Walkthrough: Seamers (What's this, actual Football content?)

[Temo]

I figured with all the offseason nattering that goes on (and bores me to death), we could use some actual football content every now and then.

The always great 'Walkthrough' over on FO had some interesting cowboys-related stuff today. Basically a study into deep routes that TEs run (which would mostly be Seam routes) and who is most effective at them. Not a suprise that Witten comes out ahead of the pack.

http://footballoutsiders.com/walkthrough/2009/walkthrough-seamers

Worth a click-through for play diagrams, but I did quote the Cowboys-related parts.

Seams Simple

What do Jason Witten, Billy Miller, and Tony Scheffler have in common? Besides the fact that they are tight ends, smart guy?
The answer: They were among the best tight ends in the league at running the seamer last year.


The seamer (or seam route) is a deep pass pattern up the middle of the field, usually run by the tight end or a slot receiver. The receiver's goal is to attack the lane between two zone defenders. Even if the receiver doesn't get open, he creates space over the middle of the field by forcing the deep safeties to cover him.


You'll often read that a tight end possesses the "speed to stretch the seam," but there's no real way to measure how good a tight end is at running this particular route. That doesn't mean we cannot try. At Football Outsiders, we're awash in play-by-play data, as well as the results of our Game Charting projects. We don't specifically label plays as "seamers," but the official play-by-play categorizes each pass by location: short left, right, or middle; deep left, right or middle. It's a simple matter to sift through the data to find every pass thrown to a tight end in the deep middle of the field. Not all of these passes are seamers, and not every seam route will get labeled as a "deep middle" pass, but the data will give us a sense of how well the tight end works that area of the field.


Here are the numbers for all of the tight ends who were thrown five or more passes in the deep middle of the field in 2008:

Top Tight Ends on Deep Middle Routes, 2008 Player Team Att Comp Yards Y/A Jason Witten DAL 10 7 193 19.3 Billy Miller NO 10 8 200 19.3 Tony Scheffler DEN 8 7 213 26.6 Dallas Clark IND 7 5 133 19.0 Vernon Davis SF 7 3 75 10.7 Mercedes Lewis JAC 7 5 121 17.3 Zach Miller OAK 7 5 160 22.9 Visanthe Shiancoe MIN 7 4 95 13.6 Chris Cooley WAS 6 5 128 21.3 Robert Royal BUF 5 5 118 23.6 L.J. Smith PHI 5 1 20 4.0 These are tiny data samples, so we shouldn't draw any major conclusions. The data can best be used to corroborate some opinions (Jason Witten is good) and make minor adjustments to other opinions (maybe Robert Royal is good at something).


Some surprising names were left off the list. Antonio Gates, for example, was just 1-of-3 in the deep middle of the field, for 25 yards. Kellen Winslow was 3-of-4 for 64 yards. Greg Olson was 2-of-2 for 40 yards. Tony Gonzalez was just 1-of-2. I checked the "deep right" and "deep left" data, and none of these guys were targeted deep very often last year. There are a variety of reasons: Winslow had quarterback issues, Gonzo is getting old, Gates played on a team with several deep-threat receivers. Again, we must be wary of the data sample: Only three or four passes separate these tight ends from the middle of the list. Players like Gates and Winslow would rank near the top of the chart if we look at two- or three-year windows: Winslow, for example, was 9-of-15 for 207 yards in the deep middle in 2007. Long-term analysis is a project for later in the spring, perhaps in a publication.


The data does add a little color to our knowledge of each team's offensive schemes. We're all familiar with Clark's and Witten's games, but it's easy to overlook how often the Saints throw over the middle to their tight ends. Miller caught eight seamers, and Jeremy Shockey was 3-of-4 over the middle for 72 yards. The Broncos loved to throw seamers last year as well. Both teams ran wide-open offenses with lots of empty backfield sets; with wide receivers running tunnel screens and working the short routes, it's easy to see how a good tight end would be able to slip into a coverage gap. And of course, both teams threw a million passes, so we would expect high totals in every passing category.


The presence of players like Davis, Lewis, Miller, and Shiancoe near the top of the list isn't surprising when you realize that these tight ends were often the best receivers on the field for their teams. Again, we can't draw massive conclusions from seven passes. Instead, we'll use the list as mild support for non-controversial conclusions: Miller is a pretty darn good player on a bad team, Davis is a talented disappointment, the Jaguars really need better receivers.


One last factoid before we move on: the average pass to a tight end over the deep middle travels about 18 to 22 yards in the air. That's confirmed by the 2007 Game Charting data. It's rare to see a pass thrown 30 yards to a tight end, and almost all 30-plus-yard receptions by tight ends are catch-and-run situations. That makes sense: tight ends like Gates, Witten, and Clark are fast enough to threaten a safety and force him to back up, but they aren't fast enough to beat a safety in a footrace to the deep post.
Why Tight Ends Go Deep

Figure 1: Strong TE Seam

The data above showed that even the best tight ends are only thrown about a dozen deep passes over the middle. So why is seam-splitting speed so darn important?


The answer lies in the split-second timing of pass route combinations. The tight end may not be the primary target when he runs the seam, but must be able to pull the deep safeties out of position. The threat of a pass up the deep seam is as important as the actual reception.


Figure 1 shows a route combination designed to beat a Cover-2 defense. The wide receiver, running an in-route at about 12 yards, is the primary target. The running back leaks into the flat to occupy the cornerback. The tight end runs a deep route directly at the safety. As drawn, this isn't technically a seam route, but it's a similar route with the same goal. In this example, the tight end is a speedster in the Gates/Witten class.


With a fast tight end running up the middle, the deep safety on the left must start to backpedal. The left linebacker, who's responsible for covering the tight end in the underneath zone, trades him off once he races through. Neither the safety nor the linebacker is in position to defend the in-route. Those three steps of backpedal by the safety make a huge difference in a play that takes about 2.5 seconds to unfold.


Figure 2: Weak TE Seam

In Figure 2, the tight end is much slower on his route. Here, the safety isn't forced to backpedal immediately, and the linebacker can take longer drifting back in underneath coverage. Both defenders are in much better position to make a play on the in-route. If the offensive coordinator doesn't feel that his tight end is fast enough to threaten that safety, he may have to scrap this play; without the backpedal, the safety could easily jump this route for an interception.


So seam-splitting speed is important, even if the tight end doesn't get the ball very much. That's why guys like L.J. Smith and Jerramy Stevens keep getting jobs: They may drop passes, fumble, and make mistakes, but coordinators want their downfield speed to open up the rest of the offense.

 

[cowboyjoe]

great post to me temo