Still doubt that passing is more important that rushing?

[TwoDeep3]

Please allow me to retort.

It takes a balanced offense to be...well...balanced.

To look at this team and even attempt to make finite statements about how an offense thrives is an exercise in the **ridiculous.



















**Notice how this word is spelled correctly?

 

[wick]

Yes, but it has nothing to do with the running games value. The threat of a strong running game improves pass effectiveness by some amount. Without being able to measure how the threat of a strong rushing attack helps Passing Effectiveness, any conclusion about the value of rushing as it relates to the Passing Effectively concept is nonsense.

People keep saying this, but if it were true, you'd see a correlation between running effectively and passing effectively. If no such correlation exists, then the theory is just wrong. To that end, how do you explain Dallas' best passing games occurring in the games it ran the ball the worst?

 

[wick]

ummm what healthy QB on this roster would you want throwing the ball 35 - 40 tiimes? The one that only throws check downs or the one that threw 3 picks in 5 passes?

Who said anything about throwing 35-40 times a game?

 

[wick]

No, at 20-20 if we don't give up the KO return and get a late FG and win, what would that say about the theory?

We would have lost the PER margin and the TO margin, yet we still won.

How were we going to get that field goal? There are a lot of permutations that you are just glossing over.

 

[Nightman]

The concept of the team with the better passing differential wins is an 80% concept, IIRC. It's not a 95% type of thing.

Where the entire theory goes off the rails is when people try to use it to make conclusions about the running game. The threat of the run improves passing effectiveness but people that promote the theory can't or won't acknowledge that fact because they can't measure it.

If a defense faces two offenses and both offenses gain 50 yards rushing but the defense played 7 men in the box against 1 offense and 8 men in the box against the other, the stats make it appear that both teams had equal running games; however, that is far far from the truth. The offense that faced 8 in the box had 1 less defender in coverage against the pass. The threat of the run therefore helped that team's passing effectiveness. I say threat of the run because you can't use rushing success as measured in yards because the defense adjusted to limit those.

The 7 vs 8 in the box is just a simplistic example. There are obviously many ways that defenses adjust to limit the running game at the expense of their pass coverage.

I think the Passing Effectively Differential = Wins is more of an effect not a cause of winning. By the end of the game, most teams that win will have a better passing differential than the losing team. Considering that the stats only support it at about an 80% rate makes the whole thing of minimal value.

Considering that most teams have around 400 yards of offense in a win with 300 passing and 100 rushing should make it obvious that rushing as measured in yards is not a good stat for comparison. If one team has 50 yards and the other has 100 yards rushing that 50 yards is not a big percentage of the overall 400 yards gained in the game. That's 50% more rushing yards but a 50% better day in terms of passing yards would be 150 yards for the loser compared to 300 yards for the winner. Obviously when using the stat yards, passing will correlate more than rushing just because of how the numbers work out.

The value of rushing is not the actual yards gained because the defense can adjust to limit those. It is in how the threat of the run affects the passing game and how a quality running team has an advantage in various situations like short yardage, goalline, less predictability, etc..

Another reason the stats are off is because of what happens in games where there is big difference on the scoreboard in the 2nd half or 4th quarter. Teams that are winning will often run the ball for a low average per carry while just running out the clock. Teams that are behind often throw caution to the wind and just start throwing the ball around in a desperate attempt to score in a hurry. Passing in this situation will obviously not be efficient on average.

That was mainly a question to Adam's post about winning 30 in a row. It was later explained that they use different stats to determine Passing Effectively other than QB Rating or even QBR.

I side with your thinking that their box is too narrowly defined and looks backwards too much.

But if you are correct that it hits at 80% then it doesn't carry as much weight. I would love to see a much larger analysis and see what formula was used.

 

[Nightman]

How were we going to get that field goal? There are a lot of permutations that you are just glossing over.

DAL drove to the NYG 30 after the KO return. They went for it on 4th down since they were down by 7. They could have easily kicked a FG instead.

I simply changed 2 plays and DAL wins while being out passed and losing the TO margin by 4.

But lets just say SEA missed the last FG. DAL wins again with a 61 PER vs 82 PER

 

[Brooksey]

People keep saying this, but if it were true, you'd see a correlation between running effectively and passing effectively. If no such correlation exists, then the theory is just wrong. To that end, how do you explain Dallas' best passing games occurring in the games it ran the ball the worst?

If the defense stacks up against the run and we keep passing (like we always do), the passing numbers look good at the expense of the running game but it's the threat of the running game keeping them out of nickel or dime/blitz packages. If you're telling everyone that were passing great against "all pass defenses"..prove it. Like I said before you got some research to do.

Why don't you break down the pass plays on the last thirty games and see how many were against a run defense and how many plays against the pass defense

 

[Nightman]

It's possible to win if you pass less effectively than your opponent. I don't think anyone has ever said it's not possible. But if you look at the actual results of games, there's nothing short of points scored that better correlates to winning than passing more effectively than your opponent. And to that end, the team that has done this in Dallas' games is 7-0. Per @AdamJT13, the team that has passed more effectively than the opponent in Dallas' games is 30-0 in the last 30 games. We're just talking facts here. Now, if you find that one statistic has a perfect correlation to winning over the last 30 Dallas games, don't you think that is meaningful? Or do you chalk that up to just randomness?

I just did a quick look and ATL beat NYG, WAS beat TAM and TAM beat ATL and they all were on the short end of the passer rating.

 

[wick]

I just did a quick look and ATL beat NYG, WAS beat TAM and TAM beat ATL and they all were on the short end of the passer rating.

Passer rating is crude, as I said at the beginning of the thread. You can find better stats like QBR or ANY/A. Maybe some that are even better that I'm not aware of.

 

[xwalker]

That was mainly a question to Adam's post about winning 30 in a row. It was later explained that they use different stats to determine Passing Effectively other than QB Rating or even QBR.

I side with your thinking that their box is too narrowly defined and looks backwards too much.

But if you are correct that it hits at 80% then it doesn't carry as much weight. I would love to see a much larger analysis and see what formula was used.

They would love to got into great detail about formulas and what not. But all the complex formulas in the world don't really matter when they don't have stats available to really evaluate the running games contribution to winning. We know for certain that rushing yards are not a great measurement and we don't have stats to show 7 vs 8 men in the box, etc..

You generally find in technical topics that people that sort-of know some stuff will tend to come up with complicated formulas and talk in depth using buzz words and that type of thing; whereas, people that are actually experts will try to simplify things as much as possible when discussing it with a general audience.

It's the baffle them with BS concept. People like to try to bog down in formulas but can't see the big picture of what the formulas do or don't represent.

Regardless of formulas, it seems obvious that the team that is better in the passing game than the opponent will likely win more of those games than not. It would actually be quite odd if the team with better passing stats than their opponents lost more often than not.

 

[big dog cowboy]

Please allow me to retort.

Love how you said "please" in there.

 

[xwalker]

Passer rating is crude, as I said at the beginning of the thread. You can find better stats like QBR or ANY/A. Maybe some that are even better that I'm not aware of.

It does not matter what formula you use for PE. Maybe 1 formula shows PE (Winner) > PE loser 80% of the time while another formula shows it to be 75% of the time.

Regardless, none of the formulas show the contribution from the Threat of a Strong running game on PE. I think we all know that the running game can have a contribution to improving PE such as when defenses take a man out of coverage and put him in the box against the run. We just don't know the amount of that contribution.

 

[xwalker]

If the defense stacks up against the run and we keep passing (like we always do), the passing numbers look good at the expense of the running game but it's the threat of the running game keeping them out of nickel or dime/blitz packages. If you're telling everyone that were passing great against "all pass defenses"..prove it. Like I said before you got some research to do.

Why don't you break down the pass plays on the last thirty games and see how many were against a run defense and how many plays against the pass defense

1000 likes for you.

 

[AdamJT13]

I don't necessarily disagree, I'm just saying we don't have to put up 300+ and 3 TD's to win. It just has to convert on 3rd downs and hit a big play or two to win. You Don't Need elite passing stats to win.

You're correct -- the totals don't rally matter. It's all about being more efficient than your opponent.

It's a team game. You need a good balance from defense, offense and special teams along with a balance within each (offense needs to have a good balance of pass/run effectiveness and limit turnovers, defense needs to do a solid job of stopping run/pass and create turnoverd. ST's needs to win on field position, etc...)

Some of those things have very little impact on winning or losing.

 

[Risen Star]

1000 likes for you.

Is the staff here going to allow this? That should not count.

 

[AdamJT13]

Didn't Romo have a better rating than Rodgers in the playoffs last year? 143.6 to 125.4

I don't use an individual's passer rating to measure a team's passing efficiency -- one reason being that it doesn't take sacks into account. I use adjusted yards per pass play, and we averaged 7.4 -- while the Packers averaged 8.0.

 

[big dog cowboy]

Is the staff here going to allow this? That should not count.

I'm not telling.

What was that noise???

 

[Hoofbite]

Tell that to Arizona

Tell what to Arizona? That 95% of the teams who have lost the turnover battle by 4 lose? Okay.

 

[Hoofbite]

Exactly right. He had more advantageous situations to throw the ball. I don't know why people want to have this run vs. pass debate. Seems silly to me. I want to and we should seek to do both equally well.

Damn right you should. There's absolutely no way to guarantee that you will be the better passing team in any given week. Not any more than there is a way to guarantee that you will be the higher scoring team in any given week, and that correlation to winning is as strong as correlations get.

 

[phildadon86]

Tell what to Arizona? That 95% of the teams who have lost the turnover battle by 4 lose? Okay.

No. I was referring to the fact they had 4 turnovers. And still won. They are part of the 5 percent. No disrespect intended