11 of 27
by KC Viking on Sep 14, 2009 4:24 PM CDT
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That is how many times the Vikings passed on first downs vs. Cleveland.
Other things of note...
Deep passing attempts: 1/4 (counting a nullified play), but at least they tried. Brady Quinn was 3/7 with 2 TD and an INT (counting a nullified TD) on deep passes.
3rd down plays called on 3-and-outs:
* a short right pass for -1 yards to Chester Taylor on 3rd and 9.
* a handoff to Chester Taylor on 3rd and 1 for no gain.
* a short right pass for 10 yards to Chester Taylor on 3rd and 16.
* an incomplete short left pass to Chester Taylor on 3rd and 2 (from shotgun).
* incomplete short left pass from TJ to Berrian on 3rd and 9.
Other drive killers:
* shotgun incomplete short right to Kleinsasser on 3rd and 6.
* shotgun short middle shuffle pass to CT for -2 yards on 3rd and 15.
At least they (sort of) figured out that the Browns were expecting the Vikes to give or pass to CT short of the markers on most 3rd downs. I'll bet they try it over and over next time, too, though.
Short passes which resulted in a gain of 9+ yards: 5/17.
Really, when the key of one's offensive philosophy is to succeed less then 33% of the time, then it's probably time to try something else. 5/17 is generous since I counted 1 or 2 gains of 9 yards (and counted CT's 10 yard completion as a success even though the team needed 6 more yards on that 3rd down). The completion % on these passes is also much lower than one would expect of a practice (vs. a mediocre defense) which is supposed to generate excellent production, but doesn't. Some will say that the other 8x a short pass was completed for 8 or fewer yards should be considered successful, but that would only be possibly true on 1st or 2nd down, and the Vikings do not pass to set up the run even 1/2 of the time.
BOTTOM LINE: Yay, a win...but more should be expected of the offense, especially since the Vikings will play much better teams than Cleveland this season.
This FanPost was created by a registered user of The Daily Norseman, and does not necessarily reflect the views of the staff of the site. However, since this is a community, that view is no less important.
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yep.
But we still looked like the best team in the NFC North…
Can someone help me figure out
When exactly Kleinsasser lost the ability to catch the ball?
When you go to somebody's house, you don't crap on their floor. Being a fan of one team does NOT give you license to be a dick to fans of another.
Corollary: When people are visiting your house and behaving themselves, them being a fan of a different team is NOT a reason for you to piss in their beer.
probably b/c he recently broke his hand?
he’s probably still not 100% with that hand, that’s my excuse for him
and human error
When a guy gets only 1 chance, he’ll either look much better than he really is or much worse.
by KC Viking on Sep 14, 2009 5:27 PM CDT up reply actions 1 recs
Fun with sample sizes
Joe Mauer struck out; Joe Mauer has completely lost his ability to play baseball. AP took a two yard loss on that play; what a terrible back. In November of 1996, Troy Aikman threw a pick — who found THAT scrub?
by RipHimToShreds on Sep 15, 2009 2:52 AM CDT up reply actions
I am not sure how you picked your numbers.
A yards per play average of >6 is usually considered pretty good. I have no idea what the vikings was, but i don’t know how you picked 9 yds as being the line for successful passes. Percy’s TD was 6 yds, does that mean it was an unsuccessful short pass play?
Jared Allen is to football what Jason Voorhees is to Lake Crystal.
Percy Harvin is Devin Hester, except someone very smart decided to teach him how to catch and run routes.
Look at the 6 3rd down passes listed above
6 yards would have been enough on 2 of those 6 (and only if the chain gang measured it as exactly 6 when only 6 was needed, not 6 and inches).
Even though it isn’t specifically referenced above, the credit given to Chester (10 on 3rd and 16) cancels out Harvin’s 6 yard TD. The % is the same.
By successful, I meant enough that it generated a first down (or TD when applicable). That is how Chilly explained his expectations of short passes in various press conferences in the past few years. He really belives that the way to get 12-16 yards on a pass play is to throw a 1-5 yard pass and hope that the other team can’t cover or tackle.
To hit a ypa average of 6-7
the yards on the completions you actaully make shoudl be significantly higher than 6-7.
Yeah yeah I know 6 is fine if you have a 100% completion rate. But you’re not gonna get that, so why pretend.
Browns fans rejoice
If the Vikes had a REAL quarterback we would have hung a 50 spot on them with ease. Even Terry Bradshaw feels that he could have done the same job that favre did . Let’s see if they pass on the Lions , seeing as Drew Breese passed for 6 touchdowns maybe even the old decrepit favre can do something besides hand the ball off ( although , I hardly doubt it ). To win in the NFL you need to throw the ball as well as run , there are any number of great backs with no rings .
Yeah, but
the idea is to win no matter how you do it. I can promise you that if any NFL team thought they could win by running it on every play, they would do exactly that. And if a team can win by throwing it relatively few times, then that is exactly what they will do.
There are a number of things that can happen on any passing play, only one of which is positive and some of which have the potential to be extremely negative. Even a sack on 2nd down or later will most often kill a drive (at best). Any NFL coach would prefer to run the ball if they could sustain drives that way.
With rare exceptions, the primary purpose of the passing game on this team is always going to be to enable the running game.
We’ll pass more when we need to.
by Migrant lurker on Sep 14, 2009 7:33 PM CDT up reply actions
6/31
That is how often the Vikings will win by counting on 150+ rushing yards from AP (about 3 wins per year). That means that the passing game must step up and win at least twice as many games to have a winning record.
The problem is that Childress and Bevell probably do believe that they can win vs. better opponents this way.
The flaw in your analysis is that simply doesnt take into account the chess match that is going on. If you anticipate that the the defense will be playing a deep zone then a 5 yard dunk and run is exactly what you need to do. Conversely, you throw deep when the defense has been playing tight to the line or you antipate will be in a man cover 1.
Its just not enough to simply say that “you need to be able to throw deep in every game” and then trot out the stats of one game and say “we didnt do it in this game so we’ll probably lose in the future”. The tendency of your opponent and their personnel come into play.
The flaw in your argument is that you have no proof to offer to support your claim, which you claim to be 100% true regardless.
Realistically, the Vikes ran when the Browns expected it several times, and you’d better believe that the Browns were expecting a pass on those 3rd down shotgun formations, whether they audibled after seeing the shotgun or kept the call the same since it was 3rd down and too many, after all.
Other teams throw deep more often than the Vikes, and some of them win more games, too. The Vikings, incidentally, actually threw downfield quite often and consistently during the Green and TIce years, and even to some extent during the Burns era. An incomplete 2-yard dumpoff scares no one. An incomplete 22-42+ bomb forces the opponent to think about covering that sort of play.
More good analysis
Why are you wasting your time here? Your well thought out, articulate answers based on both empirical evidence and a priori logic are wasted here.
by RipHimToShreds on Sep 14, 2009 10:51 PM CDT up reply actions
Football isn't a math game or professional dissertation
Football is a strategy game and all the statistics in the world are not gonna change that. I’d rather talk to a Chess grand master about how to play football than a math professor or a philosopher.
Anticipation and the game within the game mean more than just trotting out some single game statistics and putting together an articulate, logical argument.
Maybe a bad example?
Your post is hilarious. The single most important tool to analyze chess is game theory, which is a branch of mathematics:
http://www.ics.uci.edu/~eppstein/cgt/
Another very important tool to chess analysis? Statistics:
http://www.springerlink.com/content/nu205x3748165065/
To help you get started, I’ve linked a few good books on the topic:
This book is a solid foundation for a knowledge of analyzing chess positions mathematically.
This book is essentially a puzzle book, but the mathematical methodology can be applied in real game situations (pay especially close attention to the probability section as it relates highly to football).
I admit I have yet to read this publication, but I’ve been meaning to and it seems promising. Maybe you can read it and let me know what you think.
The truth is, if you talk to a grandmaster about football, you’re going to be talking about mathematics.
I’m a very solid chess player and well read in the history of the game. I suppose you wish you didn’t use that example.
by RipHimToShreds on Sep 15, 2009 11:21 PM CDT up reply actions
Update: the last book isn’t relevant to the discussion. My apologies for my shoddy literature review.
by RipHimToShreds on Sep 16, 2009 2:05 AM CDT up reply actions
I suppose this was supposed to be useful in talking about the Vikings.
by virginia viking on Sep 16, 2009 6:26 AM CDT up reply actions
It was to show that "strategy games" such as football and chess are best analyzed mathematically
and so, all this talk about the mathematical analysis of football (and the Vikings) not being relevant to the game at all is completely and utterly stupid.
I hope that clears up your concerns. Let me know if you have any more problems understanding things.
by RipHimToShreds on Sep 16, 2009 2:06 PM CDT up reply actions
You have no proof in your claim that throwing deep incomplete passes is important to a teams success. You pick arbitrary numbers, like 9 yards per pass play, to determine its success. Very few routes a designed to pick up 9 yards and rarely is a 1st down pass play meant to pick up another 1st down. That is like saying that a play in basketball was unsuccessful if you didn’t score 3 points. In reality there is one set of numbers that matter about this game 34-20.
Jared Allen is to football what Jason Voorhees is to Lake Crystal.
Percy Harvin is Devin Hester, except someone very smart decided to teach him how to catch and run routes.
There is actually several examples of throwing long passes (complete or not) being important to a team’s success. In fact, all one would have to do is just look at the best teams, determined by win loss records, and look at the number of passing plays that went more than 20 yards (if you really want, you can control for yards after completion, the results will most likely be the same). I have no interest in doing this analysis myself as I am currently studying the effects of stadiums on job growth in urban areas, but I don’t think I need to as I am 95% there is a strong, positive correlation on long passes (and long pass attempts) on not only win loss records, but rushing yards (even controlled for running backs’ abilities).
The argument that only “wins and losses matter” (which you seem to be implying with your assertion that the only numbers that matter are the scores of the teams) is missing the point. Of COURSE wins and losses matter — that is precisely why one would want to examine WHY teams won or lost, which is why this sort of analysis is important to fully understand the game.
by RipHimToShreds on Sep 15, 2009 3:36 PM CDT up reply actions
Don't know man
I’m at work so I can’t run the numbers but there are a lot of good teams out there that don’t use the pass much, Pitt, Ravens are just two. Now you have the flip side of the Colts and Pat’s. Different styles offer different things. I don’t think the vikes can throw the deep ball, and I wouldn’t try until the vikes O line actually starts giving favre some time back there. Deep passes with poor protection adds up to interceptions.
With that said, don’t get me wrong, I too think we should air it out a bit.
Steelers
Have many big downfield passing plays. In fact Big Ben just threw like a 40+ yard TD against the Titans week 1.
by packallday555 on Sep 15, 2009 6:57 PM CDT up reply actions
Empirical proof
When the Vikings set the scoring record in 1998 (remember that?), they were throwing downfield several times per game. When the Patriots broke that record, they were throwing downfield several times per game, too. I am surprised that you didn’t know this proof existed already, but not paying attention to the NFL in the past 2-12 years or so does explain your post.
None of the recent record holders for scoring offenses accomplished that feat by running over 60% of the time, as the Vikes did on Sunday.
In 2008, 9 of the 12 QBs who completed 40 passes of 20+ yards played on winning teams last year (one was Schaub, who played for a .500 team). In 2007, 8 of the 12 QBs who completed 40+ passes of 20+ yards played on a winning team (plus one on a .500 team, and the other 3 were on 7-9 teams). At the top of the list was the QB of the current record holding team for most points scored, Tom Brady of the New Engand Patriots. In 2003, the Chiefs led the league in scoring. 11/12 QBs who completed at least 40 passes of 20+ yards played for winners (Tommy Maddox was the odd man out) and Trent Green was #2 on that list. There is definitely a correlation between throwing downfield and winning.
Further proof: Childress, who hates to throw deep, has a career winning percentage as a head coach of exactly 50% counting playoff games. Dennis Green’s record as head coach of the Vikings was 59% counting playoff games, and throwing downfield at least once per quarter was a key point of his offensive philosophy.
Percy Harvin was supposed to be a potential deep threat, so BB’s decoy status doesn’t matter that much.
Your argument is essentially that you must do X to win, if i’m reading it right. Where is your proof that there is only one path to victory?
Secondly, where in your analysis is the variable of execution? I can attempt to throw deep with players that have the tools to do so but what if my line is weak or weaker in pass protection? What if the opposing defense’s deep coverage is a strong suit? What about simple human error or this thing called “luck”?
I’ll second the guy who said that the only statistics that matters are the final scores of your games and your W/L record. Everything short of that fails to account to both small scale and large scale strategy and plain old simple execution.
His (or her, I’m not sure) argument isn’t that variable X (throwing deep) is a causal link to winning; his argument is that there is a stochastic relationship between throwing deep and winning.
Furthermore, KC Viking never set out to prove that there is no other way to win a game; only that there is a strong correlation between throwing deep and winning. There may be other ways to win; in fact, I am certain there are. But based on all the evidence, the way to ensure that you will score the most points possible is to throw deep and throw it deep often.
Obviously this may not be feasible for some teams. It depends heavily on quarterback ability, receiver ability, and defensive ability. And luck, as you correctly stated but of which you failed to see the significance. For these teams the best way to win is perhaps a different way. Because there have been no empirical studies to control for the many other variables, all we can go on is that the league leader teams in scoring often have the best records and almost always throw deep.
The question is then: do the Vikings have the tools necessary to throw it deep once in awhile? I would say yes, but that’s another five paragraphs of explanation right there and I fear that you probably have no time to listen to me anymore.
by RipHimToShreds on Sep 15, 2009 11:30 PM CDT up reply actions
do you have a source that percy was supposed to be a deep threat? he’s never been a deep threat at any level. he’s an over the middle guy, a bubble screen guy, a counter runner.
by Natty Bumppo on Sep 18, 2009 1:11 PM CDT up reply actions 1 recs
11 of 27 sounds about right.
A couple more wouldn’t have hurt, but that’s enough to keep them guessing, which is all we want.
Taylor dropped one of the passes you listed. Kleinsasser dropped another. Handing off to taylor on 3rd and 1 doesn’t sound like a bad play to me.
Throwing it downfield on third and long is a great way to get the ball intercepted. We were obviously playing to not do that through this game (and we were right).
“Brady Quinn was 3/7 with 2 TD and an INT (counting a nullified TD) on deep passes.” Nullified plays don’t count and the one TD he did throw was completely meaningless.
We didn’t turn it over. We WON by a good margin. Nobody scores on every drive. We were stopping them defensively. I’m not sure what your point is.
I agree with you, including the part about throwing downfield on 3rd and long. Instead, my suggestion is to throw downfield on 1st and 2nd downs, which they did (but not often enough, considering that they only passed on 11/27 1st downs, leaving 7 short “high percentage” passes on 23 other 1st downs).
This week, Drew Brees also threw downfield 7x, resulting in a lot of yards, 2 TDs, and 1 INT, mostly on 1st downs with an incompletion on a 2nd down.
My point is that this offense still kicks nobody’s ass. The Vikings came from behind against the Browns, but they will need to do better than this. These fabled “high percentage passes” must be completed at a high completion % or else they may as well be further downfield and moving the chains when they are completed.
Second and short is the perfect time to try a bomb; in fact, that sort of play is perfect for this sort of offense. Favre is still accurate downfield as his bomb against the Browns shows, and if Favre doesn’t like the defense (safeties playing back, etc.), he can easily audible into an inside run to Peterson. But the fact that Peterson is on the field with short yardage to the first down will entice a lot of defenses to stack the box and play man on the sides with little safety help.
If he misses, he misses. We still have Peterson to convert on third and short.
by RipHimToShreds on Sep 14, 2009 10:59 PM CDT up reply actions
Agreed
but Peterson is still our bread and butter. Actually when I played in high school and college we were told to watch for the deep pass on a second and short. Giving up the first down while crappy was better than givng up a 40 yard play. Because like you said you always have the next down to push it through.
Yeah
I know that second and short is probably the best time to throw deep and I know that most coaches know that (probably even Childress). I just think that it may catch defenses off guard more often than it usually does due to the Vikings’ recent inability to move the ball through the air at all.
It’s a decent hypothesis at any rate.
by RipHimToShreds on Sep 15, 2009 11:39 PM CDT up reply actions
Hey at least it would be a safe time
to throw an interception :D Seriously though he should do it, he needs to have coaches looking at his team as though they have a passing attack and make them prep for that as well. Unless he’s trying to hide the passing attack tell we get to a worthy opponent and then pull it out while they have no tape to deal with it.
I don’t know, personally I don’t think Chilly is that crafty.
High scoring teams:
Last year the Saints and Cardinals finished 1st and 4th in the league in both scoring and total yards per game. They also both finished in the bottom 5 in rushing yards.
The Steelers finished in the bottom half of the league in both scoring and total yards per game.
There are different ways to get there. If we run a ball control type of offense then we will not score a lot of points this year. Ball control means we are eating up the clock every time we have the ball. Neither the Saints nor the Cardinals eat up much clock when they have the ball which results in more possessions per game (for them and the opposition), which means a lot more scoring for everybody.
Our approach is likely to be different than that.
I’m not disagreeing that going downfield is important, but we are simply not going to be one of the higher scoring teams in the league and we don’t need to be to win.
by Migrant lurker on Sep 15, 2009 5:38 PM CDT up reply actions
Vikings 1-0
It seems to me that in the nfl you scout your opponents weakness and try to exploit them the browns are not good at defending the run so we ran the ball 37 times for 225yds and 3 tds boo hoo the browns are better at defending the pass so we attempted 21 passes completing 14 with1td were sacked 4 times 0 interceptions for 110yds not bad considering Berrian was nothing more than a decoy with a bad hammstring and you are right there will be games were we will need to throw more but not this week and 34 points on the road on OPENING DAY is nothing to cry about. enjoy the victory on to detroit. GO VIKINGS.
A Statement
Sometimes it’s just trying to make a statement. The Vikes are a running team. Everyone knows it.
Yeah, it’s 3rd and 2. Yeah, we know that YOU know we’re going to run, but we’re going to do it anyway.
The 2009 Vikings are here, try to stop us!
OK...
All of the empirical proof/data/argument is great…
BUT, you also play to your strength… and for game 1, the deep ball wasn’t our strength.
Our offense needs more time to develop that part of our game.
That is the result of our QB missing OTAs and Camp.
He made the passes that needed to be made given the situation and opportunity – and he missed some too.
Hopefully, next week will be a new set of data based on the situations/opportunities presented.
GO VIKES!!
I believe the 'push off' cost us 'our' SuperBowl...
I believe you 'go for the win'... instead of 'taking a knee'...
by ArizonaVikingsFan on Sep 15, 2009 4:02 PM CDT reply actions
By that logic
we should see a lot more passing by Favre in Detroit. Problem is if we start failing at the pass in a game, well they’ll start stacking on us again. Hate to say it but until Favre really proves himself to me I’m a little leery of him throwing to many passes.
I don't think I made an argument
for more passing against Detroit… I expect our team to play to our strength based on the situation.
If that means running the ball, or dinking and dunking, or heaving the rock long then so be it.
I want the team to win and that means doing what needs to be done in the game of chess that is football.
I believe the 'push off' cost us 'our' SuperBowl...
I believe you 'go for the win'... instead of 'taking a knee'...
by ArizonaVikingsFan on Sep 15, 2009 4:25 PM CDT up reply actions
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