ciscoholgate
Winning is a Habit
Hello Phin Fans!
I finally got around to breaking down the rushing stats for the entire 2009 season. I took the non-Wildcat plays and broke them down and compared them to the Wildcat rushing stats. I will warn you now this will be a very long read! Below are the stats I got when I broke down the two categories and looked at rushing attempts, yards, touchdowns, and average:
It is very obvious the Wildcat played a major role in our offense last year, but despite this 4.0 yards per carry is very solid considering we had two first year starters on the line last year. The Wildcat was a TD formation and scored half as many rushing TDs as our base formations with much less than a fourth of the attempts as the base formation. These stats only reflect the pure rushing stats and Chad Pennington's kneel downs and Brandon Field's one botched snap rush were taken out to give more accurate stats.
I broke down the non-Wildcat formations rushing stats into the following categories: quarters, downs, and position of the line. Here are the breakdowns of the non-Wildcat formations by quarters:
Next I broke down the rushes by attempt per down. This is what I got:
Next I took a look at how well we rushed the ball behind certain linemen. This is similar to my other threads where I looked at inside rushes versus outside rushes or left side of the line versus the right side of the line. Here are those stats:
Wildcat Formations
I don't want to go into too much detail for the Wildcat, but I will give the breakdowns that have the most meaning. Here is a breakdown of the Wildcat rushing stats per quarter:
Ronnie was the main benefactor from the Wildcat. 33% of his rushing yards and 50% of his TDs came in the Wildcat set, but only 22% of his overall rushes were in the Wildcat set. The Wildcat was the perfect tool to utilize the skill set of a talented back like Ronnie.
Here are Ronnie's stats by quarter in the non-Wildcat formation:
Ricky was very solid in the fourth quarter. Combined with his Wildcat stats, Ricky had 44 rushes and averaged 4.3 yards per carry in the fourth quarter. The entire team had 133 rushes (Wildcat included) in the fourth quarter. This combined for a total of 31% of the rushes for 2009. What this tells me is we were protecting leads and we were still averaging 3.9 yards per rush in the fourth quarter.
Here is how Ronnie fared in non-Wildcat formations on each down:
Ricky was Mr. Reliable. He was solid on both first and second downs. Ricky played a large part in our teams' success last year. I do not expect him to have as much success as he did last year, but I do expect him to be solid. I also expect Ronnie to improve his game also.
Finally I looked at Ronnie's stats in the non-Wildcat formation. Here are those numbers:
In conclusion I would have to say I tip my hat off to the coaches. They were magicians this past year. We really struggled in base sets when it came to rushing the ball, yet we were still able to win 11 games and were crowned AFC East Champs. The key? The Wildcat! It may be a fad like some claim. It could just be a flavor of the week, but the fact is without the Wildcat this past season, we would not have won the division or made the playoffs for the first time in a very long time.
I think we have an excellent set of coaches and we got more talent on this years team that last. Hopefully that will equate into more success in base rushing formations. I think our OL is better (mostly with health and the addition of Grove). The Wildcat saw some decline as the 2008 season went on, but was still pretty effective. Here is are the numbers:
Go PHINS!
* If you have any questions about certain stats, just ask. I saved my data and can pull up more numbers if you would like.
I finally got around to breaking down the rushing stats for the entire 2009 season. I took the non-Wildcat plays and broke them down and compared them to the Wildcat rushing stats. I will warn you now this will be a very long read! Below are the stats I got when I broke down the two categories and looked at rushing attempts, yards, touchdowns, and average:
Non-Wildcat
355 Attempts, 1412 Yards, 12 TDs, 4.0 Average
355 Attempts, 1412 Yards, 12 TDs, 4.0 Average
Wildcat
76 Attempts, 500 Yards, 6 TDs, 6.6 Average
76 Attempts, 500 Yards, 6 TDs, 6.6 Average
It is very obvious the Wildcat played a major role in our offense last year, but despite this 4.0 yards per carry is very solid considering we had two first year starters on the line last year. The Wildcat was a TD formation and scored half as many rushing TDs as our base formations with much less than a fourth of the attempts as the base formation. These stats only reflect the pure rushing stats and Chad Pennington's kneel downs and Brandon Field's one botched snap rush were taken out to give more accurate stats.
Non-Wildcat Formations
I broke down the non-Wildcat formations rushing stats into the following categories: quarters, downs, and position of the line. Here are the breakdowns of the non-Wildcat formations by quarters:
- 1st Quarter - 88 attempts, 422 yards, 2 TDs, 4.8 average.
- 2nd Quarter - 84 attempts, 384 yards, 3 TDs, 4.6 average.
- 3rd Quarter - 68 attempts, 246 yards, 4 TDs, 3.6 average.
- 4th Quarter - 115 attempts, 360 yards, 3 TDs, 3.1 average.
From the stats we can see we had the most success with establishing the run in the first quarter. Some of that is skewed by our end around with Ginn and other contributions. Combined Ricky and Ronnie had 72 attempts with a 3.4 average per attempt. This means Ginn, Polite, Cobbs, Pennington, Camarillo, and Bess all combined to have 16 attempts with a 11.0 average per attempt.
What this means to me is teams were stacking against the run and daring Pennington to beat them with his arm. It is obvious the coaches did an excellent job of countering this by using the other players so effectively and catching them off guard by giving the ball to the wide outs on end around and to Polite up the gut.
Next I broke down the rushes by attempt per down. This is what I got:
- 1st Down - 176 attempts, 715 yards, 5 TDs, 4.1 average.
- 2nd Down - 128 attempts, 562 yards, 5 TDs, 4.4 average.
- 3rd Down - 45 attempts, 125 yards, 1 TD, 2.8 average.
- 4th Down - 6 attempts, 10 yards, 1 TD, 1.7 average.
Look like we had more success on second downs than we did on first. Although, first down rushes accounted for more than half of our rushing attempts. The most impressive stat to me was Ronnie had 55 attempts on 2nd downs for and average of 4.9 yard per rush. Seems to me Ronnie finds his grove once he starts getting more touches.
Next I took a look at how well we rushed the ball behind certain linemen. This is similar to my other threads where I looked at inside rushes versus outside rushes or left side of the line versus the right side of the line. Here are those stats:
- Inside Rush (LG, C, RG) - 179 attempts, 620 yards, 5 TDs, 3.5 average.
- Outside Rush (LE, LT, RT, RE) - 176 attempts, 792 yards, 7 TDs, 4.5 average.
- Left Side Rush (LE, LT, LG) - 129 attempts, 528 Yards, 7 TDs, 4.1 average.
- Right Side Rush (RG, RT, RE) - 127 attempts, 555 yards, 1 TD, 4.4 average.
Looking at the stats we had the most success running behind big Vernon. I guess the guy did deserve all the money. He could stand to improve his pass blocking skills, but he is a very solid run blocker. Combined Ronnie, Ricky, and Cobbs had 117 rushes to the right side of the line and averaged 4.3 yards per rush.
Wildcat Formations
I don't want to go into too much detail for the Wildcat, but I will give the breakdowns that have the most meaning. Here is a breakdown of the Wildcat rushing stats per quarter:
- 1st Quarter - 19 attempts, 72 yards, 1 TD, 3.8 average.
- 2nd Quarter - 21 attempts, 149 yards, 3 TDs, 7.1 average.
- 3rd Quarter - 18 attempts, 123 yards, 0 TDs, 6.8 average.
- 4th Quarter - 18 attempts, 156 yards, 2 TDs, 8.7 average.
- 1st Down - 37 attempts, 328 yards, 4 TDs, 8.9 average.
- 2nd Down - 35 attempts, 160 yards, 2 TDs, 4.6 average.
- 3rd Down - 4 attempts, 12 yards, 0 TDs, 3.0 average.
Best success was running the Wildcat on first downs. Not to sure why that is. Maybe the defenses we faced were less prepared on first downs, but we had great success on first downs. Another theory I have is that the D did not have time to get their Wildcat defenses in after a new possession or after we converted a third down or something. Just a guess.
Ronnie was the main benefactor from the Wildcat. 33% of his rushing yards and 50% of his TDs came in the Wildcat set, but only 22% of his overall rushes were in the Wildcat set. The Wildcat was the perfect tool to utilize the skill set of a talented back like Ronnie.
Ronnie v. Rickie - Non-Wildcat
- Ronnie - 166 attempts, 616 yards, 5 TDs, 3.6 average.
- Ricky - 134 attempts, 506 yards, 3 TDs, 3.8 average.
I wanted to compare the two in the base sets. Ronnie obviously benefited more from the Wildcat, but Ricky also shared a lot of success as well. So I decided to compare them in only base formations. We will look at Ronnie's stats first.
Here are Ronnie's stats by quarter in the non-Wildcat formation:
- 1st Quarter - 43 attempts, 156 yards, 0 TDs, 3.6 average.
- 2nd Quarter - 33 attempts, 178 yards, 2 TDs, 5.4 average.
- 3rd Quarter - 31 attempts, 136 yards, 0 TDs, 4.4 average.
- 4th Quarter - 59 attempts, 146 yards, 3 TDs, 2.5 average.
- 1st Quarter - 29 attempts, 90 yards, 0 TDs, 3.1 average.
- 2nd Quarter - 37 attempts, 154 yards, 0 TDs, 4.2 average.
- 3rd Quarter - 27 attempts, 81 yards, 3 TDs, 3.0 average.
- 4th Quarter - 41 attempts, 181 yards, 0 TDs, 4.4 average.
Ronnie seemed to really struggle in the first and fourth quarters. Especially in the fourth where he got the most of his looks. Although he really struggled in the fourth in the base set, he was very solid in the Wildcat. Combined Ronnie had 54 rushing attempts and an average of 6.0 yards per carry in the fourth quarter. Like I said before the Wildcat was a very large part of Ronnie's success.
Ricky was very solid in the fourth quarter. Combined with his Wildcat stats, Ricky had 44 rushes and averaged 4.3 yards per carry in the fourth quarter. The entire team had 133 rushes (Wildcat included) in the fourth quarter. This combined for a total of 31% of the rushes for 2009. What this tells me is we were protecting leads and we were still averaging 3.9 yards per rush in the fourth quarter.
Here is how Ronnie fared in non-Wildcat formations on each down:
- 1st Down - 87 attempts, 277 yards, 1 TD, 3.2 average.
- 2nd Down - 55 attempts, 271 yards, 2 TDs, 4.9 average.
- 3rd Down - 22 attempts, 64 yards, 1 TD, 2.9 average.
- 4th Down - 2 attempts, 4 yards, 1 TD, 2.0 average.
- 1st Down - 72 attempts, 282 yards, 2 TDs, 3.9 average.
- 2nd Down - 54 attempts, 215 yards, 1 TDs, 4.0 average.
- 3rd Down - 8 attempts, 9 yards, 0 TD, 1.1 average.
Ronnie thrived on second downs in non-Wildcat formations. He struggled on first and third downs in the base formations. Just to put into perspective, Ronnie averaged 8.3 yards per rush in the Wildcat formation on first downs.
Ricky was Mr. Reliable. He was solid on both first and second downs. Ricky played a large part in our teams' success last year. I do not expect him to have as much success as he did last year, but I do expect him to be solid. I also expect Ronnie to improve his game also.
Finally I looked at Ronnie's stats in the non-Wildcat formation. Here are those numbers:
- Inside Rush (LG, C, RG) - 95 attempts, 361 yards, 4 TDs, 3.8 average.
- Outside Rush (LE, LT, RT, RE) - 71 attempts, 255 yards, 1 TDs, 3.6 average.
- Left Side Rush (LE, LT, LG) - 66 attempts, 224 Yards, 1 TDs, 3.4 average.
- Right Side Rush (RG, RT, RE) - 49 attempts, 202 yards, 1 TD, 4.1 average.
- Inside Rush (LG, C, RG) - 49 attempts, 147 yards, 0 TD, 3.0 average.
- Outside Rush (LE, LT, RT, RE) - 85 attempts, 359 yards, 3 TDs, 4.2 average.
- Left Side Rush (LE, LT, LG) - 48 attempts, 170 Yards, 3 TDs, 3.5 average.
- Right Side Rush (RG, RT, RE) - 64 attempts, 284 yards, 0TD, 4.4 average.
Ronnie was better inside and Ricky was better on the edge. Ricky still has some speed. Both were better on the right hand side of the ball. Like I said before Vernon is a big guy. Comparing the two they had similar averages and almost the same number of rushing attempts, but Ronnie had much more success with both average and rushes in the Wildcat formation.
Conclusion
In conclusion I would have to say I tip my hat off to the coaches. They were magicians this past year. We really struggled in base sets when it came to rushing the ball, yet we were still able to win 11 games and were crowned AFC East Champs. The key? The Wildcat! It may be a fad like some claim. It could just be a flavor of the week, but the fact is without the Wildcat this past season, we would not have won the division or made the playoffs for the first time in a very long time.
I think we have an excellent set of coaches and we got more talent on this years team that last. Hopefully that will equate into more success in base rushing formations. I think our OL is better (mostly with health and the addition of Grove). The Wildcat saw some decline as the 2008 season went on, but was still pretty effective. Here is are the numbers:
- Wildcat (games 3-9) - 38 attempts, 296 yards, 6 TDs, 7.8 average.
- Wildcat (games 10-16) - 38 attempts, 204 yards, 0 TDs, 5.4 average.
Look for our coaches to turn to the Wildcat again this next year if we struggle to establish the run in our base formations. White will add a versatile component to our offense and I expect him to get 3-5 touches per game. Ronnie will come back healthy and I expect big things from this guy. He has all the tools to be a top three back. Numbers are sometimes overrated and on talent alone Ronnie is a top 5 back. I don't care what anyone says because when we play top tier teams, they always game plan for him. Especially when most of the Patsies players respect his game. The guy is a stud and I hope he can have a fully healthy season, because if he does, watch out!
Go PHINS!
* If you have any questions about certain stats, just ask. I saved my data and can pull up more numbers if you would like.
