Vela: A Chat with ESPN's K.C. Joyner

boozeman

28 Years And Counting...
Staff member
Joined
Apr 7, 2013
Messages
121,754
Dr. Jeckyll or Mr. Martz? A Chat with ESPN's K.C. Joyner

Posted by Rafael at Tuesday, May 28, 2013



Cowboys Nation begins a week-long chat with ESPN Insider and Scientific Football publisher K.C. Joyner. K.C. brings his fresh 2012 metrics to the discussion of all matters related to the Cowboys offense and the team's passing defense. Today, he suggests the team's game planning was out of sync with its personnel in 2012.

Cowboys Nation: We can start this going in ten different directions with the Cowboys. There was a lot of flux last year on the offense. Every name player went up, went down, had injury issues. Every player has question marks entering the 2013 season.

Let's begin with the lightning rod, Tony Romo. I imagine his bad decision metrics skewed the wrong way in 2012, especially after he was coming off a career year in 2011.

K.C. Joyner: I'm looking at him now. Romo tied for 24th in bad decision percentage, [with a 2.3% number]. He tied with Colin Kaepernick. I don't know if that's good or bad to be tied with a first-year starter who was thrown in halfway.

To put him in perspective, Phillip Rivers had a 2.4% bad decision metric and he was seen as having a bad year. Ben Roethlisberger had a 2.4, and it was hardly his best year. From that perspective, Romo's 2.3 looks bad, but I'm of two minds with Tony Romo.

Upside, 2.3% if you're a risk taker of the caliber of Tony Romo, where he likes to take a lot of chances, make a lot of risky passes down the field, that's not a bad rate for a guy like him.

I think the Cowboys don't really have a very cohesive sense of where they want to go as a team. By that I mean they have Tony Romo on offense, you've got a gunslinger, a guy who can take a lot of chances. What I think is they've decided they want to center this offense around Tony Romo, but they don't want him to be a bad decision maker. So they're throwing more safe passes. We're going to give him a lot more safe reads. This is speaking in general of the 2012 season. Things changed as the season progressed, but in general they had him try safer things.

But you look at the Cowboys offense and think, you're trying to run a safer offense, and I'm not sure that's where you want to go. You have Romo, you have Miles Austin, you have Dez Bryant. You've got some guys who can really stretch the field, guys who can really threaten defenses. If you have that kind of talent and you're not attacking vertically, because these are two guys who can torture a defense at will if they're playing as well as they can...

I have a theory as to why that is, so overall, when you're looking at Tony Romo, his 2.3 bad decision percentage would not be bad if he was playing in a higher-risk offense, but when they're dinking and dunking, it's not as good a rate as it might appear.

CN: From a metrics perspective, compare what he did with what he did the year before. How much of a metric decline did he have from the first season to the last?

KC: Let's put it this way. From a volume rate versus a percentage rate, Tony Romo had fifteen bad decisions in 2012 and he had ten in 2011. From a volume rate, ten to fifteen is a lot, but from a percentage rate, he only rose one half of one percent. Now, that's significant in BDR. One percent jump is huge, and half is significant.

But Romo threw 126 more passes last year than the year before [a 19% increase in attempts]. So one half of one percent of that is not that many bad decisions. Let's put it this way, it goes from ten to fifteen, but he also threw 126 more passes. If you throw that many more passes, and his bad decisions stayed at the 2011 rate, you would still expect two or three more just because of the increased volume. If you factor in the value you have two more. It's not much different than it was in 2011.

The Cowboys had an analytics person who was helping them determine, what's the sweet spot in your run pass mix? Should you run the ball six out of ten times? Pass the ball six out of ten times? What I understand, the sweet spot was pretty high. The Cowboys as a team averaged 3.6 yards per rush and Romo's yards per attempt passing was 7.6.

Now, there are some factors which lower the rushing total. When you're rushing and you're near the goal line and you need two yards or one yard to score, the rushing attempt will only go for those yards. Or, if it's 3rd-and-1, you might get a yard or two and you have to factor kneel downs into the equation. There are situations which will keep the rushing numbers low.

The idea is you should throw the ball as much as you can because the productivity gains are so much more. And the Cowboys spiked their passing numbers last year.

Here's the thing though. The Cowboys have built their team, on offense and defense, kind of like the Raiders of the '70s in a way, where Al Davis had the idea that we want to collect as many big, fast, strong guys as we can. We want to play what I call bully football.

The Cowboys have been very good at getting big, fast, strong guys. You can say whatever you want about the personnel side of the Cowboys game, but one thing you can't say is they don't get big, fast strong guys. They get guys to play bully football. But you can't play bully football when you're throwing the ball 650 times a year. That's a faster-paced, more space-based game. You're not going to wear the other team down that way.

What you should do is throw deep, get a lead, and then just grinding on the other team and in the 4th quarter you finish them off. Last year, the Cowboys played more of a space game and to me, the Cowboys seem to be saying, we want to throw the ball more and their personnel says run a different type of football. Until they decide we're going to change our personnel to match our philosophy or change the philosophy to better match the personnel, they're always going to under-perform.


The Cowboys Offense, Bullyball or Spaceball? K.C. Joyner Chats with C.N, Pt. 2

Posted by Rafael at Tuesday, May 28, 2013








Travis Frederick

Part two of Cowboys Nation's chat with ESPN Insider K.C. Joyner looks at the Cowboys draft and considers whether Dallas has made a change in its offensive philosophy?

Cowboys Nation: Your point raises some interesting questions. I think many people were puzzled by the team's moves in the most recent draft. The Cowboys drafted a big sluggo center in the first round, in Travis Frederick. He was seen as a reach by some, but he nonetheless filled a huge need on the team.

But the Cowboys then focused their next picks on offensive skill position guys, taking a receiving tight end and a fast wide receiver, and in the late rounds they took a space running back.

Looking at the biggest influences for this offense, there are two rather different versions of the same offensive system. Jason Garrett played for Ernie Zampese, but if you get a read on Garrett's nomenclature and the personnel packages he likes to use the most, he's very similar to Mike Martz's version of this "West Coast Offense," which comes down from Don Coryell. As he's dialed up the pass mixture more and more, Garrett leans even more on Martz's playbook, yet the Cowboys have remained committed to having a fullback and at least trying to run this offense the way Norv Turner and Zampese did in the '90s.

If Garrett had his druthers, I think he would run more power, but his offensive line just hasn't been very good. I see your point about the offense being schizophrenic, but I don't know if it's a matter of being able to run one way and not another, because that line hasn't been good at pass blocking or power run blocking.

That said, I look at Gavin Escobar and Terrence Williams and Joseph Randle and wonder if they're in fact making that decision you just spelled out? It seems they're junking two-back football and moving more towards a Martz, Josh McDaniels/Charlie Weis-style offense that spaces you out and runs a lot of one-back, with either three wides or two tight ends.

KC Joyner: Looking at a lot of mock drafts, not a lot of them had teams going for offensive linemen early. I think this may be due to the history, where teams don't push offensive linemen high.

With that, I've been breaking down NFL tapes for eleven years now, and I've never seen worse offensive line play than I did last year. I'm not just talking about the Cowboys. I'm talking league wide. I've seen such bad play, such sub-par run-blocking, sub-par pass protection, just terrible. It's easily the worst I've seen.

To see teams go out and say, we're going to prioritize offensive linemen. I had some questions on Twitter when I was commenting about it, and fans for a lot of teams were saying, "these guys would have been around in the 2nd round, these teams are wasting picks."

No, the idea is, teams are thinking, we might be able to get this guy in the 2nd, but you know what? We know we need better offensive line play, so we're taking this guy now. He may be seen as a reach, but we need him. It wasn't just the Cowboys, it was teams across the league.

To say that they got Frederick in the 1st round, and some people don't agree with that pick? I love that pick, because he's a masher, a real smart guy. I think he'll fix one of the weak points on their offensive line, and that should help their pass and their running game.

CN: Let's go from there to a question. When the Cowboys drafted Gavin Escobar, I went back to your books and pulled Jason Witten's YPAs since 2006. They show steady, high-level play, and then a significant dropoff in 2012.

I also looked at Terrell Owens, who had a similar YPA pattern. He had a career year in '07, and I remember talking to you in '08 when your book came out and you had Owens and Reggie Wayne graded as the two most dominant receivers the previous year. Then, T.O. had a huge dropoff in '08 and the Cowboys released him before '09. A lot of his fans thought Dallas was being hasty, and he was cut because he was a locker room lawyer, but the team was right with him. He never regained his form.

What do you see with Witten? Do the metrics show the early stages of decline? Is this due to his spleen injury, or is the drop-off due to being a key target in that safer, more dink-and-dunk 2012 offense you mentioned? Is it some mix of these?

KC: I'll deal with this in more detail when the fantasy draft book comes out next month, and I have my full set of metrics.

Let's step back a minute and talk about Owens. When you look at his last year in Dallas I was breaking down tape on him and I noticed something. I did some deeper reviews of him and found that his physical ability dropped pretty considerably that year and it took a lot of creative play calling to get him to be as productive in 2007. They had to do a lot of things to get him open.

With your top receivers you don't have to do that. With Owens in his prime you don't have to do that, but they had to that year. I think the Cowboys recognized this. When you do things to get a receiver open, you're sacrificing other players to get that receiver open. You can't attack the defense in the same way, and you lose variety. I think that's why they threw in the towel on him.

With Witten, you don't do as many things with a tight end to get him open, even if he's being flexed a good deal of the time. Tight ends run routes don't need that kind of help. They run complementary routes most of the time. Even if you're of the caliber of Witten, when you have a Dez Bryant and a Miles Austin playing with you, you don't need another guy to play slot receiver.

And now you've got a third explosive guy in Terrence Williams (more on Williams Wednesday) you don't need Witten to be your down-field slot guy. I don't think they need to ask Witten to do as much.

Even if he's losing a step, you can deal with that far more easily than you would if your number one receiver was dropping off, because you rely on your main receiver to do a lot more than you ask a Jason Witten to do.


Joyner, Part 3: Back to Gunslinger Football for Tony Romo in 2013?

Posted by Rafael at Wednesday, May 29, 2013



In part two of Cowboys Nation's chat with ESPN Insider K.C. Joyner, K.C. assessed top selection Travis Frederick. Today, he offers some encouraging numbers on rookie receiver Terrence Williams. Joyner also gives some run blocking metrics which highlight bad running backs play as much as bad blocking.

K.C. Joyner: By the way, I did a metrics analysis of Terrence Williams for ESPN' Insider on the top receivers in the draft. Williams was the best. His metrics were phenomenal. When you look at his physical attributes, they were nearly as good as the top guys in the draft, size, speed, weight, age, things of that nature. If you combine those, and production wise he just destroyed the field. He was tops in a lot of different metrics.

So now you've got a third explosive guy in your attack. You could put him in the slot or you could put him outside and let a guy like Miles Austin play the slot. Now, you've got possibilities that you didn't have last year...

It's hard for rookies to contribute, but we've seen people do it. He's got the capacity to contribute. I'm not saying he's going to be A.J. Green or Julio Jones as rookies, because that's rare, you don't see that happen often. Let's say he's not them, but he's a step below them? Still, if he can contribute that in a rookie season and you have Austin and Dez Bryant staying healthy? I know that's a big if, but if those two stay relatively healthy and you get Williams to contribute at a level he's capable of reaching, you could see the offense spike back up.

Now, we talked about the schizophrenia before. Do the Cowboys play bully football or do they play space football? Williams is a vertical guy. His vertical numbers were off the charts. They were easily better than any other college receiver I looked at last year.

He's a guy who can stretch the field. Now, you've got Austin who can get deep and you've got Bryant who is one of the best vertical threats in the NFL. Again, you've got three vertical receivers. If you're running a dink-and-dunk, ball control offense, you have to scratch your head and say, why? You should be running Air Coryell, or Air Martz. If you want to do that, on defense you have to be able to offset that.

I look at their offense line talent, and I think they have a 43% good blocking metric on runs. That ranked 20th in the league. I just think this team is capable of doing more. That's why they can't finish teams off. They were only a step up from Oakland in that metric and two steps up from Chicago.

Cowboys Nation: I don't want to discount that line play in that move to dink and dunk passing. There are several games I could point to, but I'll give you one. Two years ago the Cowboys want to New England, when the Patriots pass defense was really struggling. It was clear early on that Dallas wanted to spread them out and attack down the field. Garrett opened them in a lot of open backfields, with three receivers and flexed tight ends and tried bombing away.

Bill Belichick didn't do anything crazy. He stayed in his base 4-3, had his two big tackles Wilfork and Love lock up the guards and he blized his middle linebacker Brandon Spikes at the center. Spikes destroyed Phil Costa, and Tony Romo got hammered and within a quarter, the Cowboys had to junk their game plan and use more two tight ends and keep a back in to help block. There have lots of games like this lately.

There have been lots of times when the Cowboys have wanted to attack up the field, but have not been able to build a consistent pocket for Romo. That's why Frederick can be so important for this team. Now,I don't think the team is going to start hammering the ball like they did when they had Emmitt Smith or Marion Barber, and I don't think they should. But you need confidence in your pocket if you're going to throw 40 times a game.

K.C.: Look at the Mike Martz Rams, when they were going to Super Bowls. They had Lovie Smith's defense, which is a perfect defense to run with that offensive system. What you want to do, and the Colts had the same defense when they had Peyton Manning as their quarterback, is they knew they were going to be passing the ball a lot.

We're going to rush the passer, but we're not going to blitz a lot. Guys in the secondary have to tackle and we want guys to get a lot of picks. That's really what the Lovie Smith defense does. You know the other team is going to come at you throwing, because you're doing the same. You know they're probably going to make some big plays on you, but the Rams and Colts said, "we know we're going to get big plays on offense, so we're going to try and make some big plays on defense.

If we can equal you on defense in big plays -- if we can get three sacks and a couple of picks, if we're getting six or seven big plays on defense, if we can match the opponent's big plays, we know we're going to get big plays on offense, and we're going to win more than our share of games.

I think that's why they went for Morris Claiborne, because they wanted more picks on defense. But I also think there's still that bully ball mentality. You can see it in some ways.

I think Tony Romo has gotten his bad decisions under control the past couple of seasons. I'd rather see him going deep to guys like Dez Bryant and throwing 550 times a season. I want him doing that rather than saying my offense is going to be Tony Romo-centric. If you have a Tom Brady or Peyton Manning, do that.

I think Romo is a very good quarterback, but just like the Baltimore Ravens say they're not basing their offense around Joe Flacco, I don't think the Cowboys should try that with Romo.

You want another metric that's related to the Cowboys rushing woes, and the trouble they had there? They had team-wise, the lowest good blocking yards-per-attempt in the league. When they gave their running backs good blocking, no team gained fewer yards per attempt than the Dallas Cowboys.

CN: Do you think it's a line question? GBYPA often indicts the running backs, and the Cowboys didn't have much after DeMarco Murray went down, and he missed a lot of games. Do you think the line got hats-on-hats but could not get a big push, or that this low number shows the Cowboys backs were poor? Or again, is the answer a little of both?

KC: I think it's both. Good blocking is a rather detailed metric, but the general idea is you have good blocking when the line does not allow the defense to do anything to disrupt a running attempt. That's in general, and there are lots of ways a defense can disrupt things.

The Cowboys were not great in that. 43% is rather low, but let's compare them to the Tampa Bay Bucs. The Bucs had Doug Martin, and he had some explosive games. But the Bucs line had a good blocking rate of 38.1 %, which was next to last in the league. Only Arizona was worse than the Bucs. But but Bucs got 8.8 yards per attempt when their backs got good blocking. A big part of that is Martin, but you go to a team like Jacksonville or Pittsburgh. The Steelers didn't have great backs, but their numbers were still better than Dallas', and their good blocking percentage was worse.

I think it was a combination of the Cowboys line not getting very big creases and the Cowboys backs were not good at taking advantage when they were there. I think part of it is the Cowboys thought of their running attack as the counter punch, and if it doesn't work that well, you pass the ball more. They need to be concerned about it.

CN: And that factored into the Frederick pick. I think they would have liked to get more line punch, and they took some grief for not drafting more, but to get to pick 20 and see some of their o-line targets taken got them scared. Because it goes to what you said earlier, lots of teams did what Dallas did.

KC: The Giants have a history of never taking an offensive lineman in the 1st round. They always felt they could develop one, and they took Justin Pugh 19th. That says something. Then the Bears were going to draft a lineman at 20 no matter what.

I think teams have come to the conclusion that you can coach up the offensive line, and you can to an extent, but you need talent. There are limitations to how much coaching can raise your play. I think this year the trend went away.
 

Smitty

DCC 4Life
Joined
Apr 7, 2013
Messages
22,488
With that, I've been breaking down NFL tapes for eleven years now, and I've never seen worse offensive line play than I did last year. I'm not just talking about the Cowboys. I'm talking league wide. I've seen such bad play, such sub-par run-blocking, sub-par pass protection, just terrible. It's easily the worst I've seen.
Interesting.

He's a guy who can stretch the field. Now, you've got Austin who can get deep and you've got Bryant who is one of the best vertical threats in the NFL. Again, you've got three vertical receivers. If you're running a dink-and-dunk, ball control offense, you have to scratch your head and say, why? You should be running Air Coryell, or Air Martz.
Can't do it if you can't pass protect, KC.


Cowboys Nation: I don't want to discount that line play in that move to dink and dunk passing. There are several games I could point to, but I'll give you one. Two years ago the Cowboys want to New England, when the Patriots pass defense was really struggling. It was clear early on that Dallas wanted to spread them out and attack down the field. Garrett opened them in a lot of open backfields, with three receivers and flexed tight ends and tried bombing away.

Bill Belichick didn't do anything crazy. He stayed in his base 4-3, had his two big tackles Wilfork and Love lock up the guards and he blized his middle linebacker Brandon Spikes at the center. Spikes destroyed Phil Costa, and Tony Romo got hammered and within a quarter, the Cowboys had to junk their game plan and use more two tight ends and keep a back in to help block. There have lots of games like this lately.
Hmmmm.
 

Jiggyfly

Banned
Joined
Apr 8, 2013
Messages
9,220
You want another metric that's related to the Cowboys rushing woes, and the trouble they had there? They had team-wise, the lowest good blocking yards-per-attempt in the league. When they gave their running backs good blocking, no team gained fewer yards per attempt than the Dallas Cowboys.

CN: Do you think it's a line question? GBYPA often indicts the running backs, and the Cowboys didn't have much after DeMarco Murray went down, and he missed a lot of games. Do you think the line got hats-on-hats but could not get a big push, or that this low number shows the Cowboys backs were poor? Or again, is the answer a little of both?

KC: I think it's both. Good blocking is a rather detailed metric, but the general idea is you have good blocking when the line does not allow the defense to do anything to disrupt a running attempt. That's in general, and there are lots of ways a defense can disrupt things.

The Cowboys were not great in that. 43% is rather low, but let's compare them to the Tampa Bay Bucs. The Bucs had Doug Martin, and he had some explosive games. But the Bucs line had a good blocking rate of 38.1 %, which was next to last in the league. Only Arizona was worse than the Bucs. But but Bucs got 8.8 yards per attempt when their backs got good blocking. A big part of that is Martin, but you go to a team like Jacksonville or Pittsburgh. The Steelers didn't have great backs, but their numbers were still better than Dallas', and their good blocking percentage was worse.
So can we now officially put to bed the myth that Dallas had the worst o-line in the NFL.

Looking at the biggest influences for this offense, there are two rather different versions of the same offensive system. Jason Garrett played for Ernie Zampese, but if you get a read on Garrett's nomenclature and the personnel packages he likes to use the most, he's very similar to Mike Martz's version of this "West Coast Offense," which comes down from Don Coryell. As he's dialed up the pass mixture more and more, Garrett leans even more on Martz's playbook, yet the Cowboys have remained committed to having a fullback and at least trying to run this offense the way Norv Turner and Zampese did in the '90s.
And this is Garrets biggest problem no real offensive identity, its no wonder they have so many mistakes it seems that every week they try and change thier offensive identity.
 

ravidubey

DCC 4Life
Joined
Apr 7, 2013
Messages
20,162
So can we now officially put to bed the myth that Dallas had the worst o-line in the NFL.
That stat only covered run blocking, BTW, but it doesn't matter that they were the worst just that they were plenty bad. Anyone who would dispute they were bad is looking to sell you something.
 

Lotuseater

Banned
Joined
Apr 27, 2013
Messages
716
That stat only covered run blocking, BTW, but it doesn't matter that they were the worst just that they were plenty bad. Anyone who would dispute they were bad is looking to sell you something.
Very little room seperates the o-lines from about 20-32. They are all equally bad for the most part.
 

ravidubey

DCC 4Life
Joined
Apr 7, 2013
Messages
20,162
Very little room seperates the o-lines from about 20-32. They are all equally bad for the most part.
Put it this way, it's hard to imagine a NFL OL worse than the Cowboys' OL was in 2012. Other things in Dallas didn't help, like the average RB talent and lack of team speed, but OL talent was their #1 problem with 1A being a lack of DL talent.
 
Top Bottom