Fun Offensive Stats
Posted: June 27th, 2014 | Author: Tommy Lawlor | Filed under: Philadelphia Eagles | 10 Comments »Chase Stuart over at Football Perspective decided to review some of his previews from last summer. He had some interesting thoughts about the Eagles offense.
Right before the season, I provided an in-depth look at the Eagles performance in the preseason and other issues related to tempo. At the time, we all thought Michael Vick was going to be the team’s quarterback: little did we know that Nick Foles was about to have one of the greatest seasons in backup quarterback history.
Philadelphia wound up running just 1,054 plays last year, which placed the Eagles behind 12 other teams. Does that mean the stories about Kelly and the team’s fast tempo were overblown? No. One extenuating factor was that Foles led the NFL in ANY/A and LeSean McCoy averaged 5.1 yards per carry while leading the league in rushing yards. Philadelphia finished 1st in the NFL in plays of 20+ yards by an astonishing margin: the Eagles had 99 such plays, with the Broncos second with 77. The Eagles also had the most 30+ yard plays and 40+ yards plays, and well, you get the point: it’s hard to accumulate plays when you know, you keep running into the end zone.
But Philadelphia ranked dead last in average minutes per drive according to Pro-Football-Reference.com. The Eagles also ranked 1st in the majority of the Pace Stats on Football Outsiders, including seconds per play, seconds per play in the first half, seconds per play in close games, and seconds per play in neutral situations.
Philadelphia led the NFL in yards per play (6.33) and 32nd in number of seconds between plays. I’d say that’s a pretty ringing endorsement forChip Kelly’s offense.
Sometimes I think we forget just how good the Eagles offense was last year. The scary thing…they can still get better.
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Stuart also had a good rip on Dallas.
Spoiler: change is not always good. The Cowboys defense allowed a franchise- and league-high 6,645 yards last season. Dallas ranked last in first downs allowed, and in the bottom three in passing yards, passing touchdowns, yards per carry, and points per drive. Change is not always good. The only thing worse than the 2013 Cowboys defense may be the 2014 version, with DeMarcus Ware (Denver), Jason Hatcher (Washington), andSean Lee (IR). Here’s the projected starting lineup:
George Selvie
Henry Melton
Nick Hayden
Jeremy Mincey
Bruce Carter
Justin Durant
Kyle Wilber
Brandon Carr
J.J. Wilcox
Barry Church
Orlando Scandrick
In other words, you want to start your fantasy quarterbacks against Dallas in 2014.
That’s not exactly Murderer’s Row.
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From today’s earlier post, I did mean Clay Matthews and not Casey. I think we’re looking at the end of the line for Casey, unless Juan Castillo gives him a job on the Ravens O-line.
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One area where the Eagles struggled last year was finishing games.. After a hot start the 3rd and 4th quarter sometimes yielded little to no points while letting other teams back in the game… Obviously when you get in the red zone you want to convert as many trips into TDs as possible as well.. That’s a very important stat. A lot of Andy Reid offenses would do fine inbetween the 20s than struggle int the RZ
When Djax was cut, I joked that it happened because the one thing Chip Kelly didn’t like about the offense was the short duration of scoring drives.
I do wonder a little if there is any truth in the last part of that statement. Would the Eagles’ defense, and team overall, benefit if the offense held the ball a bit longer, if they had another two minutes in time of possession?
I know Chip’s plan is “to fucking score points”. It will be interesting to see if there are changes in the number of offensive plays, though, and how often Riley Cooper and Jeremy Maclin run deep routes.
Eagles defense did just fine last year after the first 4 games. I think the reason our D was on the field so much was the bend-but-don’t-break philosophy, not the offense’s pace. Eagles scoring fast is a huge factor for the team’s entire success. We shouldn’t change that. Our D is a good match with our O.
Our base defense was Fantastic, especially against the
Run but often our Nickle would ruin all the good work,we did on first and second down… Expect this to Improve Drastically after focusing our resources on improving our 3rd down defense and improving the team depth which provides more sub package versatility
Was going to say, our defense wasn’t “bend not break” in 2013. It was, “can’t get off the field on 3rd down”.
Biggest thing that can improve that is an improved pass rush. Whether the Eagles have one or not remains to be seen.
and too think we saved the cowboys from getting nnamdi.. lmfao
While Chip proved he can be a successful OC in the NFL, he can improve as a HC. Finishing games, better cohesion with the offense and defense, better special teams, and so on. I believe you will see a lot of improvement in year two in these areas.
Truth that.
I always wondered what Chips first thought was on improvement for this year. Well, besides the – “I have to get DJ off the team” thought. Was it “let’s look at film on the teams that stopped the offense”? Or “get me a safety”? Or “someone fix this #$%#$% ST play or you’re all fired”?
“I think we’re looking at the end of the line for Casey, unless Juan Castillo gives him a job on the Ravens O-line.”
Painfully funny.