Another Breakdown of the Pats Offense

PonyExpress · Oct 11, 2006

Stats from footballoutsiders.com offer a different perspective on the 2006 Pats' offense as a whole and Tom Brady's performance to date...

Patriot Drive Stats (with NFL rank)

2006
yards/drive: 31.96 (6)
pts/drive: 1.96 (9)
TDs/drive: .241 (5)
Punts/drive: .407 (9)
TOs/drive: .093 (9)
Ints/drive: .056 (13)
Fumb/drive: .037 (11)
LOS/drive: 30.35 (13)
Drive Success Percentage (% of down series that result in a 1st down or TD): .725 (#2 in the NFL!)

Lets compare these numbers with last year's when Branch, Givens et. al. were running the routes for Brady...

2005
yards/drive: 31.71 (6)
pts/drive: 2.04 (7)
TDs/drive: .244 (5)
Punts/drive: .422 (15)
TOs/drive: .139 (17)
Ints/drive: .083 (15)
Fumbles/drive: .056 (15)
LOS/drive: 29.86 (24)
Drive Success %: .711 (6)

Analysis: So far this year, the Pats are moving the ball a bit farther per drive than last year, are scoring almost the exact same # of TDs per drive, punting less, throwing fewer INTs, fumbling less, have better field position to start out drives, and have a better drive success rate... Enough to rank #2 behind the Colts in that statistic. Considering the turnover in personnel, this is eye-opening. Now lets compare this season with Charlie's last two seasons...

2004
yards/drive: 33.96 (6)
points/drive: 2.37 (5)
TDs/drive: .260 (5)
Punts/drive: .331 (3)
TOs/drive: .154 (20)
Ints/drive: .083 (13)
Fumb/drive: .071 (26)
LOS/drive: 31.37 (11)
DSP: .733 (5)

Analysis: the rankings from 2006 are comparable with 2004, except that in 2006 the Offense is doing a better chance of avoiding turnovers, whether by fumble or interception, while in 2004 the offense did a bit better at converting drives into points. But the drive success percentages are comparable for both years.

A look at 2003:
Yards/drive: 25.69 (20)
points/drive:1.57 (16)
Tds/drive: 1.68 (17)
punts/drive: .455 (24)
TOs/drive:.126 (10)
Ints/drive:.068 (6)
Fumb/drive.058 (21)
LOS/drive: 33.55 (5)
DSP: .649 (17)

Analysis: The 2006 offense, so far, is better cumulatively in almost every area than the SB offense of 2003, with the exception of average starting Line of Scrimmage, which is likely the result of a superior defense in 2003 giving the offense short fields via turnovers.

Tom Brady

footballoutsiders.com uses two statistics to measure a Qbs performance: DPAR, or total value; and DVOA, total value per play. Combined into their analysis are rushing stats, sacks taken, and fumbles, unlike the infamous and widely criticized "passer rating". Here are those stats for Brady this year, with NFL rank, and since 2003:

2006
DPAR: 22.0 (7)
DVOA: 17.4% (10)

2005
DPAR: 104.0 (3)
DVOA: 30.9% (4)

2004
DPAR: 113.4 (3)
DVOA: 41.6% (2)

2003
DPAR: 44.2 (10)
DVOA: 5.6% (14)

Analysis: In 2006 Brady, while not as elite a passer as in the last 2 years, is still outperforming his 2003 season by a wide margin. With all the problems, inconsistencies, frustration of this years passing game, Brady still rates cumulatively as the #7 passer in the NFL. We can expect with each week his performance will improve. The fact he can still perform at that level, after losing Branch and Givens, speaks to his quality as a player. In fact, one could argue that those circumstances make his performance thus far among his best ever.

Overall conclusion
The 2006 Offense can be a SB offense. Brady is as good as ever, the cumulative performance of the offense is as good as ever. As BB says, he doesn't care how the offense moves the ball, by air or ground, as long as it moves. So far in 2006, the engine has been the ground game. The one area of concern that argues against this offense being a SB offense: In '04, under Weis, the offense seemed to perform at its best against the best defenses. In '05 and '06, under McDaniels, the offense seems to perform worse against the best defenses (Denver and Miami). Also, in 2003-4, among the many records the Pats set was "games in a row when scoring first". The team usually scored on its first drive and dictated tempo the rest of the way. In 2006, the Pats struggle to score on their first drive, and fail to dictate the tempo of the game as before. But all in all, contrary to my own fears there is reason for optimism, and the offense, although inconsistent, is more effective than the naked eye suggests.

Oswlek · Oct 11, 2006

Thank you for posting this. It is a very good breakdown. What many people forget, and what is not factored into the points/drive equation, are the kneel downs in enemy territory.

As good as these numbers look, I will agree with those that have some issues that NE hasn't had great answers for the two quality Ds faced. What I alos have that many of them lack is patience and a belief that the team will improve.

BelichickFan · Oct 11, 2006

Oswlek said:
As good as these numbers look, I will agree with those that have some issues that NE hasn't had great answers for the two quality Ds faced. What I alos have that many of them lack is patience and a belief that the team will improve.

I don't have time to compare them but I bet our 2005 numbers vs. Denver and Miami aren't much different than our 2006 numbers.

PonyExpress · Oct 11, 2006

The "Drive Success Percentage" actually removes "kneel-downs" to get a more accurate measurement... those football oursiders guys are hard core...

5 Rings for Brady!! · Oct 11, 2006

Very nice post, the type we look for at this site!

Not to be the devil's advocate, but 2003 was the year that Brady was injured, and had his worst statistical season by a longshot. We happened to have the number one defense in turn-overs and points allowed, featuring a heat seeking missle named Rodney, and an unmovable object named Washington.

But, other than that caveat, I like your compilation of stats.

I think that the offense is really benefitting from the running game. I still think the passing game will kick in as well in a bigger way.

With our schedule, I still am hoping for 13-3 and maybe a bi-week.

SpiritOf76 · Oct 11, 2006

It sure has been good to see our normal 1-2 punch of running backs have been hanging onto the rock in a big way. <crosses fingers>

If my stats research is correct : 0 fumbles in 2006 for Dillon-Maroney

Here's hoping they keep that up through the sleet, snow, and sand.

Notice I didn't mention Faulk. When I see him falling out-of-control on a crucial runback, I have to hold my breath.

Oswlek · Oct 11, 2006

PonyExpress said:
The "Drive Success Percentage" actually removes "kneel-downs" to get a more accurate measurement... those football oursiders guys are hard core...

I am aware of how sophisticated Footballoutsiders gets, but even they don't add in the points that likely would have been scored at the end of the Buff and Miami games.

Krugman · Oct 11, 2006

Good post,PE,football outsiders is always a must-read.

BradyManny · Oct 11, 2006

Oswlek said:
I am aware of how sophisticated Footballoutsiders gets, but even they don't add in the points that likely would have been scored at the end of the Buff and Miami games.

Good point. Also, I think we're all also forgetting what a huge impact Dillon's absence for the majority of the Denver and Miami games made.

captain stone · Oct 11, 2006

Wow. Those statistics are excellent, quantifiable indicators of offensive success. Perhaps it's too early in the season to draw comparisons; after the dolts game, I think, is a good time to start. Keep us up-to-date, please.

rabthepat · Oct 12, 2006

Interesting...very interesting.

flutie2phelan · Oct 12, 2006

captain stone said:
Wow. Those statistics are excellent, quantifiable indicators of offensive success.

Facts and data, data and facts.
That's all some of you people ever think about.
Gimme a good old-fashioned arbitrary
opinion
any day.

Brownfan80 · Oct 12, 2006

5 Rings for Brady!! said:
Not to be the devil's advocate, but 2003 was the year that Brady was injured, and had his worst statistical season by a longshot. We happened to have the number one defense in turn-overs and points allowed, featuring a heat seeking missle named Rodney, and an unmovable object named Washington.

2001 264 of 413 (63.9%) 2843 yards 6.9 AVG 18 TD 12 INT 86.5 Rating

2002 373 of 601 (62.1%) 3764 yards 6.3 AVG 28 TD 14 INT 85.7 Rating

2003 317 of 527 (60.2%) 3620 yards 6.9 AVG 23 TD 12 INT 85.9 Rating

2004 288 of 474 (60.8%) 3692 yards 7.8 AVG 28 TD 14 INT 92.6 Rating

2005 334 of 530 (63.0%) 4110 yards 7.8 AVG 26 TD 14 INT 92.3 Rating

I'm not sure how Brady's 2003 season was the worst of his career by far.. His TDs went down from 28 to 23, a loss of five from 2002, but his INTs also went down by 2 and his Average went up from 6.3 to 6.9 while his percentage dropped just under 2% while attempting 74 fewer passes but only throwing for 144 fewer yards.

Brady has been amazingly consistent through his time in the NFL, I fail to see any season that looks markedly worse than another. He's not like Bledsoe who has had extreme dips depending on the season.

But on the topic of the main post - I'll say that for all of the playcalling bashing that goes on, they are obviously ignoring the most important part of what our offense is doing this season: Finding a way to move the ball and finding a way to score regardless of the pattern the plays are called in.

It's not perfect yet, far from it in fact, but the stats do not lie. We're a top ten offense in the NFL right now. Say what you want of the playcalling, but it's not holding this offense back half as much as many belly-achers claim. Just imagine what these guys will be able to do once the passing game truly jells and the playcalling can open up a bit more.

This has the potential to be one of our best offenses ever in the history of the franchise. I would have never said that before the season started, but now the statistics and figures are backing it up.

I think that some people just focus too much on the sequence of events that they lose the actual game scenarios that have dictated those calls. They miss the forest for the trees.

Great info, thanks for posting it.

5 Rings for Brady!! · Oct 12, 2006

The football outsider stats tell much more of the story than raw data. If you watched all the games in 2003, nothing was clicking on offense at many times. They wouldn't have won the superbowl without that defense. Other seasons, even 2002, the offense flowed a lot better, until a rookie would drop a pass. 2001 was not a full season of data, but his lack of touchdowns had a lot to do with a solid goal line running game.

2003 was the year that you could see Brady in pain each game, and struggling a lot. They had no running game for the most part, yet he didn't have the yards or DVOA/DPAR stats of 2005. It was 3 and out and depend on the defense. They wouldn't have gone anywhere that year with an average defense. That was the best defense of all time for the Patriot franchise. Brady's stats benefitted a lot from that defense, as opposed to other seasons where things were clicking. 2001, 2002, and 2004 were years were our offense really clicked along for the most part in the regular season, with rookies being the culprit in 2002. We would have been a good team in 2002 with an average to above average defense.

By the way, I tend to use the Football Outsider DVOA/DPAR stats more than raw data, because they tell a lot more about how Brady arrived at his 23 touchdowns, and it wasn't pretty. We needed the best defense in team history that year, believe me. Brady was injured, and there was no running game. I don't blame him for having a tough year, but his DVOA/DPAR stats would have looked more like 2005 if the offense was showing any signs of life.

My point is that unless we have the number one defense in points allowed and turn-overs this year, I wouldn't aspire to 2003's DVOA/DPAR stats. And I consider DVOA/DPAR stats to be far more accurate than any raw data.

arrellbee · Oct 12, 2006

PonyExpress
Thanks for taking the time to post all of that data.

Perhaps you could update this every couple weeks or so ?? I for one would like to see that.

What I think a lot of folks don't quite realize is how pragmatic Bill Belichick's approach is. And how successful that has proven to be. What you are going to see week in and week out are plays called that appear in film review, game planning, and practice to have the most likely chance of overall success. He is not going to try to change the team's overall repertoire of plays on a knee-jerk basis from week to week. ((It is, however, obvious from comments that he has made that they are continually looking for possibilities to add to the full playbook when they discover them - but they will be methodically installed and practiced until they become a solid play to use.)) If you pay much attention to his comments, you understand that on a given week they pick a subset of plays from the playbook that they feel give them the best chance for success against the opponent. I personally believe that once that set of plays is selected that you won't see during a game some play pulled out the overall playbook that wasn't installed that week in practice for the game. - again, a very patient pragmatic approach of doing your best planning and then just concentrating on execution the best that the team can accomplish.

I think folks also lose sight of the fact that play calling has to be done to meet a number of objectives.

Early in the game, plays that are in this weeks play set have to be tried to see what kind of success they will have against the actual defense.

Running plays have to be run, even if they are not overly successful at the start of the game, in order to let the O-Line and RBs get an idea of what will and won't work. It is also crucial to get some wear on the defense to set up more success later in the game.

Pass plays have to be run, even if they are not overly successful at the start of the game, in order to find out how the defense is going to try to defend the pass.

So MANY times, you see the Patriots win the game in the fourth quarter (very notably also in the Charlie Weiss era). Much of this comes from wearing down the defense earlier in the game and from finding out which plays will and won't work so that late drives can take advantage of these.

I think folks also ignore a very crucial aspect of the Patriots success. Belichick manages games to have the best chance of winning given the situation. A lot of media pundits and other team's fans have no clue about this - they belittle the Pats for winning by such low margins much of the time. What they fail to understand at all - and so many other coaches seem to not grasp fully - is that overall success if greater if you concentrate on at least getting a few more points rather than take a higher risk approach which sometimes works out and sometimes loses.

I think that PonyExpress' stats show how consistent Belichick's approach is. While some teams get a flash-in-the-pan success one year and then don't even make the playoffs the next, Belichick's approach appears to be successful in keeping the Patriots at a consistent solid level of play which works best for long term and continued success.

I think Brownsfan80 summed it up pretty well:

I think that some people just focus too much on the sequence of events that they lose the actual game scenarios that have dictated those calls. They miss the forest for the trees.

On a similar topic, I think that one of the things I was most impressed about during the Charlie Weiss era was, even considering the early game objectives I mentioned above, the string of games where the Patriots scored first. This was really impressive. I wonder if the game plannning has gone away from this 'early strike' approach or if the first drive script is not as good as Charlie's or if they just aren't exectuting as well. It seemed like a pretty good formula - to get some points first to put pressure on the other team and then go into the early game setup to wear down the defense and figure out what plays were working for use later in the game.

In any case, there seems like every chance that the offense can get better and that the Patriots can methodically tune the offense and defense to contend for another superbowl. Great times.

Brownfan80 · Oct 12, 2006

Good points, 5 Rings, it just shows that there's always a story beneath the story.

MoLewisrocks · Oct 12, 2006

arrellbee said:
PonyExpress
Thanks for taking the time to post all of that data.

Perhaps you could update this every couple weeks or so ?? I for one would like to see that.

What I think a lot of folks don't quite realize is how pragmatic Bill Belichick's approach is. And how successful that has proven to be. What you are going to see week in and week out are plays called that appear in film review, game planning, and practice to have the most likely chance of overall success. He is not going to try to change the team's overall repertoire of plays on a knee-jerk basis from week to week. ((It is, however, obvious from comments that he has made that they are continually looking for possibilities to add to the full playbook when they discover them - but they will be methodically installed and practiced until they become a solid play to use.)) If you pay much attention to his comments, you understand that on a given week they pick a subset of plays from the playbook that they feel give them the best chance for success against the opponent. I personally believe that once that set of plays is selected that you won't see during a game some play pulled out the overall playbook that wasn't installed that week in practice for the game. - again, a very patient pragmatic approach of doing your best planning and then just concentrating on execution the best that the team can accomplish.

I think folks also lose sight of the fact that play calling has to be done to meet a number of objectives.

Early in the game, plays that are in this weeks play set have to be tried to see what kind of success they will have against the actual defense.

Running plays have to be run, even if they are not overly successful at the start of the game, in order to let the O-Line and RBs get an idea of what will and won't work. It is also crucial to get some wear on the defense to set up more success later in the game.

Pass plays have to be run, even if they are not overly successful at the start of the game, in order to find out how the defense is going to try to defend the pass.

So MANY times, you see the Patriots win the game in the fourth quarter (very notably also in the Charlie Weiss era). Much of this comes from wearing down the defense earlier in the game and from finding out which plays will and won't work so that late drives can take advantage of these.

I think folks also ignore a very crucial aspect of the Patriots success. Belichick manages games to have the best chance of winning given the situation. A lot of media pundits and other team's fans have no clue about this - they belittle the Pats for winning by such low margins much of the time. What they fail to understand at all - and so many other coaches seem to not grasp fully - is that overall success if greater if you concentrate on at least getting a few more points rather than take a higher risk approach which sometimes works out and sometimes loses.

I think that PonyExpress' stats show how consistent Belichick's approach is. While some teams get a flash-in-the-pan success one year and then don't even make the playoffs the next, Belichick's approach appears to be successful in keeping the Patriots at a consistent solid level of play which works best for long term and continued success.

I think Brownsfan80 summed it up pretty well:

On a similar topic, I think that one of the things I was most impressed about during the Charlie Weiss era was, even considering the early game objectives I mentioned above, the string of games where the Patriots scored first. This was really impressive. I wonder if the game plannning has gone away from this 'early strike' approach or if the first drive script is not as good as Charlie's or if they just aren't exectuting as well. It seemed like a pretty good formula - to get some points first to put pressure on the other team and then go into the early game setup to wear down the defense and figure out what plays were working for use later in the game.

In any case, there seems like every chance that the offense can get better and that the Patriots can methodically tune the offense and defense to contend for another superbowl. Great times.

Excellent points arrellbee. Some of want to understand what they do and why they do it. Others just want them to do something else or something "better". I look at the track record and I am firmly in the respect their judgement camp. None of our armchair OC's, HC's or QB's has access to as thorough a knowledge and understanding of the opposition our personnel face from week to week, or a truly informed grasp of the realistic potential of our available personnel at any given juncture.

And I think overwhleming injuries in 2005 (including our QB, C, LT, top 3 RB's) and mindboggling defections in 2006 (all but the #4WR from the 2005 team) which are necessitating installing an entirely new WR corps (save that #4 who is functioning as a #1 during the transition) has had a little something to do with our lagging first strike capabiliy. Charlie had an emerging #1 and #2 WR on board and fully functional in 2003. #1 was MIA early in 2004 but there was a #2 well versed enough to step up to #1 in addition to a motivated new down hill running potential HOF RB weapon to play with that season. Shock and awe as I recall! This season we may have shock back with a two headed RB monster when Dillon isn't dinged up, but awe is still stuck in a group wide WR learning curve. It will come.

DarrylS · Oct 12, 2006

Great thread thank you Pony Express, Brown Fan 80, Arralbee and the rest.. nice to read something besides blaming a coordinator or something is wrong with Brady. We all know things will get better as the season moves along.

I also hope you both do it again in about 3 weeks to see where we are.. once again thank you for your intelligent work.

mosi · Oct 12, 2006

All of these stats convince me that statistics are useless. You have to be blind not to see that Tom, at times, is not playing well. Is this his fault or the fault of the receivers? I don't know but it is obvious to me.

The great thing is that when he needs to turn it on, he still can. Witness the last drive of the Miami game, where he made some (typical of the old Brady) great throws.

Regardless, I am not that worried about the offense. This team will win on defense, just like in 2003. The offense just has to play well enough to score 20 points per game. If it can, I don't think we loose another game.

captain stone · Oct 12, 2006

mosi said:
All of these stats convince me that statistics are useless. You have to be blind not to see that Tom, at times, is not playing well. Is this his fault or the fault of the receivers? I don't know but it is obvious to me.

The great thing is that when he needs to turn it on, he still can. Witness the last drive of the Miami game, where he made some (typical of the old Brady) great throws.

Regardless, I am not that worried about the offense. This team will win on defense, just like in 2003. The offense just has to play well enough to score 20 points per game. If it can, I don't think we loose another game.

Agree with the Brady analysis. Let me repeat: I am not convinced of the ability of these new WRs to sufficiently grasp enough of the offensive playbook, even by season's end, and to properly execute it, including gaining separation and making the catches.

On the other hand, surely you are not comparing our defense in 2003 to our defense in 2006, are you? Because there will be games in which 20 ppg will not be enough to win.

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