I get bored, sorry...
I spent some time looking at averages per drive (TOP, plays, yards, points, etc.) for both teams' offense and defense earlier and it just seems like a really cool match up.
Not sure if anyone else is even interested in this stuff but I find myself trying to wade through it often.
With regard to average drive for both teams:
SEA (TOP, Plays, Yds, Pts*, Rank)
Offense: 2:41, 5.54, 29.7, 2.12, 8
Defense: 2:38, 5.5, 23.4, 1.17, 1
DEN
Offense: 2:25, 5.85, 36.2, 2.83, 1
Defense: 2:21, 5.3, 27.5, 1.83, 22
Point differential (offense - defense) per drive
SEA: 0.95 (2.12 - 1.17)
DEN: 1.0 (2.83 - 1.83)
So Denver's offense has about a 0.5 point(s) per drive edge in point differential. At this point I got to wondering, well, how many drives have these teams had because Denver scored SO many more points than we did (606 to our 417). Assumed the difference would be pretty large but guess what...
DEN: 190
SEA: 177
I was surprised by this number. I thought Denver was going to have a LOT more drives than we did during the season because Russell was ranked so high in many passer efficiency stats, his TD% and Y/A were in the top 5 in the league. He was extremely accurate and converted near 70% inside of the red zone in the first 2/3rds of the season.
Anyway, when I got to the stats that show the results of those drives, it quickly became clear why there was such a discrepancy in point totals on the year. Denver scored TDs in 37.9% of those 190 drives. That is 72 touchdowns for the year (which outnumbers their punt total on the year at 65). Now compare that to our 8th ranked (in points) offense who scored TDs on 23.2% of our 177 drives for a grand total of 41 compared to our 74 punts.
I can see how Denver fans think they're going to go off in this one based on the offense they've watched week in and week out but in the end, I come back to that point differential. Seattle, +0.95 and Denver +1.0 per drive. They score a lot, but to score that much and for us to still have a point differential in the ball park of that record setting team, they must have a pretty horrible defense.
Too tired to dive into defensive stats but I find an unexpected surprise in the number of opportunities that the two teams had offensively being so similar.
*According to ESPN stats, Denver finished the regular season with a point differential of +207 and Seattle with +186 which means there is probably some flawed logic used to calculate the averages per drive that I supplied, but it's close and it wasn't my logic that generated the results of the query.
[edit] Also meant to point out that Denver has gotten approximately 49% of Manning's 5,477 passing yards (that is 2,681 yards) after the catch. Russell Wilson has gotten 46.3% of his 3,357 (or 1,553 yards) after the catch. Not drawing any conclusions from this as Manning had 252 more attempts but I also went into this feeling like a LOT of Denver's passing yardage came out of YAC and it simply was not as big of a factor as I'd thought. They're near the middle of the pack (18th) and we're 27th in this category. Only thing that tells me is that we don't get a ton of YAC and that can probably be attributed to any number of things (route type, we play better tackling defenses, etc).
I spent some time looking at averages per drive (TOP, plays, yards, points, etc.) for both teams' offense and defense earlier and it just seems like a really cool match up.
Not sure if anyone else is even interested in this stuff but I find myself trying to wade through it often.
With regard to average drive for both teams:
SEA (TOP, Plays, Yds, Pts*, Rank)
Offense: 2:41, 5.54, 29.7, 2.12, 8
Defense: 2:38, 5.5, 23.4, 1.17, 1
DEN
Offense: 2:25, 5.85, 36.2, 2.83, 1
Defense: 2:21, 5.3, 27.5, 1.83, 22
Point differential (offense - defense) per drive
SEA: 0.95 (2.12 - 1.17)
DEN: 1.0 (2.83 - 1.83)
So Denver's offense has about a 0.5 point(s) per drive edge in point differential. At this point I got to wondering, well, how many drives have these teams had because Denver scored SO many more points than we did (606 to our 417). Assumed the difference would be pretty large but guess what...
DEN: 190
SEA: 177
I was surprised by this number. I thought Denver was going to have a LOT more drives than we did during the season because Russell was ranked so high in many passer efficiency stats, his TD% and Y/A were in the top 5 in the league. He was extremely accurate and converted near 70% inside of the red zone in the first 2/3rds of the season.
Anyway, when I got to the stats that show the results of those drives, it quickly became clear why there was such a discrepancy in point totals on the year. Denver scored TDs in 37.9% of those 190 drives. That is 72 touchdowns for the year (which outnumbers their punt total on the year at 65). Now compare that to our 8th ranked (in points) offense who scored TDs on 23.2% of our 177 drives for a grand total of 41 compared to our 74 punts.
I can see how Denver fans think they're going to go off in this one based on the offense they've watched week in and week out but in the end, I come back to that point differential. Seattle, +0.95 and Denver +1.0 per drive. They score a lot, but to score that much and for us to still have a point differential in the ball park of that record setting team, they must have a pretty horrible defense.
Too tired to dive into defensive stats but I find an unexpected surprise in the number of opportunities that the two teams had offensively being so similar.
*According to ESPN stats, Denver finished the regular season with a point differential of +207 and Seattle with +186 which means there is probably some flawed logic used to calculate the averages per drive that I supplied, but it's close and it wasn't my logic that generated the results of the query.
[edit] Also meant to point out that Denver has gotten approximately 49% of Manning's 5,477 passing yards (that is 2,681 yards) after the catch. Russell Wilson has gotten 46.3% of his 3,357 (or 1,553 yards) after the catch. Not drawing any conclusions from this as Manning had 252 more attempts but I also went into this feeling like a LOT of Denver's passing yardage came out of YAC and it simply was not as big of a factor as I'd thought. They're near the middle of the pack (18th) and we're 27th in this category. Only thing that tells me is that we don't get a ton of YAC and that can probably be attributed to any number of things (route type, we play better tackling defenses, etc).
