I was thinking today about our run defense. It seemed to improve this year, and we ranked a good deal higher in the NFL in run defense than we did last year. But as the stats say, our opponents rushed for 4.3 yards per carry against us in 2008, versus 4.4 in 2007.
Obviously that doesn't seem significantly better. However, I think many people ignored something very important when discussing this statistic previously.
After some calculations, here's the yards per carry average for the entire league:
2007: 4.06
2008: 4.21
That's a 0.15 yard per carry difference. Doesn't seem big, but it's fairly significant, especially since the entire league is getting better at running the ball, while we got slightly better at stopping it.
THAT is the reason we're ranked so much higher, yet only got better by 0.1 YPC.
Obviously, deeper analysis needs to be undertaken, because we didn't play everyone in the league, so there might be teams weighting those averages that we didn't play.
But overall, it appears that our seemingly 0.1 YPC improvement is actually more like a net 0.2-0.25 YPC improvement, which is fairly significant.
Any thoughts? I might try the in-depth analysis tonight, but I am wondering if people think this is at all significant.
Obviously that doesn't seem significantly better. However, I think many people ignored something very important when discussing this statistic previously.
After some calculations, here's the yards per carry average for the entire league:
2007: 4.06
2008: 4.21
That's a 0.15 yard per carry difference. Doesn't seem big, but it's fairly significant, especially since the entire league is getting better at running the ball, while we got slightly better at stopping it.
THAT is the reason we're ranked so much higher, yet only got better by 0.1 YPC.
Obviously, deeper analysis needs to be undertaken, because we didn't play everyone in the league, so there might be teams weighting those averages that we didn't play.
But overall, it appears that our seemingly 0.1 YPC improvement is actually more like a net 0.2-0.25 YPC improvement, which is fairly significant.
Any thoughts? I might try the in-depth analysis tonight, but I am wondering if people think this is at all significant.
Comment