass/run numbers, the way a team like Ravens did.

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BradyManny

Good stat and good point.

ivanvamp

Starting field position really matters too. Obviously it's all connected. Here's the starting field position in SB 46.

NYG
NY 23
NY 22
NY 20
NY 23
NY 26
NY 35
NE 48
NY 8
NY 12

AVG: NY 24.5

NE
NE 6
NE 29
NE 20
NE 4
NE 21
NE 17
NE 20
NE 8
NE 20

AVG: NE 16.1

Not one time did the Patriots start a drive further up the field than their own 30. Three times they started inside their own 10. 8 of 9 drives they started at their 21 or worse. Meanwhile, 6 of 9 NY drives started beyond their 21.

The Pats were *ALWAYS* marching uphill. All day long. Tough way to make a living against a solid defense.

EDIT: Essentially, the Pats had a hidden yard disadvantage of more than 75 yards in that game. And 75 yards is about a single touchdown drive's worth of yards. That right there could easily have been the difference in the game.

shmessy

I hope to see the Patriots employ the "Bend But Don't Break Defense" consistently this year.......


.....at the OPPONENT'S 15 yard line.

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