Chud: “This is a new time and a new team. Anything else is just noise.”
September 9, 2013Résumé stuffer, Shayne Graham, signs with the Steelers
September 9, 2013By now, we’ve read a lot about the Cleveland Browns disappointing offensive performance in Sunday afternoon’s opening 23-10 loss to the Miami Dolphins.
Yet, the pure volume and disheartening report from the box score statistics tells an even more gruesome story. All the numbers below are via Pro-Football-Reference.com’s Play Index tool.
Overall, the Browns ran 72 plays on Sunday: 59 pass (6 sacks), 13 runs. The breakdown of plays by down is shown below:
First down plays (30): 20 pass, 10 rush.
Second down plays (24): 21 pass, 3 rush.
Third down plays (14): 14 pass.
Fourth down plays (4): 4 pass.
It’s pretty astounding that the Browns passed on 21 out of 24 second-down opportunities in a game where they were almost always down just one score. It’s perhaps because 17 of these 24 second-down plays had 8+ yards to go. Of those 21 pass attempts, two resulted in a sack and 14 resulted in a completion. At least the Browns managed to get 10 first downs on these plays, which is an OK number all things considered.
Brandon Weeden’s net yards per attempt (which factors in sacks and sack yards) in the game was 4.14. Among NFL teams in Week 1 so far, only Jacksonville (2.48) had worse. The NFL average is only 6.48. Last season, Weeden’s net yards per attempt was 5.84 and the NFL average was also a much higher 8.87.
Trent Richardson gained an average of 3.6 yards per carry. Last season, he also averaged exactly 3.6 yards per carry on his 17.8 attempts per game. This was a topic I featured in last week’s edition of The Diff. The average NFL rush play in Week 1 so far has gained only 3.43 yards per attempt. In 2012, that number was 4.26.
The Browns offense has been the fourth-least efficient in football in Week One so far, averaging just 4.0 yards per play from scrimmage. The three teams worse are Pittsburgh (3.7), Tennessee (3.6) and Jacksonville (2.5). The Browns averaged 5.0 yards per play last season and the NFL’s worst team was Arizona at 4.1.
14 Comments
What is the average for Week 1 if you throw out the manning brothers?
So Weeden was 14-19 on 2nd down? That’s actually not bad.
What was he on 1st/3rd/4th? I’m guessing horrible on 3rd, which combined with the 2nd down would tell me that he’s really struggling when everyone knows a pass is coming.
That they never ran on 3rd down is pathetic, because it means it never made sense to or if it did they still didn’t. Ugh.
I believe I saw that the Browns (i.e. Weeden) were 1/14 on third down. 1/14. I swear I saw Bess pick up at least two first downs on 3rd down passes, but I guess I was wrong.
3rd down %, week1 record since ’99
Yeah, pathetic is right on 3rd down. The reasons for the horror: Lot of 3rd and longs (after penalties, sacks, and TRich 1 yd runs), thus leading to predictable passing situations, thus leading to greater pass rushes and lack of time to throw/lack of time for receivers to try to get to the markers. Just a snowball effect, reminiscent of our 99-01 days.
Was one of those called back because of a Cousins penalty?
It seems like the answer has to be “yes”, doesn’t it? 🙂
Mr. Rosen clearly did not read the memo about piling on after a bitterly disappointing loss. Fifteen yard penalty and fine for the first offense!
Typical sadistic Jacob.
NFL’s Week 1 average net yards per passing attempt: 6.48
The six best such passing offenses:
Denver: 9.89
San Francisco: 9.85
NY Giants: 9.51
New Orleans: 9.22
Seattle: 8.85
Green Bay: 8.26
The six worst:
Kansas City: 4.89
NY Jets: 4.86
Dallas: 4.78
Pittsburgh: 4.29
Cleveland: 4.14
Jacksonville: 2.28
Per Pro-Football-Reference, I see that the Browns were technically 2/14 (14.3%) on third down conversions. Weeden was only 4/13 with a sack on those attempts.
The two first downs:
2:00 left in 2nd quarter, 3rd and 4 — 8-yard pass to Davone Bess on the left side
1:55 left in 4th quarter, 3rd and 19 — 10-yard sack by Dion Jordan negated by 15-yard facemask penalty
It’s notable that the average third-down yards to go was 10.21. In the 2012 NFL, the average third-down yards to go was just 7.17 and the conversion average was 38.7%.
Ya gotta do what ya gotta do just remember when you tackle to keep ur head up!
B-b-but clearly this doesn’t correlate to wins, since three of the bottom six won, and two of the top six lost.
Womp, womp. NFL offense issues.