Short Yardage Numbers, 2010

[percyhoward]

Short-Yardage Situations
(third or fourth down, two yards or less to go. Also includes first-and-goal or second-and-goal from the two-yard line or closer.)

Short-Yardage Play Selection, 2010
run 59%
pass 41%

Short-Yardage Conversions by Run, 2010
(percentage of plays that achieved a 1st down or TD)
Barber 13 of 23 (57%)
Choice 5 of 13 (38%)
Jones 2 of 3
Gronk 2 of 2
Romo 1 of 1
Kitna 1 of 3
Austin 1 of 1
TEAM: 25 of 46 (54%)
NFL AVG: 62%
NFL Rank: 26th

Short-Yardage Conversions By Pass, 2010
Kitna 11 of 24
Romo 5 of 8
TEAM: 50% 16 of 32

 

[Kevinicus]

Can you add in information on the formation? I'd bet that 90% of the runs were in tight power I type formations.

And I bet the passes were at least 50% shotgun.

 

[Eskimo]

Percy, could you post the numbers just for the goalline situations. I think we weren't so bad away from the goalline but were pretty bad in close again this year.

 

[Future]

Choice...ouch!! :laugh2:

 

[burmafrd]

As regards running, that is MOSTLY on the O line. Get no push, open no holes. Then on having davis or someone else PULL. Dumb. Then MB is no longer a power back. TC never was. Put it all together and there you are. O line, play calling, no power back.

 

[THUMPER]

Short-Yardage Situations
(third or fourth down, two yards or less to go. Also includes first-and-goal or second-and-goal from the two-yard line or closer.)

Short-Yardage Play Selection, 2010
run 59%
pass 41%

Short-Yardage Conversions by Run, 2010
(percentage of plays that achieved a 1st down or TD)
Barber 13 of 23 (57%)
Choice 5 of 13 (38%)
Jones 2 of 3
Gronk 2 of 2
Romo 1 of 1
Kitna 1 of 3
Austin 1 of 1
TEAM: 25 of 46 (54%)
NFL AVG: 62%
NFL Rank: 26th

Short-Yardage Conversions By Pass, 2010
Kitna 11 of 24
Romo 5 of 8
TEAM: 50% 16 of 32

Good info PH. Our lack of short yardage conversions really hurt us in a lot of games. I put most of that on our O-Line.

 

[Wishbone82]

Good info PH. Our lack of short yardage conversions really hurt us in a lot of games. I put most of that on our O-Line.

I do too. Probably is the reason why we never run a sneak. Asking bigg to get low is no small feat

 

[percyhoward]

Can you add in information on the formation? I'd bet that 90% of the runs were in tight power I type formations.

And I bet the passes were at least 50% shotgun.

Percy, could you post the numbers just for the goalline situations.

Good questions.

Let me check this evening.

 

[pancakeman]

Were Barber's numbers this past year much better than in the previous year? That was my impression.

 

[NextGenBoys]

Great stuff Percy. Great stuff.

We were actually better than I thought, although that's not saying muhc. We're absolutely dismal near the goal line. Until we fix our offensive line, we will continue to lose games because we can't get in the end zone.

 

[burmafrd]

Gurode is pretty strong and big; why we just do not have a simple sneak with romo right behind him is just plain stupid. certainly would be better than what we have been doing.

 

[nalam]

Chance Romo getting hurt will be high , probably thats a deterrent .

If our OL is big and strong as claimed , they should overpower the DL and any powerback or Full back should be able to get thre 1-2 yards. But thats not the case , I would put this on Houck than on the players.

 

[TheCount]

Can you add in information on the formation? I'd bet that 90% of the runs were in tight power I type formations.

And I bet the passes were at least 50% shotgun.

You're going just 90 percent on the runs? I'd say it was higher. :laugh2:

 

[bracey]

This has been the primary glaring weakness on our offense for at least a couple of years now. I think it's all down to the OL.

 

[percyhoward]

We were actually better than I thought, although that's not saying much. We're absolutely dismal near the goal line.

26th in the league in short yardage, for the second straight year.

Like you and Eskimo said, we were much worse near the goal line, although it's normal for teams' goal line numbers to be much lower than from farther out on the field. Still, "dismal" sums it up.

Last year I researched the red zone short yardage stats for every single team, just to see if we were dead last, as I suspected. Turns out we were 31st, ahead of Oakland by tenths of a percentage point. I don't plan to do that research again for 2010, but I'm sure we're bottom 5 again.

Here are the goal line numbers for the last two seasons:

2010 32.4%
11 TD on 34 plays from 2-yard line or closer
18 runs
Barber 3 TD's on 10 attempts
Choice 1 TD on 6 attempts
Jones 0 TD on 1 attempt
Kitna 0 TD on 1 attempt
TEAM: 4 TD on 18 attempts (22%)

16 passes
Romo 2 TD on 3 attempts
Kitna 5 TD on 13 attempts
TEAM: 7 TD on 16 attempts (44%)
___________________________________

2009 27.2%
6 TD on 22 plays from 2-yard line or closer
14 runs
Barber 4 TD on 12 attempts
Choice 1 TD on 2 attempts
TEAM: 5 TD on 14 attempts (36%)

8 passes
Romo 1 TD on 8 attempts (13%)

The first thing that jumps out is that we had a lot more goal line plays in 2010 than in 2009. The main reason is that we scored TD's from farther out on the field much more often in '09. For example, Romo had 11 TD passes from outside the red zone in '09, while Kitna had just 3 in his nine games in '10.

The other big difference is the run/pass ratio on the goal line. In '09, it was 64/36 run. In '10 it was 53/47 run. If Romo had played the whole year, we might have ended up passing more than running on the goal line. The ratio was 50/50 when he was still playing, and this is consistent with the high numbers of pass attempts early in 2010.

22 of our 34 goal line plays in 2010 came in the last 8 games of the season. So we had as many goal line plays in games 9-16 as we had in all of 2009. Two reasons for this: Our lack of big plays (ability to score from farther out), and our high percentage of possessions that started in opponents' territory because of all the takeaways we were getting in the second half of the season.

Oh, and a third reason. We kept getting stuffed, and setting up another short yardage play.

 

[nyc-cowboy]

Chance Romo getting hurt will be high , probably thats a deterrent .

If our OL is big and strong as claimed , they should overpower the DL and any powerback or Full back should be able to get thre 1-2 yards. But thats not the case , I would put this on Houck than on the players.

I doubt that very much - in my 40 something years of watching this game I don't think I've ever seen a QB get hurt on a sneak.

How we can run a sneak behind Davis and Dre is beyond me.

 

[sonnyboy]

This has been the primary glaring weakness on our offense for at least a couple of years now. I think it's all down to the OL.

Absolutely! And I didn't even need the numbers to tell me what my watching the games did.

On a side note, I'd love to see our short yardage success rate compared to the league average for 1992 and 1993. It's what I always felt truely set that team apart.

Back to the current team. Obvious run and pass situations expose your OL big time.

 

[TheCount]

Wow, those short yardage numbers are pretty damn pathetic.

 

[Kevinicus]

You're going just 90 percent on the runs? I'd say it was higher. :laugh2:

I was tempted to put 95% but decided to play it safe.

 

[percyhoward]

Were Barber's numbers this past year much better than in the previous year? That was my impression.

His season-long numbers weren't much different.

2010: 13 of 23 57%
2009: 16 of 30 53%

But something very unusual happened with him this past season. He did get off to a great start, converting 10 of his first 11 short yardage runs. Then he didn't touch the ball the last 3 quarters of the first Giants game. I thought there could have been an injury of some kind, but looking at that game, I sure don't see it. Anyway, the rest of the season he was 3 of 12 converting on short yardage runs.