DMN Blog: Field position hindered Cowboys' offense

[Eskimo]

FootballOutsiders analyzes every play based on down and distance and opponent. I don't recall if they factor in field zone. The result is reflected in their DVOA statistics.

There was a graph on one of their articles which talked about the expected number of points to be yielded on 1st and 10s at various points on the field. Over the range between 27 and 32 yards (the rough difference between us and the Vikings) it looked like it was about 0.05 expected points per yard of field position. Interestingly, it also looked like expected points from a starting position around the 12 yard line was about 0, inside the 10 was negative expected points. Midfield was about 2 expected points.

Anyway, it looks then like a difference of say 0.25 expected points per possession. So if a team had the ball for say 10 possessions in a game that difference would average to about 2.5 extra points throughout the game. Now over the course of a year that would be an extra 40 points in total. Add in 20 from the kicking game and now you're at 60 points. We had 3 returns for touchdowns (2 by Crayton and 1 by Newman on an INT from what I recall) which isn't terrible but also no earth shattering - I wonder what the league average is. Since lots of people like to compare us to the Saints who hit the 80 points per 100 yard threshold this year, they had 7 which is 4 more than us and worth a total of 28 points. That would move it up to 88 points on the season or 5.5 ppg.

I suspect the rest of the slight discrepancy from how many points we should have scored is due to OL play in the red zone where we seemed to make lots of errors for some reason (stuffs, sacks, penalties).

 

[jterrell]

ummmm


5 yards is a huge difference.

5 yards * 150 possessions=750 yards.

possible 7 more touchdowns

49 points.

why do the top scoring offenses all have similar short field and better field position ratings than we do.

why does philly a top scoring offense only have one more offensive touchdown than we do....yet avergaed 5 to6 more points a game.

wow....

this thread is crying because we couldn't get points out of the yards we acquired yet you now suggest the answer is more yards because we'd score a TD every time we got 100 additional yards??? That's spitting into the wind. As I mentioned in another post the yards only matter if you tack them on at the end of drives and even then they aren't going to equal tons of points. We scored as many long TDs as anyone. We didn't face yardage challenges at all. EXCEPT in short yardage. We averaged plenty of yards per play ranking 1st in passing yards per play and 2nd in rushing yards per play. What we need was to convert short yardage to GET MORE PLAYS.



good grief....

This team had ~6500 offensive yards yet amazingly did not score nearly 65 TDs.

 

[jterrell]

We weren't even close to one of the worst. We scored a touchdown 59.1 percent of the time, which was eighth-best.



No, it's not. The more times you get the ball closer to the opponent's end zone, the easier it is to score points. Our defense was great at many things, but the lack of turnovers contributed to our offense not being able to score as many points as you'd expect.

We got the ball 13 times inside our opponent's territory, compared to 31 for the Packers. You don't think that helped them score more points? THAT is what's absurd.

That 59% was from 2008. It was 51% for 2009 or a degradation of 8% in one season.
The other high yardage offenses were ranked at 60% or higher. Minny, Indy, NO.

 

[theogt]

That 59% was from 2008. It was 51% for 2009 or a degradation of 8% in one season.
The other high yardage offenses were ranked at 60% or higher. Minny, Indy, NO.

52% for 2009 per USAToday, 14th in the league.

 

[theogt]

Our average starting point on kickoff returns was 24.7, which is 6th worst in the league.

And yet, somehow our defense is to blame.

 

[The Emperor]

the only play making DB was jenkins. Newmann isn't, never was an Int type DB, so we need to rely on our safties to take advantage, yet hamlin and sensi failed in that. I like to see if we can get sharper for a year or two and get rid of hamlin and draft a FS.

Why do you think he was wearing that massive cast on his hand? For kicks?

 

[FuzzyLumpkins]

Why do you think he was wearing that massive cast on his hand? For kicks?

Marcus Aurelius was a stoic and you do not act like him. But you are right in that people do not seem to appreciate players playing through injury.

 

[The Emperor]

Marcus Aurelius was a stoic and you do not act like him. But you are right in that people do not seem to appreciate players playing through injury.

Yay for me. It was a nickname my friends gave me in high school. I tried to read the Emperor Marcus Aurelius' Meditations, but I found it rather boring. The copy I had came in this Harvard Classics series, and in that volume, there were also some writings about Socrates -- the Phaedo and the Apology. I read those and found them more interesting.

 

[CF74]

When you get a ton of yards but stuggle in the red zone, that suggests that starting a eight yards closer wouldn't really help that much.

/thread..The End.....

 

[hmcorp]

/thread..The End.....

mmm sure helped those other offenses that scored more than us...jeez...sure helped them a lot to start in the opponents field 3 times as often. seems like our red zone efficiency for 2009 was higher than most teams so...YOU ARE WRONG AGAIN!~

DEFENSE DIDNT GET ENOUGH TURNOVERS AND WE DIDNT GET ENOUGH SHORT FIELDS.

I mean 7 scores from the saints defense 22 short fields.

We had 1 score and 13 short fields. DEAD FING LAST>

I guess it means nothing to people with an agenda.

 

[Idgit]

Marcus Aurelius was a stoic and you do not act like him. But you are right in that people do not seem to appreciate players playing through injury.

Boom goes the Dynamite! Fuzzy lowers the 'you, sir, are no Marcus Aurelius' smack and the board goes wild!