LOL, is this OP seriously this dense? This is an age-old football cliche, that just needs to die already.
When a team is protecting a lead in the 4th Q; what do they do? They run the ball! Why? Because they want to run out the clock. That's why you'll see more rushing attempts in wins. This is so painfully obvious. A key example of how correlation does not equal causation. /derp
You should really go back and look at Ridley’s splits before referring to anyone as dense because your ignorance of this situation is apparent.
2012 yards by quarter:
Q1 – 327
Q2 – 186
Q3 – 470
Q4 – 280
2013 yards by quarter:
Q1 – 121
Q2 – 103
Q3 – 65
Q4 – 31
The 4TH quarter and 2ND quarter are actually where Ridley gains the least of his yards, this year he has gain the most yards in the 1ST quarter and last season he gained the most in the 3RD quarter, ironically this season are worst offensive quarter is the 3RD. Now call me crazy but maybe but maybe if Stevan Ridley the player who ran for 470 yards and 5.1 YPC last season during the 3RD quarter had received more than 18 carries in the 3RD over the first 7 games of the season we may have scored more than 9 points total in 3RD quarters this season.
The dense comment must feel pretty stupid right about now huh? Before you roll up on your high horse throwing out insults you should probably make sure you actually know WTF you’re talking about – some free advice my not so dense friend.
...and it turns out you really are
this dense; because your attempt at a counter-point does absolutely nothing to address the issues that I brought up in the first place.
Let's recap: You cited Ridley's games w/ 20+ rush attempts in their correlation to wins. Ok. But I (and a few others) already told you that rushing attempts will go up because the winning team will want to run out the clock. Likewise, a team that is losing will most often keep throwing. A pretty simple point.
Now do me a favor and go re-read your counter-argument, what I just, quoted above. You posted the rushing yards-per-quarter in an attempt to refute...uh...
what, exactly? I mean, what does Ridley's yards-per-quarter have to do with your "20+rush-attempts" argument, or the criticism made against it? I really have to take a step back and wonder how to connect-the-dots here, because it sounds like you have no clue as to what is being discussed. Have you done anything to even address, let alone refute, my aforementioned argument? No. In fact I have to wonder if you even
grasped the argument in the first place, because randomly going from citing winning games with 20+ rush attempts to a breakdown of rushing yards-per-quarter really does nothing to support your own argument, let alone refute mine.
I mean, the best I can infer -- and I have to take a few leaps in logic, here -- is that you trying to infer that The Patriots
don't run the ball that much in the 4th with a lead, or something. Well, If so?
A) You've randomly switched from rush
attempts to rush
yards, so your point (whatever it may be) is moot.
B) The yards-per-Q stats do not make any distinction between winning games and losing games; so again, your point (er, what?) is moot.
C) Even if we ignore the above; The simple fact that a winning team will try to run out the clock in the 4th does
not mean that they will have more rush attempts (let alone yards) in the 4th than in any other quarter, or their stats are artificially inflated, or whatever. All it means is that they'll tack on some extra rushes that probably wouldn't have happened if they were losing. That's an easy way to go up from a number of rushing attempts in the mid-to-late teens, to going into the twenties. Something that probably wouldn't have happened if they were losing in the 4th, and thus still throwing in the last minute to regain a lead. That's why 20+ rushes correlate to wins.
So yeah, you've done very little to support your own argument. Hell, you really haven't even stayed on topic. But hey? Look on the bright-side, you've
totally supported my point about how dense you are. Congrats!