Tell me why we switched offensive coordinators again?

[Hoofbite]

This

Garrett can't do both jobs.

And the OC last year was just as unlikely to go with what was working and just start chucking the ball all over the field. That isn't what this team needs. I still wish at some point we would have brought Norv back as the OC.

The OC last year was overruled by his HC in such a manner that Jerry said it "wasn't fair to Callahan". Make of that what you will.

 

[percyhoward]

I guess we'll disagree then.

I can't see how they are more prolific when the raw output wasn't much different than previous years.

Were they more efficient given the opportunities they had? Sure, but as a consequence of a horrible 3rd down conversion rate their opportunities were limited so the total production of points really wasn't much different than previous years.

Actually, a poor 3rd-down conversion rate means more punts, which in turn means more drives. We had 185 drives in 2013, four more than in 2012. We scored 8 more TD, and one less FG than in 2012.

Taking defense/ST out of the equation by looking only at drives that began inside the offense's 35-yard line (75% of all drives) we had 6 fewer drives than in 2012.

And still scored 6 more TD.

 

[percyhoward]

2012 (129 total red zone plays)
Bryant 14 tgt 4 td (29%) 5 fd (36%)
Witten 13 tgt 2 td (15%) 5 fd (38%)
others 49 tgt 9 td (18%) 11 fd (22%)

2013 (132 total red zone plays)
Bryant 21 tgt 10 td (48%) 11 fd (52%)
Witten 16 tgt 6 td (38%) 7 fd (44%)
others 32 tgt 6 td (19%) 12 fd (38%)

In the red zone, Dez and Witten went from 27 targets/6 TD to 37 targets/16 TD.

 

[Hoofbite]

Actually, a poor 3rd-down conversion rate means more punts, which in turn means more drives. We had 185 drives in 2013, four more than in 2012. We scored 8 more TD, and one less FG than in 2012.

I realize that but my point has been that a few of those TDs and many FGs came as a result of the defense. The team kicked 6 FGs last year after having not moved the ball more than 5 yards. They actually had FG drives of 0 and -11 yards. How do those points provide any sort of support for a productive offense?

More drives to do what? Fail on 3rd down and punt again? In spite of more drives the team also had 93 fewer offensive snaps, which at their average of 5.4 plays per drive would equate to about 17 offensive drives worth of snaps.

The team actually had more drives than they have had in any season since 2009, and yet they had the fewest offensive plays in any season since 2009. The closest season in terms of snaps would be 2011, where they had 990 snaps (987 in 2013) on 175 drives, and 2011 is also the season with the 2nd lowest 3rd down conversion percentage over that span of 5 years.

So yes, a poor 3rd down conversion percentage limited the offenses ability to produce.

 

[Idgit]

I realize that but my point has been that a few of those TDs and many FGs came as a result of the defense. The team kicked 6 FGs last year after having not moved the ball more than 5 yards. They actually had FG drives of 0 and -11 yards. How do those points provide any sort of support for a productive offense?

More drives to do what? Fail on 3rd down and punt again? In spite of more drives the team also had 93 fewer offensive snaps, which at their average of 5.4 plays per drive would equate to about 17 offensive drives worth of snaps.

The team actually had more drives than they have had in any season since 2009, and yet they had the fewest offensive plays in any season since 2009. The closest season in terms of snaps would be 2011, where they had 990 snaps (987 in 2013) on 175 drives, and 2011 is also the season with the 2nd lowest 3rd down conversion percentage over that span of 5 years.

So yes, a poor 3rd down conversion percentage limited the offenses ability to produce.

Unless they're converting on first or second downs.

If the points/offensive series is up, how much does the 3rd down conversion number factor into anything? Sure, they'd have even higher points/offensive drive if they converted more 3rd downs, but it's still the case that the offense was efficient when it had the ball. And that the defense was among the worst in the league when it was on the field.

 

[percyhoward]

Unless they're converting on first or second downs.

If the points/offensive series is up, how much does the 3rd down conversion number factor into anything? Sure, they'd have even higher points/offensive drive if they converted more 3rd downs, but it's still the case that the offense was efficient when it had the ball.

More efficient, and more productive.

 

[percyhoward]

More drives to do what? Fail on 3rd down and punt again? In spite of more drives the team also had 93 fewer offensive snaps, which at their average of 5.4 plays per drive would equate to about 17 offensive drives worth of snaps.

The team actually had more drives than they have had in any season since 2009, and yet they had the fewest offensive plays in any season since 2009. The closest season in terms of snaps would be 2011, where they had 990 snaps (987 in 2013) on 175 drives, and 2011 is also the season with the 2nd lowest 3rd down conversion percentage over that span of 5 years.

So yes, a poor 3rd down conversion percentage limited the offenses ability to produce.

Total plays and 3rd down conversion percentage don't have strong correlations to winning. Neither do number of possessions, which is why I'm not saying we were more productive because of having more drives. (I think that's what you understood my point to be.)

We were more productive because we scored more points.

I realize that but my point has been that a few of those TDs and many FGs came as a result of the defense. The team kicked 6 FGs last year after having not moved the ball more than 5 yards. They actually had FG drives of 0 and -11 yards. How do those points provide any sort of support for a productive offense?

Those two drives don't support it at all, but there were 183 other drives.

Just look at every drive of every team. That will give you an idea of the role of starting field position in our offense's point production relative to that of other teams.

 

[Hoofbite]

Unless they're converting on first or second downs.

If the points/offensive series is up, how much does the 3rd down conversion number factor into anything? Sure, they'd have even higher points/offensive drive if they converted more 3rd downs, but it's still the case that the offense was efficient when it had the ball. And that the defense was among the worst in the league when it was on the field.

I've been saying they were more efficient. I'm simply pointing out that the total output of points is similar to previous seasons because the offense couldn't convert on 3rd down, and also because the defense couldn't get off the field. Here's a quote from a previous post.

That said, being 25th in the NFL in 3rd down conversions really shackled the offenses ability to create more opportunities for itself and being near the bottom on defense allowed other teams to eat the clock.

And yes, the defense sucked. I never said they didn't suck and wasn't building a defense for them. They did suck but they had aspects of play that helped the team and I feel there are a lot of points that they pretty much put on the board. No different than saying the defense sucked while recognizing that they improved their takeaways by 12 when comparing 2012 to 2013.

There's a lot of points that the Dallas defense pretty much put on the board, and that was really their 1 and only saving grace last year.

As far as points/offensive series, they're only up to any extent worth noting if you accept that there were 6 FGs and 4 TDs where the offense failed to gain less than 5 yards. I don't think it's all that accurate to include those because it required little to nothing on the part of the offense to score the FGs, and nearly any offense in the league would have scored at least a couple of TDs if they were given the ball inside the opponents 5 yard line.

For the FGs, the only way the team doesn't get a FG in that situation is if there's a turnover or so much negative yardage that the team is out of FG range. They had negative yardage on one of those drives and 0 on another and yet these points get attributed to the offense?

As for the TDs, having 4 drives that combine for 12 yards and 4 TDs is not any sort of measure of offensive productivity. Goal-to-go effectiveness perhaps, but it doesn't make any statement about how a team performed over the course of the season. These instances are not only extremely rare, but when they do happen teams almost always score. In the last 5 years there have been 106 such possessions across the league. Excluding the 6 occurrences where teams kneeled to end the game, teams scored TDs on 75 of those 100 possessions and FGs on 16 of those 100 possessions. 91% of the time a team has taken over that far into the opponents territory they've come away with points. Over the last 14 years, the TD percentage is 77% and the FG percentage is 15.6%.

Statistically, if you put any team in that position 4 times they're going to score 3 TDs and most likely add a FG to it. Arizona somehow got 4 such possessions in 2012 and even with one of the worst offenses in the NFL they were able scored 3 TDs. One of the worst passing games in the NFL and dead last in rushing yards and yards per carry and they still scored 21 points on these possessions.

It doesn't take a good offense to score on these possessions and their occurrence is pure happenstance. Most teams are lucky to get 1 in any given season. There are 13 teams who average 1 every two seasons or worse over the last 14 seasons, and there are 6 teams who have as many in the past 14 years as Dallas had in 2013. Normally these possessions are inconsequential just because of how infrequent they are but when you start getting an abnormal amount of them, they start inflating the numbers.

Without those scores, the team is slightly above where their point totals have been over the last 5 years. But, as I said they did it with fewer plays so they obviously improved in efficacy. After removing points attributable to the defense and those drives from the totals, here's what the points/drive looks like.

2013: 2.03 points/drive
2012: 1.92 points/drive
2011: 2.00 points/drive
2010: 1.89 points/drive
2009: 1.89 points/drive

Little bit of improvement when moving from 2012 to 2013 but not substantially higher than past years.

Just my opinion. I think a more practical reason to keep these numbers in mind is because past performance heavily influences future expectations. It's almost certain that Dallas won't get 4 possessions that start inside the opponents 5 yard line next year as they'd be fortunate to get just 1. It's also highly unlikely they will be able to put as many points on the board without having to move the ball. They had 10 scoring drives of 5 yards or less in 2013, 8 between the years of 2009 and 2012. Any expectations of similar point totals to last year may be overshooting things.

 

[Hostile]

The Cowboys have broken the 400 point barrier 11 times in franchise history resulting in 7 playoff appearances and 3 of the 5 Super Bowl trophies they own.

Last year was the 3rd time since 1995 that the Cowboys scored over 400 points but it became the first time the Cowboys would score 400 points and not make the playoffs.

So why did we switch OC's? We scored a ton of points.

Simple answer, because we want to win more games and believe that keeping Callahan's primary focus on the Offensive Line and giving Scott Linehan the play calling duties gives us a better chance to be an absolutely elite offense.

 

[FuzzyLumpkins]

I guess we'll disagree then.

I can't see how they are more prolific when the raw output wasn't much different than previous years.

Were they more efficient given the opportunities they had? Sure, but as a consequence of a horrible 3rd down conversion rate their opportunities were limited so the total production of points really wasn't much different than previous years.

What you did was not raw output.

 

[Hoofbite]

What you did was not raw output.

I think I've explained it well enough. Whether or not you agree or disagree is up to you.

 

[FuzzyLumpkins]

I think I've explained it well enough. Whether or not you agree or disagree is up to you.

And excluding a particular range still precludes the output from being raw.

You can explain it all you want but you are simply cherry picking a range and excluding it with no statistical basis. Why not within 10 yards or in the opponents red zone or whatever.

Quite simply that is no way to do analysis. It's confirmation bias.

percy did an adjusted range starting within your 35 which speaks much more to your point: exclude drives that the offense was put in unusually favorable circumstances. That at least does not smack of excluding inconvenient data.

 

[Idgit]

I've been saying they were more efficient. I'm simply pointing out that the total output of points is similar to previous seasons because the offense couldn't convert on 3rd down, and also because the defense couldn't get off the field. Here's a quote from a previous post.

​

And yes, the defense sucked. I never said they didn't suck and wasn't building a defense for them. They did suck but they had aspects of play that helped the team and I feel there are a lot of points that they pretty much put on the board. No different than saying the defense sucked while recognizing that they improved their takeaways by 12 when comparing 2012 to 2013.

​

As far as points/offensive series, they're only up to any extent worth noting if you accept that there were 6 FGs and 4 TDs where the offense failed to gain less than 5 yards. I don't think it's all that accurate to include those because it required little to nothing on the part of the offense to score the FGs, and nearly any offense in the league would have scored at least a couple of TDs if they were given the ball inside the opponents 5 yard line.

For the FGs, the only way the team doesn't get a FG in that situation is if there's a turnover or so much negative yardage that the team is out of FG range. They had negative yardage on one of those drives and 0 on another and yet these points get attributed to the offense?

As for the TDs, having 4 drives that combine for 12 yards and 4 TDs is not any sort of measure of offensive productivity. Goal-to-go effectiveness perhaps, but it doesn't make any statement about how a team performed over the course of the season. These instances are not only extremely rare, but when they do happen teams almost always score. In the last 5 years there have been 106 such possessions across the league. Excluding the 6 occurrences where teams kneeled to end the game, teams scored TDs on 75 of those 100 possessions and FGs on 16 of those 100 possessions. 91% of the time a team has taken over that far into the opponents territory they've come away with points. Over the last 14 years, the TD percentage is 77% and the FG percentage is 15.6%.

Statistically, if you put any team in that position 4 times they're going to score 3 TDs and most likely add a FG to it. Arizona somehow got 4 such possessions in 2012 and even with one of the worst offenses in the NFL they were able scored 3 TDs. One of the worst passing games in the NFL and dead last in rushing yards and yards per carry and they still scored 21 points on these possessions.

It doesn't take a good offense to score on these possessions and their occurrence is pure happenstance. Most teams are lucky to get 1 in any given season. There are 13 teams who average 1 every two seasons or worse over the last 14 seasons, and there are 6 teams who have as many in the past 14 years as Dallas had in 2013. Normally these possessions are inconsequential just because of how infrequent they are but when you start getting an abnormal amount of them, they start inflating the numbers.

Without those scores, the team is slightly above where their point totals have been over the last 5 years. But, as I said they did it with fewer plays so they obviously improved in efficacy. After removing points attributable to the defense and those drives from the totals, here's what the points/drive looks like.

2013: 2.03 points/drive
2012: 1.92 points/drive
2011: 2.00 points/drive
2010: 1.89 points/drive
2009: 1.89 points/drive

Little bit of improvement when moving from 2012 to 2013 but not substantially higher than past years.

Just my opinion. I think a more practical reason to keep these numbers in mind is because past performance heavily influences future expectations. It's almost certain that Dallas won't get 4 possessions that start inside the opponents 5 yard line next year as they'd be fortunate to get just 1. It's also highly unlikely they will be able to put as many points on the board without having to move the ball. They had 10 scoring drives of 5 yards or less in 2013, 8 between the years of 2009 and 2012. Any expectations of similar point totals to last year may be overshooting things.

If you arbitrarily discount those 46 points from the offensive points/drive calculations, you'd need to do the same for every other offense in the league to see its impact. The same goes if you want to compare our offensive points/series to our own production for previous seasons. In both cases, the data still probably says our offense was pretty effective last season. I don't have those calculations, but it's really your argument to support if you believe it changes anything.

As for the third down conversion problem, I don't have a firm grasp on how we performed in terms of stalled drives last season relative to other teams or relative to prior years in Dallas. When you look at drives that end in turnovers, or at the end of halves, and after taking fourth down conversions into account, are we stalling more drives on offense than other teams? And by that I mean are we doing it at a higher rate?

 

[Hoofbite]

And excluding a particular range still precludes the output from being raw.

You can explain it all you want but you are simply cherry picking a range and excluding it with no statistical basis. Why not within 10 yards or in the opponents red zone or whatever.

Move the line to the redzone. Dallas had the most possessions starting in the opponents redzone at 10, scored two more TDs (6) than the next closet team.

I picked the 5 yard line because of the rarity of such possessions and the high percentage at which teams historcally score from that spot. Was that part not clear?

percy did an adjusted range starting within your 35 which speaks much more to your point: exclude drives that the offense was put in unusually favorable circumstances. That at least does not smack of excluding inconvenient data.

Well why didn't he pick the team's own 20? Dallas scored more total TDs and had a higher percentage of drives ending in TDs in 2012 than 2013.

Truth is, I don't care why he picked the yard line he picked. I'm not out to discredit his entire post by attacking the way he went about gathering his data. I think he's built a strong argument that the team was more efficient with their possessions.

My position has been: In spite of an increased efficiency, the total points that you could reasonably attribute to the offense isn't much better than previous years. This is due both to a crappy 3rd down conversion rate and a weak defense.

 

[Hoofbite]

If you arbitrarily discount those 46 points from the offensive points/drive calculations, you'd need to do the same for every other offense in the league to see its impact. The same goes if you want to compare our offensive points/series to our own production for previous seasons. In both cases, the data still probably says our offense was pretty effective last season. I don't have those calculations, but it's really your argument to support if you believe it changes anything.

I've made the comparison amongst multiple seasons played by the Dallas Cowboys. I need not do it for every other team in the NFL to make a comparison between different seasons of a single team.

Here are the numbers again.

2013: 2.03 points/drive
2012: 1.92 points/drive
2011: 2.00 points/drive
2010: 1.89 points/drive
2009: 1.89 points/drive

FWIW, in one of my previous posts I did notate what effect it would have to do the same for every team's point total.

The defense definitely helped that scoring rank. If you control for these non-offensive TDs and extremely short-drive scores across the league Dallas was 11th in the NFL in scoring. I doubt there are many who would say that Dallas had a better offense than New Orleans but because New Orleans didn't get a single bit of help on the scoreboard from their defense, that's what you could conclude by looking at total points per game. Without considering defensive scores and gimme points, New Orleans is 10th in scoring. Accounting for those, they're 4th in the NFL which sounds more reasonable. San Diego saw a decent jump as well of 6 spots after removing the defensive work, and I'm only pointing it out because if you look at the rankings after accounting for the defensive work it shows Dallas having played 6 of the 7 highest point scoring offenses last year. Of course, so did the rest of the East minus Philly, who creeps to #2. Only team from the Top 7 they didn't play was New England.

 

[Idgit]

I've made the comparison amongst multiple seasons played by the Dallas Cowboys. I need not do it for every other team in the NFL to make a comparison between different seasons of a single team.

Here are the numbers again.

2013: 2.03 points/drive
2012: 1.92 points/drive
2011: 2.00 points/drive
2010: 1.89 points/drive
2009: 1.89 points/drive

FWIW, in one of my previous posts I did notate what effect it would have to do the same for every team's point total.

​

Re: "I need not do it for every other team in the NFL to make a comparison between different seasons of a single team." It's helpful, in the event that there are statistically relevant rule changes or schematic changes that occur between seasons, but I was primarily suggesting it as a measure of how we performed last year relative to the competition, which I thought was relevant to the question of why we switched OCs this season.

Still, I don't see the other post where the Dallas historic data was referenced (I did go back and look for it for context, but I'm missing it somehow), but I take it that you netted out 'defensive scores and gimme points' for all five of those seasons and you're saying that the difference is still positive, but not all that significant. That's good data, and I'll buy the argument with the note that the .11 variance is similar to the jump we saw between 2010 and 2011 and that that does actually represent some meaningful improvement.

 

[FuzzyLumpkins]

Move the line to the redzone. Dallas had the most possessions starting in the opponents redzone at 10, scored two more TDs (6) than the next closet team.

I picked the 5 yard line because of the rarity of such possessions and the high percentage at which teams historcally score from that spot. Was that part not clear?



Well why didn't he pick the team's own 20? Dallas scored more total TDs and had a higher percentage of drives ending in TDs in 2012 than 2013.

Truth is, I don't care why he picked the yard line he picked. I'm not out to discredit his entire post by attacking the way he went about gathering his data. I think he's built a strong argument that the team was more efficient with their possessions.

My position has been: In spite of an increased efficiency, the total points that you could reasonably attribute to the offense isn't much better than previous years. This is due both to a crappy 3rd down conversion rate and a weak defense.

Because his paradigm excludes any scenario where you can argue that the offense was given overly favorable field position. Yours still has all that noise. You just picked a range with larger number when you compared it to other years. The very definition of cherry picking and confirmation bias. If you want to filter out overly favorable field position then filter it out.

You are looking for a conclusion rather than allowing it to come about naturally.

 

[Doomsday101]

simple really, because Garrett wanted Linehan. When you guys start coaching the team you can pick your guy.

 

[percyhoward]

Well why didn't he pick the team's own 20?

Because that wouldn't average out to the 20-yard line. If you use only the drives from the 20 or inside it, you're looking at drives that average starting on about the 16, or thereabouts. That's not average, and it would leave out most of the team's drives. The idea is to use the average drive not affected by advantageous field position.

That's why I used the 35-yard line as the limit-- because it makes the average starting field position the 20.

Dallas scored more total TDs and had a higher percentage of drives ending in TDs in 2012 than 2013.

Total TD
2012 37
2013 45

Percentage of Drives Ending in TD
2012 20%
2013 24%

Move the line to the redzone. Dallas had the most possessions starting in the opponents redzone at 10, scored two more TDs (6) than the next closet team.

Again, you're not going to come to any meaningful conclusions by looking at 10 of the drives and ignoring the other 175, unless your purpose is specifically to measure offensive performance on drives that begin in the red zone (which it clearly is not). If your point is that advantageous field position skews the numbers, then you simply have to leave out the drives that started with advantageous field position. That leaves you with a huge sample of well over 100 drives per team to look at.

 

[percyhoward]

As far as points/offensive series, they're only up to any extent worth noting if you accept that there were 6 FGs and 4 TDs where the offense failed to gain less than 5 yards. I don't think it's all that accurate to include those because it required little to nothing on the part of the offense to score the FGs, and nearly any offense in the league would have scored at least a couple of TDs if they were given the ball inside the opponents 5 yard line.

So exclude them. That's what I'm doing. You can filter out all the drives in the NFL that were 5 yards or less. If you're using PFR's Drive Finder, under "Addtional Criteria" choose "Total Yards" and set it to ">=6" Make sure to do it for "All Teams" and not just Dallas.

When you count all drives in 2013, Dallas ranked 6th in TD percentage. Taking out all drives that were 5 yards or less, Dallas still ranked 6th in TD percentage. If you filter out all drives that covered 10 yards or less, Dallas moves up to 5th.