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Five Downs With Football Outsiders: Is Roy Williams really that bad in coverage?
10:44 AM Thu, Aug 21, 2008 | Permalink | Yahoo! Buzz
Tim MacMahon E-mail News tips
I'm pleased to announce a new feature on this here blog: Five Downs With Football Outsiders. Bill Barnwell, a contributing editor at footballoutsiders.com and one of the minds behind the must-read Pro Football Prospectus, has agreed to answer five Cowboys questions each week of the season using the FO data and methodologies. Here's the preseason edition:
1. Roy Williams' coverage ability (or lack thereof) is always a hot topic in Dallas. What do your numbers indicate about Williams' performance in coverage over the last few years?
Our numbers, in this case, back up what the naked eye sees; Roy Williams has a target on his back, and it's there for a reason. Williams was targeted with 59 passes last year, the second-most of any safety in the league. Those passes "succeeded" (our measure for tracking whether the pass did enough to contribute towards earning a first down) 63% of the time; therefore, Williams had a 37% success rate, which was 72nd amongst all safeties. Remember that there's only 64 starting safeties in the league and, well, it wasn't a pretty year for Roy.
2. Adam "Pacman" Jones arrived here with a lot of talk about his Pro Bowl potential. How close was he to being an elite cornerback for the Titans?
He wasn't close. He already was one. Jones often lined up in man coverage, and absolutely shut down opposing wideouts in 2006. His success rate was 63% -- that was second-best amongst all corners, and the 5.4 yards he gave up per pass were the best in the league. It's impossible to say what he'll be this year because of the year off, his obviously bizarre mental state, and the time it may take to adjust to a new system, but when his mind is right, Adam Jones is on the shortlist of best cornerbacks in football.
3. Can Tony Romo put up the same kind of numbers he did while rewriting the franchise passing record book last season?
He's certainly capable of doing so. We were expecting some regression from Romo and the Cowboys offense in 2007 because of the third-down principle that we've discovered exists in the NFL. Without getting too deep into the gory details, what we've found is that teams whose third down performance on offense or defense exceeds their performance on first and second down tend to see that third down performance decline in subsequent years. That was true of the Cowboys in 2006, but instead of seeing their third down performance decline, instead, the Cowboys' offense improved on first and second down.
The biggest concern for Tony Romo and for the Cowboys as a whole is injury. The team has been the healthiest in football by far over the past five years, and it goes a huge way in helping to explain the team's success. If you remember the second Eagles game last year, Romo and (I believe) Andre Gurode got hurt, and although Romo stayed in the game, he really, really struggled with his mechanics and getting the ball out on time. Romo's a very talented player, but he has a risky, daredevil style and honestly, both he and the Cowboys' offense are overdue for a year full of injuries.
4. Felix Jones averaged 7.7 yards per carry, better than any major college back other than Army's Glenn Davis in the '40s. According to your research, is there a strong correlation between college yards per carry and NFL success?
Not particularly. If we look at the ten best yards per attempt for players that we've seen at the college level, it's a mix of stars (Larry Johnson, LaDainian Tomlinson, Ahman Green) and relative disappointments (Mike Rozier, J.J. Arrington, Rashaan Salaam, Damien Anderson).
The item we've seen that best correlates to NFL success is a metric we've come up with called Speed Score, which weighs a player's performance in the 40-yard-dash relative to his weight. No one doubts that Felix Jones has fantastic speed, but it was very surprising that he ran only a 4.47 at the Combine. For a guy who weighs 207 pounds, that's a 103.7 Speed Score -- the average Speed Score for first-round picks is 112. Combining that with concerns about the style of offense that Arkansas ran and its application to pro performance, and I have reservations about Jones' ability to succeed at the pro level.
5. Judging by Football Outsiders data, who is the most underrated Cowboy? Overrated?
That's a tough one. Roy Williams would be the one who's overrated. For most underrated...I'll go with Marc Colombo. He did arguably the best job of any tackle in handling Michael Strahan last year -- particularly for the first three quarters of the playoff game, while the Cowboys were aces at running to the right last year. The Cowboys were second in the league at running behind right tackle, and first in the league at running to the outside besides it.
10:44 AM Thu, Aug 21, 2008 | Permalink | Yahoo! Buzz
Tim MacMahon E-mail News tips
I'm pleased to announce a new feature on this here blog: Five Downs With Football Outsiders. Bill Barnwell, a contributing editor at footballoutsiders.com and one of the minds behind the must-read Pro Football Prospectus, has agreed to answer five Cowboys questions each week of the season using the FO data and methodologies. Here's the preseason edition:
1. Roy Williams' coverage ability (or lack thereof) is always a hot topic in Dallas. What do your numbers indicate about Williams' performance in coverage over the last few years?
Our numbers, in this case, back up what the naked eye sees; Roy Williams has a target on his back, and it's there for a reason. Williams was targeted with 59 passes last year, the second-most of any safety in the league. Those passes "succeeded" (our measure for tracking whether the pass did enough to contribute towards earning a first down) 63% of the time; therefore, Williams had a 37% success rate, which was 72nd amongst all safeties. Remember that there's only 64 starting safeties in the league and, well, it wasn't a pretty year for Roy.
2. Adam "Pacman" Jones arrived here with a lot of talk about his Pro Bowl potential. How close was he to being an elite cornerback for the Titans?
He wasn't close. He already was one. Jones often lined up in man coverage, and absolutely shut down opposing wideouts in 2006. His success rate was 63% -- that was second-best amongst all corners, and the 5.4 yards he gave up per pass were the best in the league. It's impossible to say what he'll be this year because of the year off, his obviously bizarre mental state, and the time it may take to adjust to a new system, but when his mind is right, Adam Jones is on the shortlist of best cornerbacks in football.
3. Can Tony Romo put up the same kind of numbers he did while rewriting the franchise passing record book last season?
He's certainly capable of doing so. We were expecting some regression from Romo and the Cowboys offense in 2007 because of the third-down principle that we've discovered exists in the NFL. Without getting too deep into the gory details, what we've found is that teams whose third down performance on offense or defense exceeds their performance on first and second down tend to see that third down performance decline in subsequent years. That was true of the Cowboys in 2006, but instead of seeing their third down performance decline, instead, the Cowboys' offense improved on first and second down.
The biggest concern for Tony Romo and for the Cowboys as a whole is injury. The team has been the healthiest in football by far over the past five years, and it goes a huge way in helping to explain the team's success. If you remember the second Eagles game last year, Romo and (I believe) Andre Gurode got hurt, and although Romo stayed in the game, he really, really struggled with his mechanics and getting the ball out on time. Romo's a very talented player, but he has a risky, daredevil style and honestly, both he and the Cowboys' offense are overdue for a year full of injuries.
4. Felix Jones averaged 7.7 yards per carry, better than any major college back other than Army's Glenn Davis in the '40s. According to your research, is there a strong correlation between college yards per carry and NFL success?
Not particularly. If we look at the ten best yards per attempt for players that we've seen at the college level, it's a mix of stars (Larry Johnson, LaDainian Tomlinson, Ahman Green) and relative disappointments (Mike Rozier, J.J. Arrington, Rashaan Salaam, Damien Anderson).
The item we've seen that best correlates to NFL success is a metric we've come up with called Speed Score, which weighs a player's performance in the 40-yard-dash relative to his weight. No one doubts that Felix Jones has fantastic speed, but it was very surprising that he ran only a 4.47 at the Combine. For a guy who weighs 207 pounds, that's a 103.7 Speed Score -- the average Speed Score for first-round picks is 112. Combining that with concerns about the style of offense that Arkansas ran and its application to pro performance, and I have reservations about Jones' ability to succeed at the pro level.
5. Judging by Football Outsiders data, who is the most underrated Cowboy? Overrated?
That's a tough one. Roy Williams would be the one who's overrated. For most underrated...I'll go with Marc Colombo. He did arguably the best job of any tackle in handling Michael Strahan last year -- particularly for the first three quarters of the playoff game, while the Cowboys were aces at running to the right last year. The Cowboys were second in the league at running behind right tackle, and first in the league at running to the outside besides it.
