I'd also like to see an improved running game, and the offense definitely needs to get off to better starts in games. But the score did not have any meaningful effect on the performance of the defense. Playing with a lead didn't seem to help defenses stop us from piling up yards and points last year, and it didn't help our defense either when we had leads. We gave up more yards and TD when we had leads than when we were tied or trailing.
Thanks Percy, You find some good stuff related to dallas stats. I hope you don't find the following as a challenge - just an opinion. I posted a long analysis about this topic around week 13 last year. The crux is that Dallas and Denver were outliers to overall ebb and flow. I initially did this analysis to see if I could gain an advantage at the sport book. And I did better than 65% selling dallas and denver in the first half and buying in the second half. starting around week 7.
http://cowboyszone.com/threads/the-...in-the-4th-quarter.249079/page-2#post-4896306
Dallas Defense when leading
49 drives
38.4 yards per drive
(6.4 yards per play)
0.29 TD per drive
Dallas Defense when trailing or tied
128 drives
30.0 yards per drive
(5.3 yards per play)
0.20 TD per drive
We played with the lead only 28% of the time, and were either tied or trailing 72% of the time. If you reverse those numbers (IOW, if we had been playing with a lead 72% of the time), and assume the rates stay the same, we'd have given up an additional 700 yards and 7 touchdowns playing with the lead more often.
I don't think this is assumption would be completely valid. First, there is a pretty small sample size of "drives when leading." That denominator equates to 14 TDs when leading and I assume would include First quarter Dallas leads of 3-0 which may turn to 3-7. Secondly, I would anticipate opponents yards to be higher if you play with a lead. They will be taking more shots. I would also expect that the defense would force more turnovers as they are keying in on the offense having to be one dimensional. Neither turnovers of making the opponent one dimensional were the cornerstone of dallas last year. Some of that was defensive injuries, some was the offense not being in a better position to press the opposing offense to score. In that thread, I believe I noted where Dallas was one of the best defenses in opponent first half scoring. That is washed away when your offense is 31st in first half scoring (trailing only KC). That may have changed in the last 2 weeks of the season, but not much.
Passer rating has a high correlation with winning. Opposing QB had success no matter what the score.
Dallas Defensive Passer Rating
(when Cowboys were leading)
109 of 183 1394 yd 7.6 ypa 8 td 3 int 91.2
(when tied or Cowboys trailing)
211 of 328 2501 yd 7.6 ypa 14 td 4 int 96.6
Notice how the yards per attempt is the same. Touchdown percentage is virtually the same. The 5-point difference in passer rating is due to a lower completion % and a slight increase in Dallas' INT%, which goes up from 1.2 (32nd--dead last) to 1.6 (equivalent of 29th) when we had the lead.
I will agree that it seems to be statistically significant that passing efficiency and defending the pass is highly correlated with wins. however, as mentioned above there are outliers in every statistical analysis. Football, unlike baseball, is rather difficult to have a few stats be a baseline in all scenarios. I have spent way too many hours trying. There is some interesting work, but, as you know, each play in football is not homogenous, and it is hard to assign full season stats to prove or refute any situational assertion as the sample size is usually not large enough (i.e. personnell, plays, opponent, score, time in game, etc.)
Playing with a BIG lead was anything but a help for the defense. These are the numbers when the Cowboys were leading by 10+ points:
7 drives
57.7 yards per drive
(6.7 yards per play)
0.43 TD per drive
Dallas Defensive Passer Rating
32 of 46 329 yd 1 td 0 int 97.0
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I guess this last section is the one that Im scratching my head as to what you were implying. What I got out of it was that we had 7 drives in the WHOLE season where we were up by 10 pts. That is about 1/2 of 1 game of football. I did not know that, but that makes me ill because I think it is a valid number. I do hope you were not trying to establish statistical significance on 7 drives for one team (which was my initial assertion and was a early scoring outlier). While the bolded sentence may be true for dallas, it was not true of the elite/playoff teams.
When you look at all games in the NFL, Scoring early seems to be a trademark of successful teams. Dallas and Denver were outliers. It makes for great TV to be a "2nd half" or "comeback" team, and people tend to remember the wins that are produced by such games. However, when you pile up wins like NE, SF, GB, Hou, you will not most of the games they got out early. This was the same recipe the 1990 team used. and was a trademark of the 2007 team ( and I believe the 2009 team)
Somewhere I did this analysis for every team back to 2008. and the results were the remarkably the same. Again, just an opinion and I do appreciate the numbers.
