FanPost

Amateur attempt at looking beyond the numbers.

So there has been some discussion going on about how awful the Chiefs have been and people wondering aloud about whether or not the Chiefs have improved at all on Defense. I have taken an amateur attempt at breaking down the defensive stats to see if there has been any improvement...

More after the Jump.

I will start this with saying that I was going to compare this defense to last years defense, but thanks to my laptop having roughly 2 seconds of battery life and accidentally unplugging it losing everything I did, combined with really growing tired of compiling all of the stats from the 2008 season I nixed the idea. I will also say that one of the basic principles in Sabermetrics is that counting stats are not helpful in evaluating performance... Instead I focused on rate stats such as yards per pass attempt, yards per carry, and yards per play.

So week 1 the Chiefs gave up a ton of yards versus the Ravens. But if you haven't noticed the Ravens are racking up a ton of yards vs everyone. On path to racking up over 500 yards vs the Chiefs the Ravens put up 303 yards passing on 43 attempts and 198 yards rushing on 41 attempts. This resulted in 7.05 yards per pass attempt and 4.83 yards per carry, and from that you get 5.96 yards per offensive play. Now if you remove the Chiefs game from the Ravens stats you get even better numbers. Minus the Chiefs game the Ravens as a team are averaging 6.89 yards per pass, and 5.04 yards per run, for a total of 6.13 yards per play. Granted this isn't a huge difference but it does show that the Chiefs defense performed better against the Ravens per play than their other opponents.

If you look at the Raider debacle you will see that the league is giving up .74 yards more play than the Chiefs did. Against the rest of the league the Giants are averaging .38 yards per pass attempt. The Eagles are averaging 1.44 yards per carry against the league than they did against the Chiefs. I also decided to compare the Chiefs defense vs the NFL as a whole (again removing the Chiefs totals from the total). Doing so shows that the Chiefs are doing better than league average against the run, where the Chiefs are allowing 4.08 yards per carry, vs the leagues 4.20. Unfortunately though the Chiefs pass Defense is giving up 7.21 yards per pass compared to the leagues 6.44.

As a whole, the numbers would say that the Chiefs have a better than league average run defense, but a a subpar pass defense resulting in an overall defense that is slightly below league average.

I also went over to Football Outsiders to see if their numbers support my data, but Im not sure it does, hopefully its because of the strong schedule and small sample size. FO has ranked the Chiefs Defensive line at 30 overall (no surprises). Good news though is that Glenn Dorsey is ranked 21st among RDE's (higher than we most of us would have), unfortunately Tyson Jackson is ranked 30th. This pretty much sums up what everyone has said about the defense. The defensive line is awful hanging the secondary out to dry. Football Outsiders does say that the Chiefs are 8th at locking down their opponents number 1 receiver... So good job Brandon Flowers.

One last thing, Football Outsiders has the Chiefs Special Teams ranked 8th as a unit based mainly on the leg of Dustin Colquitt.

Not much here, hopefully you guys weren't expecting more out of me. If anyone else has any ideas of how to dig into the numbers a little deeper... Im all ears.

This is a FanPost and does not necessarily reflect the views of Arrowhead Pride's writers or editors. It does reflect the views of this particular fan though, which is as important as the views of Arrowhead Pride writers or editors.