Week 5 Stats

Here’s a look at some stats for Dallas this year.

- Rank 8th in total team efficiency according to FO.com. Unfortunately, Seattle ranks 9th

- Here’s why I think there’s a major flaw in FO.com’s stats. Dallas ranks 6th in offensive efficiency and 22nd in defensive efficiency. I think anybody who watched the first 3 games can see that the defense is much better than the offense right now and one lousy game against the Bears shouldn’t detract from that point. But what has the offense done so far? Throw a ton of passes. And a ton of short, dink and dunk passes. FO.com pretty much has favored the Eagles and the Pats every year they’ve been in existence, two other teams known for their short dink and dunk, heavy passing offenses. Tough to blame them too much on the Pats, but the Eagles have had some rough years in between and they projected the Eagles for a successful season this year despite losing their star QB. Perhaps some day I’ll come up with a statistical formula that I feel better represents offenses.

- The Bears game has hurt our defensive FO.com stats. 24th against #1 WR, although neither Andre Johnson or Santana Moss killed us and Hester pretty much had short passes for TD’s. 32nd against #2 WR and I don’t recall Galloway or Walter killing us. 24th vs. TE’s. Cooley had a nice game and so did Olsen. We did do a good job of containing Owen Daniels, which tells me that when the defense is focused it can stop TE’s.

- Yes, we are ranked 1st in Adjusted Sacks Allowed Ratio (which play a part in a team’s ability to win games). We are getting good run blocking from Doug Free as well with the Cowboys ranking 16th on runs at left end (to his left) and 2nd in runs at left tackle (directly behind him). The problem spot is we are 20th in runs up the gut. In fact, I’d probably look to avoid runs up the gut and runs outside of Free for now if I were Garrett (which means he won’t, and we’ll just keep running at those two zones).

- True to form, Dallas mostly runs up the gut and at left end, the two spots they are weakest at. They run up the gut 60% of the time. This is where teams run the most. But the league average is usually at 50% of the time, so we overdo it. We also run at left end 15% of the time, while the league average is 11%

- Dallas is 13th in defensive sacks adjusted rate. Wade is typically one of the best in this category and usually gets his defenses in the top 5 year in and year out. Like the offensive adjusted sacks allowed, it’s early yet and we need to wait on this one.

- Where we’ve struggled on run defense is runs up the gut and at right tackle. I’m not so sure Spears or Ratliff is to blame, although this suggest more Spears than Ratliff. I know I’ve seen times where both Ware and Spencer make a gamble and pay for it. Teams only run up the gut on the Cowboys 42% of the time, which further suggests that Ratliff really isn’t the issue.

- The offense has converted 40% of their first downs, ranking t-13th

- The defense has only allowed 24% of their 3rd downs to be converted, ranking t-1st

- We’re 3rd in average time of possession.

I’ll probably have a TSHI ranking come Wednesday as that’s when FO.com usually has their Adjusted Sacks Allowed Ratio out. And I will take a look at the Titans stats on either Thursday or Friday.






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