Poring Over the Weekly Numbers

by Chris Thorman on Oct 22, 2008 8:00 AM CDT in 2008 Kansas City Chiefs Campaign

A little down analysis for you this morning. Nothing too shocking here but it's part of our commitment to making you sound intelligent on game day. Unfortunately, because everything is a freakin' mess at Arrowhead right now, it's tough to pull patterns and trends out of these stats, or any of the Chiefs' stats. Too many players are in and out of the games. We have no consistency. And no strengths, as Herm so eloquently put it a few days ago.

First Down

72 rushing plays (3.9 average yards per rush), 74 passing plays (2.07 average yards per passing play)

Interesting stat: On first down with between 6 and 10 yards to go, the Chiefs have rushed the ball 65 times for a 4.09 YPC average. They've also passed 71 times in that same yardage situation and racked up a dismal 1.87 yards per pass. On an typical running down, the Kansas City Chiefs are surprising no one with the pass. Playcalling? I think of that passing stat and I think of the "quick out" play to the sideline, which I despise.

Second Down

47 rushing plays (4.87 average yards per rush), 78 passing plays (5.81 average yards per passing play)

Interesting stat: One second down and 5 or less yards to go, the Chiefs are fairly poor at converting first downs via the run - only two first downs out of eleven rushing attempts in that situation. Okay, I couldn't find much interesting about second down this year. That's all I've got.

Third Down

19 rushing plays (3.63 average yards per rush), 70 passing plays (4.83 average yards per passing play)

Interesting stat: The Chiefs have had 89 third downs this season and over half (46) of those, they have needed to gain at least six yards for a first down. They converted a first down on ten of those 46 attempts. The Chiefs also have little confidence in the run in third down and five or less yards to go. They've passed the ball 27 times to rushing the ball 16 times in third and five or less yards to go. Not a huge disparity but a slightly telling stat if you know the team.

Fourth Down

2 rushing plays (0.5 average yards per rush), 3 passing plays (4.33 average yards per passing play)

Not much to glean from our few fourth down attempts.

Primetime will be by soon to talk about Quinn Gray, so stay tuned.

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Looks like we

need to pass more on second, and third down. Wasup Chris.

by Eric Allen on Oct 22, 2008 8:54 AM CDT reply actions

My Curiosity

How many of thost 1st down pass plays were play-action, and how many were BS quick-out to the sideline plays?

I’m with you Chris, that “quick out” play drives me batshit crazy. I think the success rate of it is somewhere in the 1 in 20 range… yet we insist on running it 10 times a game. How about running a quick slant? You know, where the WR is actually moving forward – towards the first down marker – instead of getting twisted up at the line of scrimmage for no yards.

Maybe Chan Gailey forgot how fast defenses are in the NFL? You can pull that crap in college and usually do ok but it just doesn’t work that well on a consistent basis in the NFL, especially going against a very fast D like the Titans. Or maybe he forgot that plays like that work better if the D has to respect the deep ball and play off the WR a bit? I can’t imagine any team out there has any fear of us going deep on them. Primarily because we almost never go deep; secondarily because if and when we do, our QB’s throw the ball out of bounds where nobody can catch it.

I’m also curious about the number of running plays we run “inside” vs. “outside”. To a degree I can understand pounding LJ inside, but with the big WR’s we have (Bowe and DVD are supposedly great blockers) why the hell don’t we try to stretch the field a little? Even when we run toss plays they are quick tosses that are lead inside. When we have someone as fast as Charles out there, we should turn him loose to the outside a bit.

We should take a page out of the Titans playbook in that respect. Chris Johnson is lightning fast but guess what, Charles was the second fastest RB at the combine behind Johnson. Yet we insist on running Charles inside if we run him at all. It’s like we don’t realize that we have our own version of Thunder and Lightning with LJ and Charles.

ok, I’m done bitching.

by Ochophosphate on Oct 22, 2008 10:23 AM CDT reply actions