JJT: Cowboys offense no juggernaut

[fanfromvirginia]

Told you so... Last season, Garrett spoke about the defense having to do better in providing the offense with TOs to capitalize. They gave them over ten plus more opportunities than two years ago with like 3 games to play. Now, these jokes are blaming it on the defense and telling us the offense was not the problem, the defense was.

The defense was the problem but the offense production is being overrated by the offense's relative lack of injuries and easy schedule. The defense was awful by almost any standard, except turnovers and even those numbers were a function of having started the season really well.

Give this offense an average schedule and an average amount of injuries and they'll produce on an average level, despite having quite a bit of talent.

 

[khiladi]

We were also worst in yards allowed almost ever, but not worst ever this season in points allowed. In fact, we were middle of the pack in scoring allowed until the Saints and Bears game.

Yardage means nothing in terms of winning games. When Garrett was in charge, we were top give yardage wise the offense, but consistently muddle of the pack and getting worse in terms if red zone scoring. Garrett was demoted.

 

[TrailBlazer]

No, that is ONLY offensive scoring. Defensive scores and turnovers don't have anything to do with it.

And as percy already showed, the Denver game doesn't skew our stat any more than other teams' "fluke" games skew theirs.

The defense gave the offense the ball in the opponents red zone 8 times. You can't tell me that doesn't skew the offensive scoring stats. But stats don't mean much to me; I watched every game and I know we didnt have a top five offense like your stats would suggest. Remember that 0-16 streak on 3rd down conversions? The offense was awful at times... And other times they were good. Too inconsistent to be top 5.

 

[Idgit]

You don't understand how threads like this can exist? I'll try to break it down for you. It was an article regarding the cowboys on ESPN.

Other ppl have different opinions. That's not hard to understand. I believe what I believe bc I've watched every game for many many years. I know this team plays up and down to their competition. The offense was too inconsistent. The defense was the main problem in 2013, but the offense was downright awful at times too. Remember that 0-16 streak on 3rd down conversions? Yeah, that happened. Put the stat sheet down and watch the games. This was not an elite offense. Put an average defense on this team and were still not legit contenders for a SB. The offense would still be inconsistent, play down to conpetition, and would fail to come through when we need it most.

Defense was not our ONLY issue in 2013. See 0-16 on 3rd downs spanning 3 games is just flat out RIDICULOUS.

This very third down argument was exploded earlier in this very thread.

You're unhappy about things you haven't bothered to measure in context or that don't have a significant impact on winning. When that's explained to you, you ignore it or write off stats, as if measuring and weighing the things that matter when it comes to winning is a bad thing.

While that's your perogative, for sure, it *is* irrational. Whether you realize it or want to admit it, or not.

 

[fanfromvirginia]

But stats don't mean much to me; I watched every game and I know we didnt have a top five offense like your stats would suggest.

This isn't a very impressive argument. Seeing may be believing but it's a terrible thing to base an argument on. It's true stats can give an incomplete picture; I'm sure these are doing just that. But 'I ain't gonna believe the stats because they contradict my argument' is both incomplete and wildly biased.

How about the possibility that other mediocre teams looked as bad to their fans as the Cowboys do to us?

Having said that, I'll reiterate here what I've said multiple times in these threads and *still* haven't gotten a good response to. This strong offensive production was almost certainly a function of having played a weak schedule and endured a relatively low number of injuries. Put this year's offense against an average schedule and saddle them with an average amount of injuries and the production would have been average, at best.

 

[TrailBlazer]

This very third down argument was exploded earlier in this very thread.

You're unhappy about things you haven't bothered to measure in context or that don't have a significant impact on winning. When that's explained to you, you ignore it or write off stats, as if measuring and weighing the things that matter when it comes to winning is a bad thing.

While that's your perogative, for sure, it *is* irrational. Whether you realize it or want to admit it, or not.

Stats aren't the end all be all for measuring performance. The eye in the sky don't lie. Put the stat sheet down for a sec, Actually watch games and make your own judgment. The stats would suggest the cowboys had a top 5 offense in 2013 and that simply wasn't the case. Their blunders were well documented against Philly Detroit GB... It took 4th quarter miracles from romo against Washington and Minnesota. Sucked against a terrible bears defense. Not consistent enough to be ranked as high as the stats would say.

 

[percyhoward]

Having said that, I'll reiterate here what I've said multiple times in these threads and *still* haven't gotten a good response to. This strong offensive production was almost certainly a function of having played a weak schedule and endured a relatively low number of injuries. Put this year's offense against an average schedule and saddle them with an average amount of injuries and the production would have been average, at best.

There's so much grey area there that it's hard to address, and I don't think anybody's going to give you a response that will satisfy you. We played 8 games against defenses that ranked in the top half of the league in points allowed per drive, and 8 against teams that ranked in the bottom half. Since all we have to go on is the schedule that was actually played, then if we were an average offense, it stands to reason that we'd have scored about what the average team scored against these defenses.

In our 8 games against teams with defenses that ranked in the bottom half of the league in points allowed per drive, we scored 225 points on 90 drives, an average of 2.50 per drive. On average, these teams gave up 2.13 points per drive. So the Dallas offense scored 14.8% more than the rest of the NFL did against these defenses. If Dallas' offense was average, the difference should then be seen in how it performed against the better defenses it faced.

In our 8 games against teams with defenses that ranked in the top half of the league in points allowed per drive, we scored 174 points on 93 drives, an average of 1.87 points per drive. On average, these teams gave up 1.66 points per drive. So against these better defenses, Dallas scored 11.3% more than the league did. This was not an offense that beat up on the bad defenses it faced and was exposed by the good ones.

 

[JD_KaPow]

Let us assume your calculations are correct, do do field goals count as points per possession? BTW, percentages across the league doesn't mean that much, especially when talking about teams that create 12 TOs compared to 20 plus... They obscure reality...

You're welcome to look at the numbers and slice them any way you like right here. I have no idea what your point is about teams that create more or fewer TOs. I will note that both of Bailey's missed FGs this season were on drives that started in the opponents' territory, so that will make the scoring look a bit worse than it probably should.

 

[AdamJT13]

The defense gave the offense the ball in the opponents red zone 8 times. You can't tell me that doesn't skew the offensive scoring stats.

Did you forget which thread this is? It's all about how our offense supposedly DID NOT take advantage of the great field position our defense gave it (as if no other offenses ever got the ball in great field position). How could it skew our stats (more than it skews any other team's stats) if we didn't score enough on those eight possessions?

And if you count ONLY the possessions that started on each offense's side of the field, we still were among the top five offenses in points per possession, behind only the Broncos, Saints, Bears and (barely) Chargers.

But stats don't mean much to me; I watched every game and I know we didnt have a top five offense like your stats would suggest. Remember that 0-16 streak on 3rd down conversions? The offense was awful at times... And other times they were good. Too inconsistent to be top 5.

So you're saying top-five offenses never go into slumps or seem inconsistent at times? And since you "watched every game" and know exactly how consistent all 32 offenses were, who were your top five offenses? And where would you rank ours? Sixth? Twenty-sixth? Which offenses were better?

 

[khiladi]

You're welcome to look at the numbers and slice them any way you like right here. I have no idea what your point is about teams that create more or fewer TOs. I will note that both of Bailey's missed FGs this season were on drives that started in the opponents' territory, so that will make the scoring look a bit worse than it probably should.

You don't think the ones he made had anything to do with how good the scoring looked? Why did they extend him with that contract?

The point about percentages isn't difficult. Percentages are only truly reflective of a point when attempts are close are equal.

 

[JD_KaPow]

You don't think the ones he made had anything to do with how good the scoring looked? Why did they extend him with that contract?

The point is that we missed 25% of our FG attempts on these drives, a high percentage compared to other teams. Since we know that our kicker was not below average, this flukey result makes our scoring on these drives look worse than our scoring overall. And the fact that an FG was attempted means that the offense was in position to score.

The point about percentages isn't difficult. Percentages are only truly reflective of a point when attempts are close are equal.

Huh? Percentages are what you use to normalize across different numbers of opportunities. If the attempts are the same, there's no need to use percentages.

 

[khiladi]

Do you understand basic logic? This implies their is a weakness when using percentages, especially when number of attempts varies widely across teams. That was the point. Telling somebody we were a certain percentage is often times blowing hot air.

As far as the number of attempts of the field goal kicker how does that in any way address the point regarding our defense putting us in a position to score via field goals? If our field goal kicker misses two attempts that were because of defensive TOs, it simply looks bad on the kicker, which brings me to the point that I raised earlier... Whether or not you want to credit a defense for points when the offense settles for field goals after a TO...

 

[khiladi]

We are bringing in Linehan. Moved Wade Wilson to the booth. People claimed JG started calling plays. We were blasted for not running the ball. And yet, people are telling us the offense was all world... Give me a break

 

[big dog cowboy]

Last season, Garrett spoke about the defense having to do better in providing the offense with TOs to capitalize. They gave them over ten plus more opportunities than two years ago with like 3 games to play. Now, these jokes are blaming it on the defense and telling us the offense was not the problem, the defense was.

We had the worst defense in the league. What kind of record did you think we could finish up with given that fact?

 

[cowboys1981]

Our defense is a juggerNOT!

 

[khiladi]

We had the worst defense in the league. What kind of record did you think we could finish up with given that fact?

Doesn't yardage given up equal points given up?

 

[DFWJC]

JJT completely misses the point.

Even with an average defense, the offense would have been good enough to win 2 or 3 more games.

They didn't have to be a juggnaut.

This.

I agree that the 5th in scoring thing overestimates the offense somewhat,
but they were plenty good to get this team to 10-6 or 11-5 if they had even an average defense.
I mean, this team lost 4-5 games by just a few points.

 

[DFWJC]

Statistics rarely tell the (entire) story.

fify

stats tell the majority of a story--maybe even vast majority--but not all of it.

 

[Idgit]

Stats aren't the end all be all for measuring performance. The eye in the sky don't lie. Put the stat sheet down for a sec, Actually watch games and make your own judgment. The stats would suggest the cowboys had a top 5 offense in 2013 and that simply wasn't the case. Their blunders were well documented against Philly Detroit GB... It took 4th quarter miracles from romo against Washington and Minnesota. Sucked against a terrible bears defense. Not consistent enough to be ranked as high as the stats would say.

If you're looking at the right stats, they are the best measure of performance. There's no disputing it. The 'eye in the sky' is a euphemism for a recording device, not for a fan's interpretation of what's going on on the field. My own judgment after watching the games, for example, is about as far from your assessment as it's possible to get. If your takeaway from just watching the games was that we lost to GB or DET, for example, because of the offense, I'm not sure what to tell you. If you think a measure of *any* offense is playing great, in every game, well then, the obvious conclusion I draw from that is that you simply don't have much experience watching more than one NFL team for any length of time.

Speaking for myself, I normally watch the games once in real time, then I come back to CZ and learn as much as I can about how the game unfolded from any number of great posters here who build and support their arguments based on reasons and not just emotions. Then I go back and watch the game again with what I've learned in mind, and focus on the areas that we've talked about the most or that I found most interesting. It doesn't take a whole lot of experience doing that to figure out that the problem with last season, as the year wore on, was insufficient pressure from the defensive front and poor coverage on the back end (and from the LB corps in some key games) on the back end. While not perfect, the offense and the special teams were not the problem. No matter what your snap judgement might suggest.

 

[Idgit]

fify

stats tell the majority of a story--maybe even vast majority--but not all of it.

It depends on the stats, and on the story. But there's no doubt that there are stats that measure the things that correlate most strongly to winning in the NFL. It's not a matter of opinion, it's just math. These guys can argue with the correlations, maybe, or point out other correlations or adjustments to the correlating data that are relevant or that further unpack an argument or assumption. That's convincing when it happens.

What they can't do--with the hope of changing the opinion of anyone actually bothering to pay attention to what's really going on--is appeal to their own emotional interpretation of what their own eyes saw and act like that's a rational argument against a highly-correlating win statistic. It doesn't matter how many people used their own eyes and happen to agree with them. It's either measurable, or it's an opinion, and not all opinions are created equal.