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Jonathan Bales is a special contributor to SportsDayDFW.com. He’s the founder of The DC Times and writes for DallasCowboys.com and the New York Times. He’s also the author of Fantasy Football for Smart People. He can be reached at jonathan@thedctimes.com.
You can follow him @BalesFootball.
I’ve been surfing through STATSPass quite a bit lately to uncover ways the Cowboys could potentially improve their offensive attack in 2013. Like I’ve mentioned before, I collect all kinds of data on Dallas, but it’s essential to understand league averages so that I can make accurate comparisons between the Cowboys and other teams.
One of the simple-but-interesting stats I found today is offensive efficiency by down. Below, I charted the Cowboys’ average yards per play on each down as compared to the rest of the league.
It’s interesting that the ‘Boys had so much success on second down. Part of the reason is probably that they performed only moderately well on first down—right around the league average—forcing them to pass the ball more on second and third. You never want to be in a position in which you’re forced to throw the ball—having the ability to run is always nice—but passing obviously leads to bigger average gains than running.
To get a better sense of what the numbers are telling us, I also recorded the Cowboys’ pass rates by down versus the rest of the NFL.
You can see the Cowboys passed the ball more often than average on every down, which isn’t really a surprise because 1) they’re a passing team and 2) they were losing so frequently.Your initial reaction might be to conclude that the Cowboys should run more often on first down; they ran it just 41.3 percent of the time on first down in 2012, compared to 52.2 percent for the entire league. However, don’t forget that many of those first downs came in the second half of games that the Cowboys were losing. Dallas was leading after three quarters in just four contests all year, so they were really forced to pass in low-upside situations on all downs, hence the lowered efficiency.
On a league-wide basis, passing is way more efficient than running on first down. Last year, quarterbacks completed 61.7 percent of their first down passes and averaged 7.3 YPA (above the overall mark of 7.1 YPA), while offenses averaged just 4.3 YPC on the ground (right around the league average on all downs). Most defenses still play to stop the run on first down, allowing for the opportunity to exploit them through the air. The Cowboys don’t need to pass less frequently on first down, just more efficiently.
You can follow him @BalesFootball.
I’ve been surfing through STATSPass quite a bit lately to uncover ways the Cowboys could potentially improve their offensive attack in 2013. Like I’ve mentioned before, I collect all kinds of data on Dallas, but it’s essential to understand league averages so that I can make accurate comparisons between the Cowboys and other teams.
One of the simple-but-interesting stats I found today is offensive efficiency by down. Below, I charted the Cowboys’ average yards per play on each down as compared to the rest of the league.
It’s interesting that the ‘Boys had so much success on second down. Part of the reason is probably that they performed only moderately well on first down—right around the league average—forcing them to pass the ball more on second and third. You never want to be in a position in which you’re forced to throw the ball—having the ability to run is always nice—but passing obviously leads to bigger average gains than running.
To get a better sense of what the numbers are telling us, I also recorded the Cowboys’ pass rates by down versus the rest of the NFL.
You can see the Cowboys passed the ball more often than average on every down, which isn’t really a surprise because 1) they’re a passing team and 2) they were losing so frequently.Your initial reaction might be to conclude that the Cowboys should run more often on first down; they ran it just 41.3 percent of the time on first down in 2012, compared to 52.2 percent for the entire league. However, don’t forget that many of those first downs came in the second half of games that the Cowboys were losing. Dallas was leading after three quarters in just four contests all year, so they were really forced to pass in low-upside situations on all downs, hence the lowered efficiency.
On a league-wide basis, passing is way more efficient than running on first down. Last year, quarterbacks completed 61.7 percent of their first down passes and averaged 7.3 YPA (above the overall mark of 7.1 YPA), while offenses averaged just 4.3 YPC on the ground (right around the league average on all downs). Most defenses still play to stop the run on first down, allowing for the opportunity to exploit them through the air. The Cowboys don’t need to pass less frequently on first down, just more efficiently.