Percy's Stats on Dak

[visionary]

Although 40% is a nice cutoff, it's not a big difference in the amount of actual pressures. I think the key is to look at the < and > and see how much difference there is, and more importantly when in the game he's under pressure. Dak attempted 490 passes, add in the 32 sacks and we'll throw in half of the rushing attempts because they probably started out as passes - that means Dak dropped back 550 times on the season or 34.blah blah blah per game. So his cutoff for 40% pressure is 13.75. If he was pressured 13 times it was 37.8%, if they got near him once more it goes up to 40.7%. I don't think that anyone is going to assume that the one extra pressure is going to put him in the tank. Especially since it might not come until the last play of the game and I don't think that numbers for the previous 33 drop backs will magically change because of that pressure.

What I'd like to see is first quarter pressure. From what I've observed Dak gets happy feet when he feels pressure early and it affects the rest of his game. If I were a DC I'd throw everything at Dak the first five times he dropped back, because if I can get pressure on him 2 or 3 times and make him uncomfortable he's going to get skittish and forget his footwork for the afternoon.

Good points
Most of these systems are continuous systems so any cut off will be arbitrary however if you have enough data points you can figure out medians and other cut offs or just plot drop backs vs pressure and see where the incompletions and interceptions fall

Bottom line is that whatever stats were plotting all NFL teams in this day and age have (or at least should have) stats people to run way more sophisticated stats to identify trends

Then it is up to coaches and Dak to leant from those.

 

[erod]

Were you saying that when Troy Aikman was QB?

Different era, but I have always said that Troy was the greatest beneficiary of that team. He had a great arm, but he was a very robotic player. If he played for Romo's teams, he would have been run out of town.

 

[khiladi]

Yeah, that game is on youtube. It's ugly. And during the game they show a clip of the week 15 game from the season before where the Eagles knocked Troy out for the rest of that season. And though we adjusted, poor Troy didn't finish the season - for the third time in 3 tries. I don't think people remember how badly QBs got hit back in the day. I see too many posts talking about Troy and early career struggles - Dak hasn't seen the kind of pressure Troy did early on. I'm not sure Dak could have played in that NFL, regardless of his physical traits.

Forget QBs for a second, a bunch of these WRs, particularly these small ones. You could spear WRs going over the middle, besides have to battle DBs off the line.

There was no such thing as a successful RB in those days that you’d roll out regularly on a bootleg regularly as a staple. Randall Cunningham was probably the only one you could define as a successful running QB, but he had a rocket arm.

Dak would be leading WRs straight into the emergency room the way he throws..

 

[khiladi]

Although 40% is a nice cutoff, it's not a big difference in the amount of actual pressures. I think the key is to look at the < and > and see how much difference there is, and more importantly when in the game he's under pressure. Dak attempted 490 passes, add in the 32 sacks and we'll throw in half of the rushing attempts because they probably started out as passes - that means Dak dropped back 550 times on the season or 34.blah blah blah per game. So his cutoff for 40% pressure is 13.75. If he was pressured 13 times it was 37.8%, if they got near him once more it goes up to 40.7%. I don't think that anyone is going to assume that the one extra pressure is going to put him in the tank. Especially since it might not come until the last play of the game and I don't think that numbers for the previous 33 drop backs will magically change because of that pressure.

What I'd like to see is first quarter pressure. From what I've observed Dak gets happy feet when he feels pressure early and it affects the rest of his game. If I were a DC I'd throw everything at Dak the first five times he dropped back, because if I can get pressure on him 2 or 3 times and make him uncomfortable he's going to get skittish and forget his footwork for the afternoon.

Eagles did just that the game Romo played in 2016...

If you got a video of that game, watch how he chucks up some of his passes into almost INTs

And then watch how the Eagles suddenly change their defense when Romo is in, most probably after he attacks deep on his first pass.

 

[JDSmith]

Forget QBs for a second, a bunch of these WRs, particularly these small ones. You could spear WRs going over the middle, besides have to battle DBs off the line.

There was no such thing as a successful RB in those days that you’d roll out regularly on a bootleg regularly as a primary staple. Randall Cunningham was probably the only one you could define as a successful running QB, but he had a rocket arm.

Dak would be leading WRs straight into the emergency room the way he throws..

Cunningham was always underrated IMO. He could do everything, but his coach was a freaking moron and wasted his ability for the best years of his career....sounds familiar. Luckily for Cunningham he eventually got to go and flourish, even if it was later in his career after his best years were behind him.

People didn't want to put their QBs at risk running options and stuff because defenses would absolutely kill them the first chance they got.

 

[khiladi]

Irrespective of differences of opinion we may have with @percyhoward conclusions, he is a HUGE and UNIQUE asset to this board and want to give him a special shout-out for all the work he does with the stats.

 

[khiladi]

Derek Anderson was still in the league this past year. Even if Dak were to struggle again, he could easily bounce around as a backup/some team trying to "recreate" his rookie year.

Dak is an ideal backup in this league and will have a niche...

 

[JDSmith]

Dak is an ideal backup in this league and will have a niche...

I hope that Dak ends up a lot more than a backup. Because the dark age between Troy and Romo was not even a little fun.

 

[khiladi]

I’d actually like to see stats regarding Dak’s success in respect to designed roll-outs last year versus this year.. if attempts went down and success did as well. DCs were saying they were making an effort to keep Dak in the pocket so I want to see if there is any trend there.

But that data is probably really ‘advanced’...

 

[khiladi]

I hope that Dak ends up a lot more than a backup. Because the dark age between Troy and Romo was not even a little fun.

You mean you don’t miss Chad Hutchinson and Ryan Leaf?

 

[JDSmith]

You mean you don’t miss Chad Hutchinson and Ryan Leaf?

I miss Chad, but only for his folksy guitar.

 

[JDSmith]

And I'd like to point out that anyone could see that Hutch would never pan out because the guy was a freaking cyclops. What kind of depth perception could he have when his eyes were like 1/8" apart?

 

[visionary]

Different era, but I have always said that Troy was the greatest beneficiary of that team. He had a great arm, but he was a very robotic player. If he played for Romo's teams, he would have been run out of town.

Can't agree
Aikman would not have accepted the coaching or player mediocrity that Romo did and would have either left or forced Jerry to make changes
Aikman came in the NFL to win championships, Romo wanted to be a QB in the NFL, anything else was gravy. If he had put his foot down and accepted the challenge and forced Jerrys hand, he could be in the HOF now.
Not even close

 

[jterrell]

Different era, but I have always said that Troy was the greatest beneficiary of that team. He had a great arm, but he was a very robotic player. If he played for Romo's teams, he would have been run out of town.

Then that's fair and you are at least being consistent.
I also tend to agree to a tiny extent but you also have to decide what offense you want to run and which is most effective.
We had Romo here and won nothing so I'm not sure I need a guy to sling it 50 times a game.

Also worth noting Brees is a ONE time Super Bowl winner even with all his passing yardage.
He's only .500 the last 4 seasons combined.
Dak is 22-10 and has never finished a season at .500.

I know defense is a factor but hard to call the 2016 Dallas defense good.

 

[khiladi]

Can't agree
Aikman would not have accepted the coaching or player mediocrity that Romo did and would have either left or forced Jerry to make changes
Aikman came in the NFL to win championships, Romo wanted to be a QB in the NFL, anything else was gravy. If he had put his foot down and accepted the challenge and forced Jerrys hand, he could be in the HOF now.
Not even close

As a Romo Fan, that’s my one biggest ‘qualm’ with him. It took seven years for him to finally start wrestling control away from Garrett, while still taking the criticism that it was ‘his fault’ for TOs and not running the ball.

But I’m not sure that is Romo, more to do with just how tied Garrett is to Jerry, especially after last year and this off-season and how th Romo-Dak situation was handled..

It’s just Garrett’s mediocrity and a new Romo contract finally forced Jerry’s hands, but as soon as a ‘peep’ to try and move away from Romo, whom Jerry loved, Jerry allowed Garrett to go fully with Dak without any QB competition despite all the sacrifices romo made..

 

[visionary]

As a Romo Fan, that’s my one biggest ‘qualm’ with him. It took seven years for him to finally start wrestling control away from Garrett, while still taking the criticism that it was ‘his fault’ for TOs and not running the ball.

But I’m not sure that is Romo, more to do with just how tied Garrett is to Jerry, especially after last year and this off-season and how th Romo-Dak situation was handled..

It’s just Garrett’s mediocrity and a new Romo contract finally forced Jerry’s hands, but as soon as a ‘peep’ to try and move away from Romo, whom Jerry loved, Jerry allowed Garrett to go fully with Dak without any QB competition despite all the sacrifices romo made..

The way I look at it is that if Romo had said he won't resign unless Garrett leaves, Garrett would have been kicked out

After the joneses, I think (admittedly with no inside knowledge) that Romo had the most power when he was playing at a top 5 level.

 

[jterrell]

It would be, without knowing time in the pocket for each pressure. But we do know time in the pocket for all dropbacks, and that doesn't increase in the games when pressures amount to at least 40% of dropbacks.

We know that he was pressured more quickly this year, and (presumably as a result) did not hold the ball as long as he did last year.

Time to throw
2016 2.89 (4th)
2017 2.81 (8th)

Time to scramble
2016 5.10 (12th)
2017 4.89 (22nd)

Time to sack
2016 3.83 (4th)
2017 3.14 (27th)

In games when he was pressured 40% of the time or more, his time before the throw averaged 2.80 seconds. In the other games, an almost identical 2.82 seconds. This tells us that a) the extra pressures weren't a result of holding the ball longer and/or b) if they were, then he must have been getting rid of it a lot quicker on the non-pressured attempts, or else there would have been even more pressures.

His average time from snap to sack was 3.25 when pressured often in the game, and 3.17 when not (so not even a 10th of a second's difference). There was a difference of a full second between snap and scramble: 5.38 when pressured often, 4.41 in the low-pressure games.

He was sacked 6 times in the 8 low-pressure games (once per 42.5 dropbacks), 26 times in the 8 games when pressured often (once per 11.5 dropbacks). But in the low-pressure games he had 124 dropbacks with 2.5 seconds or less in the pocket, and 130 dropbacks with more than 2.5 seconds in the pocket. In the games when pressured often, he had 149 dropbacks of each duration.

Here are the QB with the most "quick sacks" in 2017.
Time to sack 2.5 seconds or less
1 Brady 10 sacks
2 Cousins 10 sacks
3 Dalton 10 sacks
4 Prescott 9 sacks
5 Stafford 9 sacks

And the QB with the most sacks after holding the ball longer.
Time to sack > 2.5 seconds
1 Brissett 47 sacks
2 Taylor 41 sacks
3 Stafford 37 sacks
4 Wilson 37 sacks
5 McCown 34 sacks

17 Prescott 23 sacks

Most of the 8 high-pressure games were those four games with a starting OL out, and from the first 4 weeks of the season, when the OL was still coming together as a unit. That's why I attribute the increase in pressures more to OL issues and pass rushes faced, rather than indecisiveness/bad reads/poor pocket presence on Dak's part. If those things were the real issue causing the pressures, they'd likely be an issue in every game, and you'd see a similar significant effect on his passer rating. But we don't see that. Dak's passer rating was 55.5 when either Smith or Martin missed most or all of the game, 97.0 when they played.

I love you man.

 

[percyhoward]

Stats like this don't tell the whole picture, you know that. If you can't see he's struggling on certain NFL passes, regardless of pressure..take another look.

There is nothing in the numbers that shows he is perfect when not pressured, the evidence is only clear that he is very good (and ironically, even very good under pressure) when not pressured often in games, and that his performance drops substantially when he is pressured an inordinate amount of times.

While there are always things a young QB can work on to improve mechanics, accuracy, pocket presence, and understanding of defenses, I think the biggest need for improvement is in how he responds play after play in games when pressured often -- even with no pressure on a particular play. That may come as he sharpens his skills, it may come with more game experience, or it may not come at all.

 

[jterrell]

And I'd like to point out that anyone could see that Hutch would never pan out because the guy was a freaking cyclops. What kind of depth perception could he have when his eyes were like 1/8" apart?

when hard knocks detailed just how corny he was, you knew it was over.

 

[Toruk_Makto]

The point is that people claim that he does not have the ability to be accurate (mechanics, arm strength, etc.) which is false.

He can work on getting better at dealing with pressure and the coaches "should" be able to help this within the scheme.

Changing the 85% pass when in shotgun and 85% run when under center would be a good place to start.

Of course he has a mechanics and footwork issue. When he feels like he is being pressured...even when he isn't. His accuracy and mechanics plummet.