Time for some fun facts. During blow-out games, the numbers are always a little odd and some of the stats really are not even worth looking at. We typically include:
1. “WR Times Targeted”—who is Ben looking for
2. “DB Times Targeted”—who is the opposition picking on
3. “Formation analysis”—how many times are we in 4WR formations? How many times are we in 3TE? etc…
Due to the nature of the Texans game, we are giving you a bit of an abridged version of our “Fun Facts” weekly feature.
Rushing yards and attempts by direction. We fully expected to see the Steelers run LEFT early and often due to the fact that Kemo and Marvel live in that neighborhood. With the exception of 2 long runs to the right, the yards gained and the rushes attempted were pretty much even on both sides. Again, due to it being a blowout game, the Texans defense was exhausted in the 2nd half and the Steelers were just having their way with them no matter where the play was designed to go.
The numbers for the RIGHT SIDE are a bit slanted here because of Parker's 32 yard run and Ben's 17 yard scramble. Still, even if you take those 2 big plays out of the equation we had some success running the ball to the right side of the field.
Passing yards and attempts by direction. Once again, we find real nice balance on both sides of the field. When your opponent isn’t dictating play at all, you can deliver the football wherever you want. The Texans weren’t really taking much away and weren’t really forcing Ben to go to a certain WR or direction.
Special Teams Tackles. We added this stat to the list last season when our special teams failures were such a hot topic. We wanted to see who was getting the job done on special teams. Below, we have included both SOLO and ASSISTED tackles. Donovan Woods shows you one of the reasons he made the roster.
Play selection on 1st down. This stat category is self-explanatory but consider this the “Bruce Arians watch”. We are always intrigued by how aggressive the OC is on 1st down, and how conservative we get depending on the time/score/situation. The blowout nature of this game causes this week’s 1st down numbers to be abnormally run-heavy. Ben and the Steelers usually play extremely well when they pass on 1st down but in order to validate that point we’ll have to put the numbers up when we play a good opponent/defense.
Kickoff Return Average:
Mendenhall—23.0
Andre’ Davis—18.7
Average Yards Per Pass Play: The Most Important Stat in Football
Steelers—6.1
Texans—4.2
Jeff Reed’s Kickoffs
(The Steelers had 1 kickoff that was purposely kicked high and short, so we’ll take that one out of the mix)
Kickoff 1: landed on the -7 yard line
Kickoff 2: landed on the 0 yard line
Kickoff 3: landed on the 4 yard line
Kickoff 4: landed on the 19 yard line
Kickoff 5: landed on the 3 yard line
Kickoff 6: landed on the 1 yard line
Kickoff 7: landed on the 5 yard line
Reed’s Average Kickoff Depth: 1 yard line
Reed’s first kick off was 7 yards deep EZ so your first number should be -7. Which would bring Reed’s average down to the 1 yard line.
I like your pretty charts and graphs but here’s to hoping the Steelers screw up your analysis with blowouts more often than not.
My new mantra is “First Down is a Passing Down”, but Arians never seems to listen. Even in the first half, I think they ran on first and 10 eight of twelve times.
nice job on the stats…
Good catch Mike. Just like math in school…I imagine you taking out a red pen and circling the #7 and writing a minus sign next to it.
the 1st down play selection pie is interesting, but showing that over time is a better representation. i’ve posted a line chart of the cumulative run play selection on 1st down over each progressive 1st down of the game for the steelers and compared against the league average (for week 1). this is interesting because it indicates that as the game wore on, the steelers moved more and more to the run as expected…
http://picasaweb.google.com/roethlisbergh/PlaySelection/
Nice.
Yeah, that particular stat (as well as all the other stats from Sunday’s game) would mean a lot more if the Steelers vs Texans game was remotely close. Can’t really monitor trends or tendencies when the last 1.5 QTRs feels like and is being coached like a preseason game.