[OC] Weekly Offensive and Defensive Drive Stats

This one is going to raise some hairs and create some angst because it goes against our conventional wisdom and the people who think we had a "top 10 offense". But I'm going to demonstrate that the Offense was worse than we think, the Defense was actually better, and we finished right where we should have record wise.

Now, to be clear - I am NOT saying the Defense was good or that the offense was bad - simply that the difference between their performances isn't nearly as great as most of us thought it was. And, I'm not going to put the blame on the O issues on any one thing - this is a failure with 1000 fathers, from Zimmer's philosophy, to Kubiak play calling, to offensive line play, to risk averse play at the QB position.

So, I'm stuck in zoom meetings and most likely going to resign next week anyway, so I have some time on my hands. And what I went thru was the per drive averages. to play with this, I had to put all these rankings in a spreadsheet, and found what might be the single best metric that correlates with team success - or failure.

That is Average Ranking in Points Per drive (Offense Rank + Defense Rank /2) - in other words, how productive is a team with the ball, and how effective are they at stopping the other team's productivity? Seems rather obvious right?

Now, how good is this? The top 8 teams in this metric are in the playoffs. 11 of the top 13 teams are in the playoffs. And 4 of the bottom 5 teams in this metric are drafting in the first 4 slots in April. If you can find a metric that predicts success (or failure) better, please let me know.

Who are the top 8 teams? Buffalo (2.5); NE (4), TB (4.5), Dallas (6) LA Rams (6), Cincy (9.5) KC (11), Arizona (11.5)

Who are the bottom 5? NYJ (30); Jax (29.5); Hou (28.5), ATL (27.5), Det (27.5). Atlanta at 7-10 is the outlier.

The Highest ranking non playoff team was Denver (12) who finished 7-10, and NO (12) who finished 9-8.

To round out the playoff teams, TEN, GB, and SF (Slots 11-13) all finished at 12.5. Philly (Slot)18, finished at 17, PIT (Slot 22) 20.5 and LVR (Slot 23) at 21.

Now, where did the Vikings finish? Tied with Philly at slot 18 and an average of 17. So, what did our team rank? 15th in Offense, and 19th in Defense. Pretty average on both.

If we dig a bit deeper and we will find we did not play complimentary football. Our Defense faced 194 drives - tied with Pittsburgh for the 4th most. (To be clear - Dallas faced the most with 203 and was ranked 8th in points per drive, so a defense can overcome things). But, if you look at it, KC, GBs, and NE's defenses faced about 10 drives per game - ours 11.5. By the end of the season, those Defenses had faced about 1 to 1.5 games fewer worth of drives. (Forgive that inartful phrasing)

So, how does the O fit in here?

Our offense was ranked 27th in plays per drive, and 28th in time per drive. Our offense failed to hold on to the ball. And even when they scored - they typically did so quickly (they were 15th in points per drive after all), and that still put more pressure on the defense. We were 25th in 3rd down conversion at 36.4%, and 16th in 4th down conversions at 54.5. Conversely, our D was 4th in 3rd down conversions at 36.4% (yes, the same as the offense), and 19th in 4th down conversions at 50%.

Now, to be clear, the Defense is allowed to get stops at critical moments, and too often they failed to. But there were a lot of three and outs and periods where the offense simply failed to show up for long stretches and left the D on the field. Last week someone listed all the quick three and outs the offense had in the last two minutes of the first half which led to the other team getting the ball back and scoring. Again - the D failed to stop them, but the O failed to its number one job in that situation, which was to avoid giving the other team back the ball. Complimentary football.

This shows that the next coach/GM isn't walking into a well oiled offensive machine - there is a lot of lifting to be done on that side of the ball. But maybe a bit less than we might have thought on the defensive side.

Additionally, and I’m going off on a bit of a tangent here, we always have to remember that football games are won - or lost - on the basis of dozens of not hundreds of small things that happen during the game. Small edges that are created by better clock management, key conversions, key stops. In any game won by two scores or less, the losing team can point to 2-3 plays and say, had that gone differently, we might have won. The entire NFL is on a razor’s edge. GB has, in the last three seasons, won 13 games - 2.6, 2.1, and 3.3 more wins per season than their stats would have us believe. It’s not an accident. It’s edges created by making the right plays at the right time.