Locked On Patriots - Daily Podcast On The New England Patriots - Locked On Patriots October 18, 2017 - Running Game By The Numbers

Episode Date: October 18, 2017

Your Wednesday edition of Locked On Patriots. Mark Schofield dives deeper into New England's success on first-down rushing plays and what that might mean historically. Then he breaks down some scheme stuff to look for when New England tries to run against the Atlanta Falcons. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Welcome into Locked on Patriots for Wednesday, October 18th. Hope you're having a wonderful morning, afternoon, evening, whatever time it is you're listening to the show. Mark Schofield here with you in the big chair as I am five days a week. Bringing you Patriots news, analysis, notes, scheme stuff, everything my tiny little brain can think of that you might need to get ready for the upcoming weekend and the upcoming weekend action. This is the Wednesday show. Every time I do a Wednesday show, I'm reminded of Tony Kornheiser. And that's probably a strange little segue there, but back when he had a radio show, Tony Kornheiser would always tell people, oh,

you would tell people that wanted to get into the radio business or the sports media business, oh, you want to have a radio show, oh, that's great, that's nice. What's your Wednesday show going to be? What are you going to talk about on Wednesday? Because it's easy, obviously, to talk about what happened the past weekend on a Monday or a Tuesday. It's easy to start previewing the upcoming games on a Thursday or a Friday, but what are you going to talk about on a Wednesday? So here's what I'm going to talk about on this Wednesday. We're going to dive back into the Patriots' first down Russian numbers, not just from this past Sunday against the Jets, but I got a little curious, so I dove into it a little bit more. So we're going to talk about that. We're going to talk about a little DVOA for a minute.

Then again, we're going to get into some scheme stuff. We're going to talk about how the Patriots have been running the football, looking at how they ran on first down against the Jets, the scheme stuff, the X's and O's stuff there, as well as Atlanta and their run defense. Some interesting stuff that I found through the tape, going through the Atlanta game tape. So that's kind of the roadmap for the show.

As always, check out LockedOnPatriots.com. More stuff going up there all the time. Get some articles up there about Brady Gronkowski. Got a piece on Atlanta's ability to run towards the edges, which we talked about in yesterday's show. Got some more stuff today on some of the stuff we're going to be talking about. And let's dive into the numbers here for a minute, because as I said, I got curious.

And I know the expression is curiosity killed the cat, but here we are anyway. And when I gave my sort of snap reaction to the Patriots' win over the Jets, I noticed that the Patriots had success running the ball on first down. And I broke down the numbers for you in that immediate reaction show on Sunday night. But to recap, not counting Brady's kneel down, which came on a first down to end the game where he lost one yard. Patriots 16 rushing attempts on first down against the Jets. Gained 73 yards, averaging 4.56 yards per carry.

Had one touchdown, which was a short one-yard run by Deion Lewis, and one fumble, the Mike Gilleslie fumble. per carry, had one touchdown, which was a short one-yard run by Deion Lewis, and one fumble, the Mike Gilleslie fumble. And I thought at the time, and as I told you Sunday night, Monday morning, whenever you listen to the show, that stood out to me as something of note. That seemed notable because anytime you're gaining, goodness, almost five yards on first down right in the football, you're getting your offense into second and five, second and six type situations. That keeps the offense on schedule.

It keeps the playbook open. It keeps you on script. You don't have to dig into your bag of tricks for, say, second and long. But I wanted to see if there was more to it, if that was just a one-off, if there's any sort of correlation between a team's success running the ball on first down and their success throughout the year. And so I went over to Pro Football Reference, pro-football-reference.com, and I played around with their play index,

their gameplay finder over there, and it's an incredible resource. Definitely check this website out, and what they do is they allow you to search their database, which is they get from either Stats Incorporated or the NFL itself, wherever they get from either Stats Incorporated or the NFL itself, wherever they get the data. And they allow you to query almost anything you want in terms of NFL plays.

And so the first thing I did was I looked at this season, six games in the books. And I thought, okay, well, Patriots looked good against the Jets running the ball in first down, but has it been more than that this year? And what I found was, right now the Patriots rank through six games, eighth in the NFL in terms of Russian average

on first down plays. Top team in the league, Kansas City Chiefs. They're averaging 6.42 yards on the ground when they run the ball on first down. And team number two, Jacksonville Jaguars. 5.09 yards when they run the ball on first down that's a big gap first of all Kansas City have an incredible amount of success

running the ball on first down when you can get 6.5 yards on first down running the football maybe there's no surprise Kansas City is 5-1 but the New England Patriots are 8th. Right now they're averaging 4.67 yards per run and play when they run the ball on first down. So let's try to put that into a little bit of context. Try to give that a little bit of depth.

And the way I want to do that is by talking about DVOA. Now DVOA stands for Defense Adjusted Value Over Average. And it's the brainchild of the minds over at footballoutsiders.com. And generally speaking, what it is, it's a way to measure a team's efficiency by comparing what they do on every single play to a league average based on situation and opponent. And obviously when they put together a statistic like that, a metric like that, they had to come up with some terminology, some framework for it. And one of the frameworks that they came up with was what they call a successful play. And the way they define a successful play varies based on the down and distance. You know, not all five-yard runs are equal.

A five-yard run on first down and 10 is nice. A five-yard run on first down and 20 isn't quite as nice. And so the way they've sort of framed out a successful play, a successful play in the NFL gains 45% of the yardage to go on first down. So if it's first and 10, a successful play by their standards gains 4.5 yards. And that number increases depending on the down. So a successful play on, say, second down gains about, I believe, it's 75% of the yardage to go. And a successful play on third and fourth down gains all of the yardage necessary to get a first down. And so coming back to first downs for a second,

by their analysis, successful plays gain 4.5 yards on first down. Last Sunday against the Jets, Patriots run in the football, excluding Brady's kneel down, 4.56 yards. They averaged up right on the ball on first down. So they're averaging a successful play on first down. And if you kind of want to look at it a little bit more, of those 16 runs, seven of them gained 5 or more yards

2 more gained 4 yards And so 7 of their 16 rushing attempts, just about half Gained 5 or more yards To kind of give it a little bit more context So right now the Patriots are 8th to kind of give it a little bit more context. So right now the Patriots are eighth through six games in terms of runs on first down and what they're gaining.

Right now they're averaging 4.67 yards per rushing attempt on first down. League average, in case you're curious, 4.02. So they're above league average right now. Okay. Now I know what you're wondering. That's great. Is there any correlation between team success and rushing attempts

and yardage gained running the football on first down? Well, I went back through the past five Super Bowls, the past five years, and here's what I found. Last year, your two Super Bowl contenders, New England and Atlanta. New England last year averaged 3.89 yards rushing the ball on first down. Now, they won the Super Bowl with that. League average last year running the ball in first down. Now they won the Super Bowl with that. League average last year running the ball in first down,

4.13. Your top two teams, Buffalo, 5.41. And the Atlanta Falcons, 5.20. So out of last year's two Super Bowl teams, one of them is averaging

5.2 yards running the ball on first down. Now, New England, the winner, wasn't even league average. League average last year, 4.13. So New England was below average last year, but the Super Bowl runner-up, above average. Two years ago, Super Bowl 50, Denver, Carolina.

Denver comes in, run of the ball average on first down, 4.04 yards. Carolina, 4.05. League average, 4.08. So basically you have both Super Bowl teams are right at league average in terms of yards gained on the ground, run of the ball on first down. Super Bowl XLIX, New England, Seattle. New England, again, below average in terms of rushing yards gained on first down attempts.

They're at 3.89 again. League average, 4.14. Seattle, 4.84. So out of the last six Super Bowl teams, Super Bowl participants, two of them, Atlanta last year and Seattle back in Super Bowl XLIX, those two teams well above league average. That Denver Carolina Super Bowl, Those two teams well above league average. That Denver Carolina Super Bowl,

those two teams right at league average. Then you have the Patriots well below league average. But they won both those Super Bowls. Super Bowl XLVIII. Seattle-Denver. Seattle wins the Super Bowl. League average that year.

Russian yardage gained on first downs. 4.14. Seattle, 4 Super Bowl. League average that year, Russian yardage gained on first downs, 4.14. Seattle, 4.51, above average. Denver's a little bit below, 3.95. Super Bowl XLVII, Baltimore, San Francisco. Baltimore wins the Super Bowl. They're at 4.23. Again, talking yards gained on first down run of the temps.

League average that year, 4.28. So they're about league average. San Francisco, the runner-up, 5.06. So out of the last 10 Super Bowl participants, four of them were well above league average, three of them were basically at league average, and then you have your three outliers. Denver, the year they lost to Seattle, they were below.

And then the New England Patriots, their last two Super Bowl victories, they were actually below average in terms of yards gained rushing the ball on first down. 3.89 last year and then 3.89 in 2014. And so we'll see if this sort of plays out again,

but you might need somebody a little bit smarter than me in terms of numbers and statistics and analysis to dive into this. But it seems to me there's at least somewhat of a correlation between running the ball, having success running the ball in first down, and get into the Super Bowl. Of course, the two outliers that stand out are the New England Patriots. Their last two Super Bowl victories, they were below league average in that. But right now, they're above league average.

We'll see if that continues. But there's some nerdy math stuff. Surprise, surprise, to start your Wednesday. Come back in a second, we'll do a little scheme stuff as well. So now let's talk a little bit about the schemes the Pats have been using to run the football this year. And you know the two biggest first down runs that they had against the Jets both from Deion Lewis. One was an 11-yard gain the other was a nine-yard gain. Let's talk about that nine-yard gain here for a second because when I went back and broke down their running game against the Jets, I saw

zone. I saw split zone. I saw zone with a fullback lead. I saw power. They were mixing up doing a lot of different stuff. This first play I want to talk about, 908 mark of the first quarter. This is a Deion Lewis rushing attempt. We're going to get split zone. And what that is, zone blocking schemes. That's where players on the offensive line move in unison, usually to one side of the field or the other. They're not so much blocking an assigned man, but an assigned area. Split zone is a variation of that where the five offensive linemen like they do on this play,

they'll flow to one side. Here they flow to the right. And then you have a player, sometimes a fullback, usually a tight end, cut back to the back side of the play to seal that edge. And here we get a split zone run and play to the right. And what they do is they bring Rob Gronkowski in motion right before the play. That gives him a little bit of a head start. So everybody comes to the right.

Gronkowski cuts across back to the left to seal that backside. Deion Lewis takes the handoff from Brady out of a shotgun formation. He's just reading and looking for a hole. Patience as a ball carrier is critical. Whether it's power or zone, you've got to let the blocks develop. Think Le'Veon Bell. Sometimes it's almost nerve-inducing

watching him run the football because he's so patient back there. You wonder what he's waiting for. But you have to be patient to let the block in set up, both power zone schemes. Here, Lewis is very patient, sees Gronkowski's block on the edge, and what happens as Gronk executes that block,

the defender tries to cut inside. So Gronkowski sort of rides him that way. Lewis sees that, cuts right around that block, right behind Gronkowski, right behind his backside, and turns it upfield for a gain of nine yards. So again, it's that patience there, that vision, the ability to feel the block as well as the execution up front that leads to that play. Let's talk a little power blocking scheme now. Power blocking has basically been around since the dawn of football. Like we talked about with the Atlanta Falcons yesterday, angles again are very important, especially with power blocking plays. You get a

play in the third quarter. A Mike Gilleslie run for seven yards up the middle comes at the 142 mark. Again, I'll have a piece up on LockedOnPatriots.com breaking these plays down, but this is a simple power scheme where you have fullback James Devlin in the game. Brady is on our center and they run Gilleslie to the right side. And you get down blocks from the center, the right guard, and the right tackle, which allows left guard Joe Thune as well as James Devlin to sort of pull in front of Gilleslie. And the rules are basically pretty simple. Thune, the guard, is going first. He hits the first green shirt he sees.

In this case, it's the edge defender, number 47. And Thune basically rides him behind the play. Now the second player is going to be responsible, is going to be the responsibility of Devlin. And that's the play side linebacker, Lee. He crashes the hole. Devlin hits him right there. But there's one player that hasn't been blocked, and that's the backside linebacker.

Typically what you see happen on these power plays is the play side guys that block down, you get a double team, and then one of those two blockers then scrapes to that second level to handle that backside linebacker. That doesn't happen on this play. But what does happen is Mike Gilleslie,

he gets small in the hole. And you might have heard that phrase before, but what it basically means is you don't give the guy target to hit. So even though that backside linebacker scrapes over, Gilleslie makes himself small in the hole, runs through the tackle, keeps his legs churning, and gets upfield for a seven-yard gain. Those are just two of the plays. I don't want to spend too much time on it, but just two of the plays that the Patriots used on Sunday running the football. Power scheme.

The first one we talked about was a split zone. They also did a split zone. They also did some straightforward zone. Even some lead zone where they have Devlin, the fullback, sort of leading the way. Leading the ball carrier to the edge. But now they get the Atlanta Falcons.

And this is a team that right now is pretty good against the run. I reached out to good friend and colleague Charles McDonald of the aforementioned Football Outsiders as well as some other outlets. Co-host of the Set in the Edge podcast. You should check that out. He and Justice Mosqueda, they do some good work over there. But Charles is also a Falcons fan. So I reached out to him this week,

asked him about Atlanta's defense. And the main thing he said was the run defense has been playing well. The numbers bear that out. You know, right now they're 13th overall in terms of yards given up per game on the ground. They've given up just over 100 yards per game on the ground. Only 12 teams are better than them right now.

And matter of fact, the Patriots have played some of those teams that are better run defenses right now. They played Tampa Bay, who's currently 12th. They played New Orleans, who's surprisingly 11th. And Carolina, who's 5th right now against the run. They're only giving up 83.3 yards per game. Interestingly, though, in terms of yards per attempt,

Atlanta's sort of near the bottom. They've given up 4.3 yards per attempt on the ground. Only 10 teams have given up more, including the New England Patriots. They've given up 4.7. But Charles told me that, look, the run defense is sort of the strength of this Atlanta defense right now. And they've been effective against every type of run that I was just breaking down from New England, whether it's lead zone with a lead blocker, whether it's power,

whether it's split zone, whether it's straight forward zone. And it usually starts with somebody on the edge or somebody even in the interior getting some quick penetration. Again, peace up over at LockedOnPatriots.com that you can check out on this Atlanta run defense. But for example, they faced a split zone play against the Miami Dolphins. And you know how I talked on Tuesday's show about getting the buy-in from the outside receivers. Well here, what happens is outside receiver for Miami needs to block down, needs to get his helmet on strong safety.

He doesn't do that Strong Safety crashes inside forces JGI to make a cut on the backfield Strong Safety misses the tackle but by then the help is on the way and so when New England runs these type of plays they're going to need guys to execute those blocks. Talking about New England running power.

We just broke down that play from Mike Gilleslie. The play against Chicago from week one. You know, it's a power scheme. You've got guys pulling. The guy that leads the way, the fullback, again, he's responsible for the second threat. The pulling lineman's responsible for the first threat.

The guy behind is responsible for the second one. This is Zach Miller, tight end. Never hits the guy behind is responsible for the second one. This is Zach Miller, tight end. Never hits the guy. Linebacker scrapes right into the hole, stops Jordan Howard for no gain. So execution is going to be critical against this Atlanta run defense. You know, it's okay if this Atlanta run defense.

It's okay if you lose sort of a one-on-one matchup. A guy overpowers you. That's going to happen. They're paid to play too. They're good on the other side of the ball. If they've made it to the NFL, chances are they're a pretty good football player. But you need to at least execute.

You need to at least know the assignment and do your job. A prime example of just sort of getting overpowered at the point of attack, Dontari Poe, free agent acquisition by Atlanta. It was a play, again, one of those lead zone plays against the Buffalo Bills a few weeks ago. Where Poe just takes the center on

right at the snap and just drives him right into the path of the ball carrier. So yeah, David Andrews, he might have his hands full with Poe in a couple of these plays. And Poe might get the best of him a couple of times. But you'd almost rather see that than guys just not hitting their assignments. You know, you can live with that.

Poe's a great player. But if the Patriots could continue this success that they've had running the football particularly on first down they're going to need to make sure they at least

execute the assignments might lose a couple of one-on-one battles up front but at least execute those assignments and so for you fantasy minded

people out there we talked a lot about the run games this week you know it's almost a situation where maybe maybe you still might sort of lean on

this Patriots run game a little bit. Lewis looked really good rushing the football last week. Patriots have been running the ball well like we talked about particularly on first down. Yeah, the strength of this Atlanta run defense might, this Atlanta defense might be the run defense, but there are still opportunities to make plays,

provided guys execute. So that's been a sort of real deep dive into first down rushing attempts in both of these teams in terms of the run Patriots with how they run the football Atlanta how they've been able to stop it what's your Wednesday show

Mr. Kornheiser asked well today it was all about the ground game hope you enjoyed it I'll be back tomorrow gonna do a little crossover action again with Aaron Freeman. He's the host of Locked On Falcons. He's also

a writer for The Falcoholic. Aaron does great work. I've been on shows with him before. Really smart guy. Really looking forward to chatting with him. Also, a quick call to arms for all you loyal listeners of the Locked On Patriots, of which there are many,

of which I am incredibly overjoyed, as I say all the time, about the reception of the show and all the nice things people have said about the show. You know, massive shout-outs to people listening worldwide. Canada, Japan, Germany, Switzerland, Norway, Sweden. Appreciate each and every one of you. If you're interested, if you or somebody you know is interested in advertising on the show, hit me up on Twitter, at Mark Schofield. Shoot me an email, mark.schofield at gmail.com.

Don't sign me up for too many spam things. I know somebody out there will and that's fine. But don't do too much of that, okay? But seriously though, we're always looking for partners for the show, for the podcast network. You know, we hit those key demos, the 25 to 34. Obviously, most of our listeners are male, but a good number of women listen to the show, which I'm incredibly happy about. Incredibly proud to see that. And so if you are, again, if you or somebody you know

is interested in advertising, partnering with us, let me know, hit me up. You can find me on Twitter, at Mark Schofield. Shoot me an email, mark.schofield.gmail.com. I'd love to hear from you.

So tomorrow, again, we'll be back. Aaron Freeman, Crossover Action. Friday's going to be your game day edition. I'm going to be addressing some of your questions. You know, throw some questions my way as well. What you want to know about the upcoming game. Maybe draft stuff. Draft talk already heating up.

Some teams are already thinking about their next draft class. It's never a dull moment here in the football world. Thanks for listening to today's show. Appreciate all the love you guys give me. Until tomorrow, keep it locked right here to me, Mark Schofield, and Locked on Patriots. Is democracy in danger or decline?

Condoleezza Rice, William Galston, and Carlos Gutierrez and others take on this question in the fall edition of The Catalyst, a journal of ideas from the Bush Institute. Surveys show Americans place less trust in institutions like the media and business. Others contend America has faced far more challenging periods and emerged strong. Leading policymakers, Bush Institute experts, and respected journalists take on this debate. Read about it at bushcenter.org slash catalyst.