Wednesday, September 22, 2010

Week 2 Personnel Grouping Stats


A big thanks to Bob Sturm’s blog, otherwise Statistical Cowboys would not exist.

A few things:

- The team is currently operating out of the shotgun 47% of the time and has run out of the shotgun only 3 times (4.5% of the time). And they haven’t run well out of the shotgun. Obviously, most teams don’t run a lot out of the shotgun or run that well out of the shotgun, but that’s part of the problem with a heavy shotgun offense, the opposing defense has no reason to worry about the possibility of running the ball and can pin the offense’s ears back.

I remember when Joe Gibbs became the coach for the Skins in his second go-a-round, he stated that he wasn’t a fan of the shotgun and I sort of wondered why, particularly on 3rd downs. Eventually Gibbs relented and let Mark Brunnel run the offense on the shotgun, but only on 3rd downs. I’ve discussed the importance of a team’s QB rating because it is so important to have a high QBRD. But, if you’re running out of the shotgun a ton, then you’re allowing the defense to not only know that they have to play for the pass, but you also increase the likelihood of getting your starting QB injured because the pass rushers are going full bore after him.

- Just as alarming, Dallas used shotgun on 23 1st or 2nd down plays. There were 57 total 1st or 2nd down plays. Meaning that 40% of the 1st or 2nd downs, Dallas used the shotgun formation where the defense knew we were going to pass. This game the shotgun worked a bit better as Romo averaged 7.4 yards per pass attempt, but that’s still down 9% from his career average (prior to this season).

- Here’s a look at the personnel groupings and formations and the percentage of time they were called.


Formation…………………% of time called

S11………………...……31%

21………………...……..17%

22………………...……..15%

S12………………...……15%

12………………...……..11%

31………………...……….4%

11………………...……….3%

WC22………………..……1%

S01………………...…...…0%


So we ran out of the S11 formation (shotgun, 1 tailback, 1 tight end), the most amount of the time. The good news is that Garrett did for good reason as it had by far the highest yards per play of all of the formations (8.8 ypp). We also used the 21 formation (under center, 2 tailbacks, 1 tight end) the second most amount of time as that was netting us a nice 7.1 yards per play. But the 22 formation (under center, 2 tailbacks, 2 tight ends) we ran almost as much as the 21 formation and that only netted the team 4.5 ypp. So some decent adjustments by Garrett although I still feel that we need to ‘bite the bullet’ and run a lot more often to help keep the opposing defense off balance and hopefully open things up for a big pass play opportunity. One thing is for sure, Garrett has zero confidence in the O-Line’s pass protection as the high amount of shotgun or 2 tight end formations suggest.

So far for the year, the offense has ran 78.7% of its plays from either the shotgun or a 2 tight end formation. A basic personnel group, like the 3 WR, 1 TE group (aka 11 personnel), Dallas has only used that formation 5 times this year (3.5% of all of the plays) and only thrown it from that personnel once.

Still, it boggles my mind that Garrett would continue to throw the ball so much and use so much shotgun, if anything to protect the O-Line’s pass protection deficiencies.


- So far for the year, the team’s best personnel group is the 21 personnel (2 running backs, 1 tight end). Followed by the S11 personnel (shotgun, 1 tailback and 1 tight end). If I were Wade Phillips (because Garrett ain’t going to do it), I’d start running more on 1st down and try and keep that down as balanced as we can. I would also dramatically cut down our 1st and 2nd down shotgun plays, and use more 21, 22 and 11 personnel groups. Then I would stick to more S11 personnel when we do use shotgun.







3JACK

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