FanPost

How can you win with a lousy defense?


There has been much speculation around how to best adapt to the anticipated poor defensive play from the Dallas defense. I decided to take a look around the league at how teams won when their defense gave up at least 400 yards. There were 54 games that teams found a way to win even when their defense did poorly. I've isolated the offensive statistics from those games for a closer look.

I would have liked to have used yards per play, but PFR queries with that stat don’t work right now. (the correlation with yards and yards per play is pretty strong however). It should also be noted that Dallas was absolute worst in yards allowed and slightly better in yards per play and scoring. So using yards is meaningful in the sense that is the area that Dallas had the most trouble with.

How important is a good running game to winning with a bad defense?

When looking at the 54 victories when the defense allowed at least 400 yards in 2013, the rushing attack had a pretty good day. However, not a truly exceptional day. The averages per game shook out to:

28.5 rushes - 124.9 yards - 4.38 yds/att - 1.22 TDs

Here's how it looks compared to the league average by percent:

Online Graphing



I don’t think I would call it ground and pound, but the rushing attack was a vital and efficient part of a well functioning offense. This is about 2 carries above the league average with a corresponding amount of yardage. These teams are rushing an average of 47% of the time (about how often San Diego ran it last year). The biggest difference is obviously the scoring. This is an efficient running game.

How about the passing game?


When you look at the passer rating, it shakes out to an impressive 107.3 rating. That would have been good for second place behind Denver's incredible year. This is no bus driver. A typical game would look like this:

22/33 attempts - 261 yards - 2.14 TDs - .35 Ints

Compared to the league average (red line) it looks like this by percentage:

Online Graphing

What we see here is that the QB performance is almost completely average with the exception of TD's and Ints, with the Int percentage being incredibly low. This is a highly efficient performance.



Overall

Here is how these performances stacked up to league averages by percent. The red line is the league average.

Online Graphing



Note that the overall yardage of these offenses are actually below 400 yards (386). That is still great yardage output, but they do it with a slightly below average number of plays! They have a very impressive 6.23 yds/play. Generally you would expect about 27 points of offensive scoring from the above numbers. However the average score for the winning team was around 33.1 points.

This suggests almost no punts, some really good special teams play, turnovers, and/or some defensive scoring. The turnover margin is off the charts at around +2.1. Well above Seattle’s leading +1.3 average last year. Even if you give up yards, the defense still has to do something right if you want to expect to win. :(

So, if you have a highly efficient, mistake free offense and an opportunistic defense you can give up 400 yards or so and still win.

What does this mean for Dallas?

Dallas was only 2-6 in games where they gave up over 400 yards (and 6-2 when they held them under) link. The overall win percentage for the league is actually .461 when allowing at least 400 yards. So what gives? The real issue for Dallas is that they gave up 3 of the top ten worst yardage games in the NFL last year and 4 of the top 14 (ironically the one team to manage a win in those games was - ahem - Denver…).

Those games are next to impossible to win. Dallas has a good enough offense to deal with bad defensive performances, but they absolutely have to stop the putrid ones if Dallas has any hope. Maybe it is too much to expect the Dallas defense to rise much overall, but they have got to raise their floor.

The good news is that the defense has shown itself to be opportunistic on occasion. Perhaps it’s just a function of how many plays that opposing offenses get to run, but the Dallas defense got its share of turnovers. There is some room for the offense to cut its turnovers and increase the teams turnover differential.

Can the offense protect their defense in those putrid games?

Well, somewhat. The problem is that once you get behind, being conservative and slowing down the clock doesn’t help much. If you look at the New Orleans game for example, it’s hard to imagine the running game making a real difference. Sure there can also be games like Detroit where if Dallas has a better rushing attack then maybe we can close in the last few minutes and the game doesn’t quite get that out of control. But the fact of the matter is that the offense can’t control whether the Defense collapses in the first half. What they can do is be highly efficient, avoid giving up the football and keep from making critical mistakes that give their defense short fields.

What can the Dallas offense improve overall?

While there is a lot of talent in the passing game, Dallas needs to run more. And when I say that, I mean run the ball more than Dallas did last year, not become a run first team like Seattle/SF/NYJ/Buff. Let me be clear, I’m not proposing this as a Time of Possession strategy - it’s a way to avoid interceptions. Keeping your passing attempts low increases the likelihood of getting through a game without an interception. If Dallas simply puts themselves in line with the league average in run percentage, they will be in very good position to do this.

They absolutely need to give their defense long fields. That means good special teams play and not giving up the football. These are the bare minimums. It may seem self explanatory, but it’s more achievable than insisting that they score 7 points every time. If Dallas can keep the football and take advantage of their opportunities, they should be in position win even with bad (but not absolutely terrible) defensive performances. However, if the defense sinks to Chicago/New Orleans levels too often, there just about nothing that the Dallas offense can do but pray.



Some notes about Time of Possession and Running the ball

The connection between ToP and running seems obvious to most, and there is some cause for that. However, I would like to point out that the correlation between teams that run more and teams that dominate ToP is not very clear.

Top 5 Time of Possession teams from 2013

  1. New Orleans
  2. San Diego
  3. Detroit
  4. Carolina
  5. Cincinnati


Top 5 rushing teams by percentage

  1. Seattle
  2. San Francisco
  3. Buffalo
  4. NY Jets
  5. Carolina

See a connection there? Neither do I. New Orleans was a pass heavy offense, and Detroit was number three(?!). Carolina was the only team in the top five of ToP that to me was a run first team. FYI, Seattle and SF were very average in ToP.

My opinion is that ToP is a function of game specific objectives and events, not a consequence of a rushing attack. You can’t control the clock by simply running more, you need to use tempo to your advantage when the situation calls for it. Maybe this seems like a straw man to some, but I don’t think our discussion of the effective use of a great offensive line have been that nuanced so far. I hope that this contributes a little to our conversations.

Another user-created commentary provided by a BTB reader.