Interesting drive stats analysis

[QuantumMechanic]

From commenter Anonymous1 on the AFCCG Preview post at Football Outsiders:

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.

 

[Calciumee]

I have absolutely no idea what that means

 

[jmt57]

I think along with that I would say that it is imperative that when - not if, when - Brady gets hit it doesn't result in a turnover. I know this is stating the obvious but it's far better to take a sack or throw the ball away and punt than it is to turn the ball over and give the opponent easy points.

In this game that may be true even more so because they don't have an elite offense; not scoring and being forced to punt to them is not the end of the world. If they had an offense like the Packers or Saints or Colts from a few years ago not scoring and giving them the ball would be a bigger concern.

I think the Pats may get away with turning the ball over once, but two or more turnovers will make it very difficult to win.

 

[jmt57]

I have absolutely no idea what that means

The way I read it, it says Baltimore thrives on the defense setting up the offense with a short drive via a turnover.

Don't turn the ball over and the Ravens are in trouble.

On the other hand though the Pats defense does help out by forcing turnovers, the offense is capable of driving the length of the field to score.


Something like that ...

 

[RelocatedPatFan]

Note to Hernandez: when going for the extra yards, cover the ball up like Gronk when you feel you are about to be tackled; probably a good idea for all of them. Don't have to worry about Branch as he'll go down if it's close, unless he needs to extra yards for a first down (can't blame him with his injury history and it seems fairly smart to me).

 

[RobertWeathers]

The way I read it, it says Baltimore thrives on the defense setting up the offense with a short drive via a turnover.

Don't turn the ball over and the Ravens are in trouble.

On the other hand though the Pats defense does help out by forcing turnovers, the offense is capable of driving the length of the field to score.


Something like that ...

That's pretty accurate. I thought the poster did a good job of trying to show that the BAL offense is not really that efficient even though they are 9th in yards per point.

Other metrics for BAL that might help with the confusion:

-20th in Red Zone attempts per game (they don't get a lot as they aren't in the red zone a lot)
-13th red zone TDs (not bad converting)
-21st in yards per play (lots of plays don't get them much anyway so they are't really that explosive)

They more often than not get great field position because the defense is forcing a number of turnovers and 3-n-outs or 6-n-outs.