lamafist
Rotational Player and Threatening Starter's Job
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Great thread! I don't necessarily agree with your conclusion, though.
You raise a truly salient point when you bring up the difference in average starting field position, but I think that 'yards per drive' is sort of a 'neither here nor there' stat. For an offense that scores a lot, yards per drive is increased by poorer average field position, a variation due not to the offense being any better, but there simply being more field to cover.
In this case, I think points per drive is the more useful metric. In 2010, the Pats averaged 2.9 pts per drive compared to 2.79 in 2011. The difference of 0.2 is actually pretty close to the the difference in expected points between starting drives at the 33 vs. 29 yard lines is 0.3. Now, you can't really create an 'adjusted points per drive' that simply, but still -- it does lend support to your argument that a better average starting field position makes the 2010 offense look better.
That said, there are some areas in which the Patriots' offense got worse that aren't really affected by starting field position. The 2011 Patriots turned the ball over on 9.2% of their possessions compared to 5.7% of the time in 2010, which amounted to a ~60% increase in turnover rate. (Though the good news is that after throwing 10 INTs in the first 8 games, Brady threw 2 the rest of the way.)
Still, I think that in terms of point production efficiency, you can at best argue that the two offenses were roughly equivalent, and this is all before you take into consideration that the '10 offense faced a significantly more difficult slate of defenses.
I think the tendency is to discount just how amazing efficient the 2010 offense was because of how the season ended. One shouldn't -- the poor timing of the offense having its worst game of the season doesn't change what it was able to do the rest of the year. The 2010 offense's performance was one for the ages in a way that this year's hasn't been.
The question is, how does one reconcile the observable drop-off in scoring efficiency with the fact that three of the team's best offensive play-makers are equally observably operating at a higher level than they were last year.
Welker was clearly hampered by his knee rehab last year, and this season, he's even managed to add a new facet to his game, catching opposing d-backs off guard by running more deep posts and fly routes. And do I even need to get into the work being done by Gronk and Hernandez this season? Gronk's YAC has been ridiculous, his hands unbelievable, and his body control and ability to use his size to give Brady a safe spot to throw it to are just nuts. Even more impressively, these guys are catching passes all over the field. In recent games, BB and BOB seemed to be specifically getting Gronk some work catching passes along the middle-deep sideline, and he's been as great there as everywhere else. Hernandez has always run more typical WR routes.
I think these players' improvements have at times been counterbalanced by some problems along the offensive line, stemming mostly from having to adjust after losing our long-time center, while also working in a rookie starter (due to Vollmer's prolonged absence) and a new veteran at RG. While both Waters and Solder have looked good winning their one-on-one matchups, one has to wonder if their newness to the Pats' offense is responsible for the rash of missed assignments that plagued the offense early in the season.
In the end, I see the 2010 offense as one playing right up against their overall lower ceiling. The 2011 offense hasn't been able to play as tightly with the same consistency, but I think this offense doesn't have the limitations that the Jets were able to take advantage of in last year's postseason.
