Chalk Talk: Year by Year by the Numbers

[KDawg]

Feel free to comment in this post. TK is working on getting a sub forum up to put each post without comments

There are some minor things to clean up on this post, I know. But I've been working on this in my free time for the last few days, forgive me

The thumbnails can be clicked on the actual blog page if you have problem seeing them here. Follow the link below to enlarge them.

PS: I had a hell of a time formatting this damned thing. Any hints on formatting this sucker a little better would be greatly appreciated via PM (You'll get credit if I go with your format, I just want this thread to be comments on the year by year analysis only )

http://dawgvision.blogspot.com/2009/...y-numbers.html

This is a post reviewing our yearly averages in Rush Yards Per Game, Rush Yards Per Carry, Pass Yards Per Game, Pass Yards Per Attempt, Pass Yards Per Completion, Completion Percentage, Total Yards Per Game, Total Yards Per Play, 3rd Down Conversions, Fourth Down Conversions and Turnover Ratio.

These charts are strictly on a by the numbers basis and not analyzed further than what they are. Take from them what you will.

The charts provided will graph the offensive numbers versus the defensive numbers in order to show if there's any correlation between our "winning" seasons and "losing" seasons based strictly on the statistics, which admittedly don't always tell the entire story, but it's a start.

Rush Yards Per Game. Pretty self explanatory here. Every season for the past five seasons, our offense has rushed for more yards per game than our defense allowed. That is very good news and encouraging. Our running game and rush defense, as a whole, appear to be doing quite well. Yards per game were actually quite low in 2004, though.

Once again, every season in the past five years has been even or tilted more towards the offense in rushing yards per carry. In 2004 the defense actually only allowed 3.1 rush yards per game. That's ridiculous on many levels. Our offense averaged UNDER four yards a carry twice (2004 and 2007) and our defense only allowed OVER four yards a carry twice (2005 and 2006).

Our offense only averaged more yards per game in two seasons (2005 and 2007). For the most part, we were pretty even here, though, with the exception of 2004 and 2006 where we were outgained by quite a few yards per game in the air.

Okay, this is where it got interesting. According to the stats on nfl.com we had a higher number as far as average per COMPLETION, which likely means we'd have a higher number in average per ATTEMPT here. However, I took from our TOTAL pass yards, that includes sacks for loss, the stats on nfl.com do NOT account for sacks.

Yards per Attempt take into consideration every pass thrown for us and against us. Incomplete or completed doesn't make a difference. How ever many times we threw or they threw, this is the amount of yards they got per play. This is an area that both our offense and defense can seemingly use improvement on.

This is the same story as the yards per attempt above. I took sacks into consideration.

We allowed almost a first down PER completion defensively every single year the past five seasons. Ouch. In turn, offensively, we averaged over ten yards per completion in three years. Not bad, but that stat needs to be over ten each and every season.

Self explanatory. 2004 and 2006 are the only years where our defense allowed a higher completion percentage than the offense.

Our offense got more yards per game than our defense allowed in every season except in 2006. That's an encouraging stat based on our defensive output. Alot of our total yards are dependent on our rushing game, which is great, but we could use more production from our passing game (not that this chart tells us that, just sayin' )

More self explanatory charts. Our offense was over or at five yards per play in four of the five seasons. Our defense only allowed over five yards per play twice. Not bad for either unit.

3rd Down Conversions. The defensive stat is how often they allowed a conversion on third down, obviously, the offensive stat is how often we got a first down on third down. I think we could use improvement offensively, and we need to stay below 35% every season defensively as well. Allowing a team a first down on third down once every three attempts isn't too bad statistically. We should aim there.

We allow an absolutely alarming rate of fourth down conversions. I don't have the exact numbers here, but I'd imagine these are pretty much mostly all short yardage situations with the occasional exception here and there. We allow too many and we definitely don't convert enough of them. This needs to improve. Last season appeared to be a step in the right direction offensively, but not so much defensively.

We've had a positive turnover ratio ONCE in the past five seasons and it was at +1. That's no good. We had a -5 TWICE. We need to force more turnovers and take better care of the ball.

Stay tuned, next Chalk Talk thread will be a breakdown game by game of the 2008 season where I measure our average with our peaks and valleys throughout the season.

Then we'll get in to the real X and O talk

[SpringfieldSkins]

I like it KDawg.


I love stats. I especially love stats when they are in visual form for easy comparison to other stats.


Very good job man.

[KDawg]

Like I said in the OP, if anyone has any suggestions on formatting let me know. I did the charts in excel, had to screen print and import to paint, crop, upload to blogspot, format there, post that. Come here, copy/paste then go through and put all the image tags in each spot here.

Seems like there has to be an easier way

Let me know via PM if you know of one, please

[SpringfieldSkins]

Like I said in the OP, if anyone has any suggestions on formatting let me know. I did the charts in excel, had to screen print and import to paint, crop, upload to blogspot, format there, post that. Come here, copy/paste then go through and put all the image tags in each spot here.

Seems like there has to be an easier way

Let me know via PM if you know of one, please

What a pain in the ass!


The charts are too small to read, so I had to read your comments below every chart. I would assume if there were a sub forum for stuff like this, you could make the charts large enough to read.


But I love the graphs. Call me crazy, but I love graphs.

[KDawg]

What a pain in the ass!


The charts are too small to read, so I had to read your comments below every chart. I would assume if there were a sub forum for stuff like this, you could make the charts large enough to read.


But I love the graphs. Call me crazy, but I love graphs.

Click the link to the actual blog. You can click each thumbnail to enlarge

I'm working on making them larger. Gotta reupload all of them though. Which is okay, if it helps the masses read the charts

[SpringfieldSkins]

Click the link to the actual blog. You can click each thumbnail to enlarge

I'm working on making them larger. Gotta reupload all of them though. Which is okay, if it helps the masses read the charts

Aw crap... I didn't even see the link.

Thanks, that makes it much easier.

[SpringfieldSkins]

Wow...

Our completion percentage has gone up every season since 2004. The graphs make it very easy to see that. Either that means that our QB play is getting consistently better or our pass routes are getting consistently less risky.

[KDawg]

Okay, I just screwed with image size. Because the images are bmps (knew I should have made them jpegs) they get blurry when they're bigger. Continue to click the thumbnails to view the charts, they are bigger on the blog but unreadable. I have alot of stuff to do today. This will be fixed over the next few days, until then, do the best you can

[Skins_Throwback]

cool, thx for the work.

[STBonecrusher21]

KDawg you are indeed the man. I ****ing LOVE graphs.

But like Springfield said, it's hard to tell if we're getting better, or just taking less chances. Watching the games, you could easily say both.

[fire3fighter4]

this year we've actually been a top team on defense for 3rd down%. 4th down hasn't been very good though.

[KDawg]

This thread didn't get the response I was hoping for. I guess I'll skip the '08 statistical breakdown then and stick to X and O talk

[Toe Jam]

Thanks for taking the time to do this.

I think the mods should allow you to have a custom avater or something. Keep this up because it's very, very informative.

[SpringfieldSkins]

This thread didn't get the response I was hoping for. I guess I'll skip the '08 statistical breakdown then and stick to X and O talk

I actually like this more than X and O talk. That's just my opinion. It's probably because schemes and X and O are more "sexy" than stats. Also, people don't have a complete grasp on all of the schemes which leads to more discussion. It's interpreting the stats that I like, finding out what kinds of impacts those stats had on our season.


I wish you would do the stats thing, but if it doesn't take hold than I understand why you wouldn't. It looks like a lot of hard work.

[KDawg]

I actually like this more than X and O talk. That's just my opinion. It's probably because schemes and X and O are more "sexy" than stats. Also, people don't have a complete grasp on all of the schemes which leads to more discussion. It's interpreting the stats that I like, finding out what kinds of impacts those stats had on our season.


I wish you would do the stats thing, but if it doesn't take hold than I understand why you wouldn't. It looks like a lot of hard work.

I may still do both, we'll see.