A New Look at the Redskins' Offense

[JaimeDeCurry]

UPDATED TO INCLUDE 2010-PRESENT

After reading a few threads where there were some debates going on about our offensive production this year, I realized that I didn't really like any of the current methods for determining offensive success.

To me, an offense's primary job is always to get the ball in the end zone. Secondary is getting points at all, in the form of setting up a field goal try. But looking solely at points scored didn't satisfy me, because there was no qualifier there for how close we were getting to scoring on drives where we didn't come away with anything. Was our offense good, but just not quite good enough? We were dismal most of the time, with a few lucky drives a game? Somewhere in between?

To get a better idea, I went back and looked at every drive our offense had over the past two seasons, as well as the games this season. I charted the starting position for the offense, how many yards were gained, and what the result of the drive was - either a punt, field goal attempt, touchdown, turnover or other (turnover on downs or end of half/game). I also gathered what I was really interested in, which was the percentage of yards-to-go that our offense gained on every drive. If getting to the end zone is the goal, I wanted to see how good the Redskins offense was at driving towards that goal, and how we've improved this season. Here's what I came up with, after charting all the drives from 2010 through last week against Dallas:

Starting Field Position
2010: own 28.4
2011: own 28.4
2012: own 26.5

Average Percentage of Yards-to-Go Gained
2010: 39.8%
2011: 41.9%
2012: 47.9%

Percentage of Drives Ending in Scoring Opportunity
2010: 32.8%
2011: 37.8%
2012: 42.4 %

Percentage of Drives Ending in Touchdowns
2010: 14.6%
2011: 15.0%
2012: 24.6%

Percentage of Drives Ending in Turnover
2010: 15.2%
2011: 19.4%
2012: 9.3%

Some notes...I included all field goal attempts as "scoring tries", as to not punish the offense for a special teams failure. It was, however, disheartening to see how many of our drives ended in missed or blocked field goals. It was also disheartening to tab over to the "turnover" column to add an X so many more times than tabbing over to the "touchdown" column. There were only three times this season (2011) that we scored touchdowns on back-to-back drives.

UPDATE FOR 2012: This changed a tremendous amount. So far this year we've had 50 drives ending in scoring opportunities (TDs, FGs, or FG tries) with only 11 drives ending in turnovers. We've had seven times already this season that we've scored TDs on back-to-back drives.

The biggest improvement is obviously in touchdowns and turnovers. There's been an absolutely remarkable difference in those two items between the past two years and this year so far. I have my own theories on why that is, but it really is incredible. I can't wait to see how we finish this season off. Mike, Kyle and RGIII really seem to have something special going on here on offense.

[mmzznnxx]

Almost 20% of drives ending with a turnover? Lol, I almost wish I didn't see that stat.

This is a very interesting perspective of the offense this year though. It would be neat if you were to do the same for the offense in 2010 and the offense a year from now and see what improvement (if any) there is. Thanks for the info.

[JaimeDeCurry]

Almost 20% of drives ending with a turnover? Lol, I almost wish I didn't see that stat.

This is a very interesting perspective of the offense this year though. It would be neat if you were to do the same for the offense in 2010 and the offense a year from now and see what improvement (if any) there is. Thanks for the info.

I'm planning on doing the same for the 2010 offense, as well as the 2010 and 2011 defense (yards-to-go and scoring tries given up). I think it'll be a huge improvement on defense, and not so much on offense. But who knows? Maybe we moved the ball way more effectively in 2011, but just didn't get the points to show for it.

[thesubmittedone]

I personally can't wait to see how it compares to 2010, specifically. Thanks for taking the time to do this Jaime!

[Kostaskins]

One has to also factor in how good wins and loses our competition is. Key veriables, along with, what our
Projected compeition is going to be for next year. And next years list of teams that we play is going to get even worse.

[JaimeDeCurry]

I personally can't wait to see how it compares to 2010, specifically. Thanks for taking the time to do this Jaime!

Updated the OP to include the 2010 statistics for YTG gained. Gotta say, I'm actually a little surprised.

[thesubmittedone]

Interesting... definitely no big jumps in improvement, but it seems like they improved on every area except Drives Ending in Turnovers. Pretty much what I think most of saw without having to look at stats, lol.

Again, thanks for doing the work on this Jaime.

[JaimeDeCurry]

I really thought there would be more of an improvement over 2010. We only gained an average of 7% more of our yards-to-go this year, and had essentially the same % of our drives end in scoring opportunities. Obviously our turnover percentage went up by an unacceptable amount, but I definitely thought our 2011 offense "looked" better than our 2010 one - although these stats, at least tend to not really support that.

[Aghar]

Almost 20% of drives ending with a turnover? Lol, I almost wish I didn't see that stat.

LOL. I thought the same thing! That's ridiculous.

Thanks to the OP for posting this info though.

[JaimeDeCurry]

Updated the OP to re-work the numbers a little bit from 2010-2011 to make them more accurate, as well as added our offensive statistics from this year thus far. Gotta say, looking at 2012 vs the past two years...Kyle and RGIII are making some magic happen.

[Gibbs Hog Heaven]

Those last three category's are both the glaring and pleasing differences.

The difference 10 makes.

Hail.

[dfitzo53]

Interesting numbers, thanks for taking the time to do that.

[Thirtyfive2seven]

that's pretty eye opening. But I really expected to see these spikes with RG3. Its great having a franchise QB. Even if the skins stumble I think we should keep this coaching staff and try to fill as many holes as possible.