Tuesday Stat Day: Week 1

For you newbies, Tuesday morning's are for discussing stats, among many other things of course. I'll put up the drive charts and pull out a few choice stats to get the conversation started. Also, in addition to some sort of article each morning, we're posting lots of news updates in the FanShot section so head there each morning for updates as well.

Number of drives: 10 (Last game: 13)

Average starting field position: 31 yard line (Last game: 25 yard line)

Average number of plays per drive: 6.2 (Last game: 4.84)

Average net yards gained per drive: 28.4 (Last game: 14.5)

Average drive time: 3:03 (Last game: 2:34 minutes)

Longest drive: 73 yards (Last game: 63 yards)

Time of possession: 30:11 (Last game: 33:25)

Box score is here. Gamebook is here (PDF opens).

Right off the bat, I'll point out that it's been the case since last season that the Kansas City Chiefs can't score a touchdown if they're not within 60-65 yards of the end zone when they start. That's opposed to the Patriots, who made touchdown scoring drives of 98 and 80 yards in just this one game. Do you remember the last time the Chiefs drove 80+ yards down the field for a touchdown? Does Trent Green to Marc Boerigter bring back any memories? Just kidding. It wasn't that long ago.

I am loving the new efficiency the Chiefs are playing with on third downs. They converted 8 of 16 last week, after converting 50%, 37%, 41% and 36% of them respectively in the first four preseason games. While some of those preseason numbers aren't great, the team is improving which is our mantra this year. Half of our drives didn't produce a first down, which is another area of continual concern. Click the image below for a more detailed look at third downs last week.

Damon Huard continues to be amazing in relief of injured quarterbacks. He posted a 91.3 QB rating in the fourth quarter.

The stats for drops haven't been accumulated yet but Dwayne Bowe has to be #1 in the league, right?

Alright, we'll be back throughout the day to continue this conversation. Any suggestion of stats to the weekly tracker would be helpful. In fact, I'm thinking we should get together a big list of stats we want to track and do that each and every week. Non-traditional stats. I sort of did that last year but it wasn't in any organized matter. The "Chiefs really need a short field to score" stat came out of that set of data.

I'm calling out chiefstatnut too today. You better live up to your commenter name.