PostGame Thread OFFICIAL 2024 Week 1 Postgame Thread - Patriots Open 1-0 with a win over Cincy

[dliverey44]

I never got the Mayo hate.
He was an obvious rising star and would have gotten a head coaching job somewhere else if Kraft didn't lock him up.
Better a year too soon than too late applies to coaches also.

I loved the hire, but I think there was a lot of initial dislike because folks assumed he was going to be like BB and people wanted a complete change. Then Mayo was more open with the media and people would take things he said and create a narrative. People felt like he contradicted himself often and that led those that disliked the hire to really pile on. Those things and then the continually switching the OL gave the implication that he did not know what he was doing because OL needing to have continuity.

I think there was alot of hate over the AVP hire too because it was more than likely an Eliot Wolf hire or at least introduction. AVP did not have much experience calling the game and people thought that he was a retread. Even though he had actually only been fired once and that was Cleveland because Watson sucks and they needed a scapegoat, my opinion only.

I loved the hire because of his familiarity with BBs defense. Hell he played in it for 8 or 9 years and coached in it for 5 I think. The biggest thing for me was the way he interacts with people. He is a truly leader and I assumed that players would go to war for him. Granted its only been one game.

 

[Jim Beankie]

So why were RB yards before contact so bad? Mainly because Bengals had 8-9 men in the box every running down. Basically the Bengals had no fear of the passing game.

Ah the good ol' days o' 2020. I remember them well. RS was but a weee lil gamete in Papa Rham's longhorn on its way to Mama Ewe's bachelor party favor item (don't ask me how I know).

 

[dliverey44]

Keion White's sacking him 2.5 times did seem relatively pressure free. Like a light breeze while Burrow was skipping in the wind singing "La Di Da that's the name of this song." I think they hugged at the end. Cathartic.

Ummm you have described 3 plays. The Bengals did not sack JB but were in the backfield fairly frequently. The Pats did not put Burrow under the same type of pressure on a consistent basis.

Pressure rate is the total number of pressures divided by the total number of pass-rush snaps. So by identifying 3 plays in which Burrow was sacked doesn't really do anything for your argument.

 

[dliverey44]

I would like to reword my previous statement: I would have hoped the pats pressure rate was higher.

 

[Jim Beankie]

Ummm you have described 3 plays. The Bengals did not sack JB but were in the backfield fairly frequently. The Pats did not put Burrow under the same type of pressure on a consistent basis.

Pressure rate is the total number of pressures divided by the total number of pass-rush snaps. So by identifying 3 plays in which Burrow was sacked doesn't really do anything for your argument.

Do you have a source for pressures on JB? FB Reference seems to not be updated unless it's the anomalies of anomalies (8.6% on Burrow and 3.4%!!! on Brisk. Zap had ~35% the last game. I did watch the game. Maybe I rushed through it and need to do a more through watch, but it may have been a backfield-but-out-of-harms-way-so-no-harm-no-foul sort of deal.

What's weird is that 3 snaps out of 51 39 passing dropbacks is already 6% 8%. Doesn't make sense. You are inspiring me to do another watch, but I'm gonna say f it...

 

[dliverey44]

Do you have a source for pressures on JB? FB Reference seems to not be updated unless it's the anomalies of anomalies (8.6% on Burrow and 3.4%!!! on Brisk. Zap had ~35% the last game. I did watch the game. Maybe I rushed through it and need to do a more through watch, but it may have been a backfield-but-out-of-harms-way-so-no-harm-no-foul sort of deal.

What's weird is that 3 snaps out of 51 is already 6%. Doesn't make sense. You are inspiring me to do another watch, but I'm gonna say

This article is from Evan Lazar, I have not done the math so I don't know how correct this is. "The three elements that weren't a good mix were shaky protection (44.8% pressure rate), a lack of explosives off play-action, and conservative decisions by starter Jacoby Brissett. Despite having 170 rushing yards, Brissett only threw for 26 yards on five play-action pass attempts".


After Further Review: Breaking Down Jacoby Brissett, the Run Game and the Patriots Defense in Win Over Bengals

 

[dliverey44]

Do you have a source for pressures on JB? FB Reference seems to not be updated unless it's the anomalies of anomalies (8.6% on Burrow and 3.4%!!! on Brisk. Zap had ~35% the last game. I did watch the game. Maybe I rushed through it and need to do a more through watch, but it may have been a backfield-but-out-of-harms-way-so-no-harm-no-foul sort of deal.

What's weird is that 3 snaps out of 51 39 passing dropbacks is already 6% 8%. Doesn't make sense. You are inspiring me to do another watch, but I'm gonna say f it...

Sorry me again,

This article is from Mike Dussault and he states the pressure rate on Burrow was 17.1% and 11.1% when only rushing 4. Not having Barmore hurts.

How the Patriots Defense Tamed the Bengals

 

[Jim Beankie]

Sorry me again,

This article is from Mike Dussault and he states the pressure rate on Burrow was 17.1% and 11.1% when only rushing 4. Not having Barmore hurts.

How the Patriots Defense Tamed the Bengals

Thanks for the pieces of info. I did end up watching all of Burrow's snaps again in a very short amount of time, and the above makes more sense. Imho, the reason why there was so little pressure was because his time to throw was incredibly low... Most of it was 2.25 secs or less... a fair amount literally under a sec. When it got close to 3s, he was either running / rolling out, pressured, sacked, or did a dump off. Would love to get the official stats on that once FB Ref is updated (currently at 0.0 time to throw). I'd like to call it a dink and dunk, but there were a few where he'd get it out in 1.5s and it was caught 25 yards down the field, like I'd imagine a maestro would, working the field like TB12, knowing exactly when to throw and how much touch to get it to the exact spot a receiver would get it down the field. That being said, there's a reason why the yards per attempt was 5.7.

I'm not that worried, but food for thought, as your point is duly noted.

 

[dliverey44]

Thanks for the pieces of info. I did end up watching all of Burrow's snaps again in a very short amount of time, and the above makes more sense. Imho, the reason why there was so little pressure was because his time to throw was incredibly low... Most of it was 2.25 secs or less... a fair amount literally under a sec. When it got close to 3s, he was either running / rolling out, pressured, sacked, or did a dump off. Would love to get the official stats on that once FB Ref is updated (currently at 0.0 time to throw). I'd like to call it a dink and dunk, but there were a few where he'd get it out in 1.5s and it was caught 25 yards down the field, like I'd imagine a maestro would, working the field like TB12, knowing exactly when to throw and how much touch to get it to the exact spot a receiver would get it down the field. That being said, there's a reason why the yards per attempt was 5.7.

I'm not that worried, but food for thought, as your point is duly noted.

That is a great point about time to throw, I had been rewatching and focusing on the OL and have not rewatched the defense. I would normally take that into account but have been hyper focused on our OL, so I feel kinda silly for missing something like that. Thank you for the insight.

 

[SlowGettingUp]

All the analytics come back and say passing offense is what wins. Rushing offense is rather irrelevant in terms of making playoffs.

I have no idea how this all relates to the patriots.

 

[DaBruinz]

Way to go out on a limb DB.

I posted it in the 0-4 Thread days prior.

 

[DaBruinz]

I wonder how many games we lost last season because our field goal/xp kicker sucked. Nice to have one that doesn't suck now.

You'll say that right up until Slye missed the 3-4 that he does every year in the Under 30 category.

 

[Lagaffe_07]

So in other word, just play perfect

 

[Lagaffe_07]

I like Mayo confidence but I don’t think that there is many teams that are afraid of Brissett dicing them.

If a team can stop the run, I think we are in trouble with Brissett at QB.

 

[n1997y]

Bedard was concerned that Maye did not come over to listen in on the QB discussions on the sidelines when Brissett conferred with the coaches at various timeouts and situations.He thought it was a wasted opportunity to learn. He said Maye stood at midfield seemingly disinterested.

Maye won’t earn playing time acting like that

 

[PScottman]

I am not following the connection to James Earl Jones. Please splain

"I find your lack of faith disturbing" is just a little too close of a quote - it sounded purposeful, although it seems per the above it was not.

 

[Jim Beankie]

At some point, they'll let the grill warm up enough and cook some Brisket.

I said it in jest, but I did notice 3 starts ago for him, they really fired up some Brisket. It was highly likely a "rack up the yards on a prevent defense" type of thing, but 28-41 324yds 3TD 0INT (1 lost fumble though) against the Bills is pretty darn good. 2 starts ago, he beat his mentor aka the GOAT.

Cleveland Browns at Buffalo Bills - November 20th, 2022 | Pro-Football-Reference.com

Cleveland Browns 23 at Buffalo Bills 31 on November 20th, 2022 - Full team and player stats and box score

www.pro-football-reference.com

 

[Jim Beankie]

Something is not right on that team. They should be better than that.

At least it wasn't as bad as last year's opener when Burrow was 14 for 31 82yds 0TD+INT with Higgins 0 recs on EIGHT targets. In each of Burrow's seasons, they started 2-9, 4-4, 7-6, and 5-5. Each year had at least 1 bad Burrow injury with 2 season enders. Starting to creep into Andrew Luck endgame territory here. 1 major injury away. 1st game back after injury, I can see why they were being conservative.

 

[KCSVEN]

Not sure the point of that, in recent NFL history it's obvious passing relates to playoffs, rushing does not. The average NFL winning team is scoring 23 points, so 20 or under makes sense. The study below also proves it but I bet the effect is much more toward passing in recent history as this is from 2005, passing offenses are way more efficient today, I'd say the evidence is OVERWHELMING that a good/great passing offense is a guarantee of making the playoffs, rushing offense has no real effect on making playoffs. Partly because teams can stack the box and stop the run and playoff teams can stop run without stacking the box, much harder to stop a great passing attack.

Teams that win the turnover margin win the game almost 70 percent of the time.
Teams that win TOP win 67% of games

So in 900 regular season games, about 4% of this stat applies. When you just take out TO margin it leaves you with 13-14 games where the other things mattered.

Analyses by Jeremy Arkes, Associate Professor of Economics, Graduate School of Business and Public Policy, Naval Postgraduate School:

A problem with these simple assessments is that teams that are winning will rush the ball more to run out the clock and reduce the chance of turnovers and will often wait until the clock runs down before starting a play. So, if a team is heading towards victory, they are likely to increase their rushing yards while boosting their time of possession
The twist in this analysis is that the model corrects for endogeneity by using the first-half statistics. This essentially strips a large portion of the endogenous component from these statistics, as teams are not likely to change strategies to “ball preservation” or “speedy catch up” until the second half. Given that 78.5 percent of teams leading at halftime in 2005 games ended up winning the game, having a halftime advantage in many of these statistics should contribute to a higher probability of winning
This paper is the first analysis to model a production function for winning an NFL game based on in-game statistics. This carefully constructed framework, which models victories based on home-team over away-team statistics, can be used for other models for winning games in the NFL or in other sports leagues.

The results of this analysis cast doubt on the contention that the key to winning games in the NFL is to control the rushing game. The results do indicate that having a rushing advantage for the full game is positively correlated with the probability of winning and having a passing advantage for the full game is not correlated with winning, holding other factors constant. However, these correlations are likely due to endogeneity, in that full-game rushing and passing yards are partly products of a team’s success during the game. In other words, as demonstrated in this paper, the strategy for second-half rushing-passing mix depends on where a team stands at halftime. This means that we cannot label these correlations as causal influences.
#### Results

I find that having a first-half passing-yard advantage increases the probability of winning, but having a first-half rushing-yard advantage has no significant effect.
The results in this analysis suggest that NFL coaches may be more successful if they were to place more emphasis on the passing game than on the running game

Is Controlling the Rushing or Passing Game the Key to NFL Victories?

Jeremy Arkes, Associate Professor of Economics, Graduate School of Business and Public Policy, Naval Postgraduate School ### Abstract #### Purpose To evaluate whether controlling the running game or the passing game contributes more to winning in the NFL. #### Methods This analysis uses...

thesportjournal.org

 

[Ross12]

At least it wasn't as bad as last year's opener when Burrow was 14 for 31 82yds 0TD+INT with Higgins 0 recs on EIGHT targets. In each of Burrow's seasons, they started 2-9, 4-4, 7-6, and 5-5. Each year had at least 1 bad Burrow injury with 2 season enders. Starting to creep into Andrew Luck endgame territory here. 1 major injury away. 1st game back after injury, I can see why they were being conservative.

How were they being conservative though?