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Outsiders on Patriots
The Football Outsiders Almanac 2009, which looks at the game through a statistical lens, is now available.
I asked Doug Farrar, who researched and wrote the Patriots section of the Almanac, to share five factors that fans should remember when thinking about this year’s team. Each day, I’ll post one of his thoughts:
“The Patriots might be to quarterbacks what the Broncos were to running backs.”
"The Pats had just half a quarter of Tom Brady last year, but they managed to put together the NFL’s best offense, based on DVOA [Defense-Adjusted Value over Average], in the second half of the 2008 season. As you know, they did this with a guy in Matt Cassel who had never started a college game. How is this possible? For the Pats in the recent past, it’s been all about the shotgun formation. In 2007, New England became the first NFL team to run the shotgun formation on more than 50 percent of their plays, and that trend continued in 2008. Our data shows that teams are more effective and efficient in the shotgun – over the last two years, teams have averaged 5.9 yards per play from the shotgun, and 5.1 under center. The differences between New England’s DVOA under shotgun and not were pretty significant. Cassel threw 433 passes out of the shotgun and amassed a DYAR [Defense-Adjusted Yards over Replacement] of 531, and a DVOA of 7.8%. Under center, he threw 124 passes for a DYAR of 124 and a DVOA of 2.2%. Should Matt Gutierrez or Kevin O’Connell have to take the reins for any length of time this season, they may be in a situation like Denver used to have with running backs – it’s just that Brady is Terrell Davis, and the other guys are Olandis Gary and Mike Anderson."
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At the close of preseason last year many prognosticators thought Guttierez outplayed Cassel. The thinking was Gutt makes the team and Cassel does not. Obviously BB and the coaching staff made their more informed choice. But, I wonder why has no other team given Guttierez a small contract to see what might happen. Seems like $28 Million guaranteed for Cassel and a $63 mill contract makes a few million on Gutt a reasonable flyer to take to see what can be developed.
The NFL is usch a copy cat system they cannot even 'discover' talent that was already exhibited 11 months ago.
Michael
Although the comparison is fair, the Terrell Davis/Brady comparison is NOT. The comparison should be the Denver O Line and the Pats QB groups through the years. The O Line under Shanahan is what has opened the holes for Terrell Davis, Gary, etc. Evenlast year, they had some no name backs that ran well.
Regarless of the stats presented in the original comment, the greatest challenge for Denver is dealing with the new Head Coach
I'm sorry but anyone who posits that a second year guy like O'Connell or 3rd year/practice squad player like Guttierrez could step in and perform on par with Cassel's performance of last year does not know much of anything about football beyond the statistics. Cassel had been practicing in the system for 4 years before he was tapped to take over.
And Guttierrez, with training camp, will have three years in the system. So the difference between his and Cassel's experience running the Pats offense in practice is only 1 year apart. I wouldn't be shocked if Gutt had to play for some reason and actually performed pretty well with the offense. Remember it took Cassel 6 to 8 weeks before he really appeared to be getting comfortable running the type of offense the Pats usually would go with.
belichick puts quarterbacks in the position to succeed. brady is a great quarterback but when he first took over for bledsoe he wasn't asked to do anything that he didn't feel comfortable with. eventually he gained experience and confidence and was able to expand his game. the patriot quarterbacks don't have the deer in the headlights look that many of the other teams new qb's do.
belichick is a very big part of this.
What a bull...if there's no randy moss, brady won't score more than 28 tds in a season. nothing to do with pats coaching staffs and so on.
posted by Steve
"belichick is a very big part of this."
And so were those tapings of defensive coordinator signals back in the day. eh?
Waa, waa, Spygate. Pretty much every other coach either a) admitted to doing it themselves, b) thought it was a non-event, or c) both.
Those still obsessing over "Spygate" seem to conveniently forget that "back in the day" it was that Pats' superior DEFENSE that carried the team, much less explain how opposition defensive signals help your own defense.
They also fail to explain how, under what must be pretty intense post-Spygate scrutiny, the Pats have managed to win 29 of 35 games (.829), presumably without any further "signal stealing." It couldn't be that they're just, y'know, GOOD, could it?
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