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football outsiders

Football Outsiders: Looking at Patriots formation tendencies

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Football Outsiders has taken a look at the formation tendencies of each of the 32 NFL teams and the Patriots stats are pretty interesting. Let’s start with last week’s look at the offensive side of the ball where the Patriots ran formations by the following percentages:

  • 0-1 WRs: 15%
  • 2 WR: 39%
  • 3 WR: 40%
  • 4-5 WR: 6%

They also mention:

After drafting Rob Gronkowski and Aaron Hernandez, New England completed their transition away from the shotgun spread toward more of a two-tight-end alignment. As a result, their DVOA in formations with one-or-fewer wide receivers increased by 14.4% in 2010 after having dropped from 14.5% in 2008 to 6.5% in 2009.

As for their DVOA out of each formation here’s how the Pats fared (the higher percentage DVOA the better):

  • 0-1 WR: 20.9% (4th overall)
  • 2 WR: 65.7% (1st overall)
  • 3 WR: 42.7% (2nd overall)
  • 4-5 WR: 79.0% (1st overall)

So yeah, no matter what personnel/formation the Pats used they were near the best in the league. But what about when defending the various personnel packages?

Let’s start with the frequency that they faced each personnel combination.

  • 0-1 WRs: 7%
  • 2 WR: 30%
  • 3 WR: 53%
  • 4-5 WR: 10%

And here’s how the Patriots defense performed versus each personnel grouping (rating in DVOA, the lower the better, into the negatives).

  • 0-1 WR: 20.5% (30th overall)
  • 2 WR: -22.6% (2nd overall)
  • 3 WR: 23.1% (28th overall)
  • 4-5 WR: -19.8% (4th overall)

Football Outsiders found that how defenses performed against the 4-5 WR sets highly correlated with how much teams won or lost. We can see that the Patriots were one of the best teams against the 4-5 WR sets, but they were dreadful against the 3 WR sets and that’s where the opposition tried to attack them most.

They struggled the most against the 0-1 WR sets although teams threw that personnel at them only 7% of the time. This would include short yardage and goal line situations.

The Pats defensive numbers are pretty strange, with incredible disparity between the rankings of 0-1 WRs and 3 WRs versus 2 WRs and 4-5 WRs. The thing about 3WR sets is that defenses really have the choice of inserting a nickelback to cover the 3rd wide receiver, or staying in base and allowing a linebacker to potentially have to cover them. This can allow for confusion and hesitation in a defense, especially one that is as inexperienced as New England was in 2010.

Clearly the Pats defensive strength was when the match-ups were more cut and dry. The 3-4 defense which they excel at was a perfect match for the 2 WR sets, and with multiple talented safeties and corners their straight up sub-packages were hard to throw on.

Football Outsiders: 2010 Defeats

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Football Outsiders: 2010 Defeats

Football Outsiders has started posting some of their advanced stats from last season and I’ve been enjoying every post. The first and biggest one was that of “defeats”, defined as:

Defeats are defined as any play (tackle, assist, pass defensed, interception, or forced fumble) that does one of three things:

  • 1) causes a turnover
  • 2) causes a loss of yardage
  • 3) stops conversion on third or fourth down

When I first looked at the top 25 players I immediately looked for any Patriots and was disappointed to find none. The ideas for a blog post ran through my head, with things like “this is why our defense struggles” and “we need playmakers” going through my head.

But upon closer inspection I noticed something interesting: 17 of the 25 guys on the list played on teams that didn’t make the playoffs. I’m not really sure how to explain it, perhaps when your the only good player on a shitty defense you have to make plays because no one else will. Perhaps on a good team the stops are more spread around. That would seem to make sense for the Patriots defense that values balance.

But still, it can’t be all that surprising to not see a Patriots on there given their troubels on 3rd down in 2010.

For what it’s worth (and it’s not all that surprising) the Patriots ranked dead last in the NFL in pass defeats in 2010. And unfortunately FO also points out:

Unlike with Run Defeats, Pass Defeats do seem to correlate pretty well with total pass defense performance.

The Patriots had no player in top 25 or bottom 25 in Run Defeats. Average. Boring.

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New England Patriots Final DVOA Chart (note – defensive DVOA flipped for charting purposes)

Football Outsiders came out with their final season rankings today and as you can see above we can now fully evaluate the 2010 regular season.

I think if you could have it any way you’d probably want your team’s chart to look like the Patriots does. Clearly they were getting better on offense and defense, and to some extent special teams as they finished the season.

Some other Patriots related items to pass along:

New England ends the year as the second-best team in DVOA history. They have the highest weighted DVOA we’ve ever measured, and the highest offensive DVOA we’ve ever measured. Their weighted DVOA seriously laps the field, over ten percentage points higher than any other team.

The Patriots’ record-setting offense does not set a record for passing DVOA. That record still belongs to the 2007 Patriots. But this team was much better on the ground, finishing with the seventh-highest rushing DVOA ever. Yet they weren’t the most efficient running team this season. The Philadelphia Eagles end up with the third-highest rushing DVOA ever. Obviously, a lot of that is Michael Vick, but LeSean McCoy was also excellent this season, 18.0% DVOA (fourth among qualifying backs).

Tom Brady ends the year with the fifth-highest passing DYAR in NFL history (2,141 DYAR) and the fourth-highest DVOA for a quarterback with more than 100 passes (53.4%). The top six DYAR seasons all belong to Brady (2007, 2009, and 2010) and Peyton Manning (2004, 2006, and 2009). Boomer Esiason’s ridiculous 1997 actually sneaks into the Brady-Manning stratosphere for top DVOA seasons. Manning finishes second this year with 1,674 DYAR, a total that was topped by six different quarterbacks a year ago.

https://www.patspropaganda.com/new-england-patriots-final-dvoa-chart-note/

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New England Patriots Final DVOA Chart (note – defensive DVOA flipped for charting purposes)

Football Outsiders came out with their final season rankings today and as you can see above we can now fully evaluate the 2010 regular season.

I think if you could have it any way you’d probably want your team’s chart to look like the Patriots does. Clearly they were getting better on offense and defense, and to some extent special teams as they finished the season.

Some other Patriots related items to pass along:

New England ends the year as the second-best team in DVOA history. They have the highest weighted DVOA we’ve ever measured, and the highest offensive DVOA we’ve ever measured. Their weighted DVOA seriously laps the field, over ten percentage points higher than any other team.

The Patriots’ record-setting offense does not set a record for passing DVOA. That record still belongs to the 2007 Patriots. But this team was much better on the ground, finishing with the seventh-highest rushing DVOA ever. Yet they weren’t the most efficient running team this season. The Philadelphia Eagles end up with the third-highest rushing DVOA ever. Obviously, a lot of that is Michael Vick, but LeSean McCoy was also excellent this season, 18.0% DVOA (fourth among qualifying backs).

Tom Brady ends the year with the fifth-highest passing DYAR in NFL history (2,141 DYAR) and the fourth-highest DVOA for a quarterback with more than 100 passes (53.4%). The top six DYAR seasons all belong to Brady (2007, 2009, and 2010) and Peyton Manning (2004, 2006, and 2009). Boomer Esiason’s ridiculous 1997 actually sneaks into the Brady-Manning stratosphere for top DVOA seasons. Manning finishes second this year with 1,674 DYAR, a total that was topped by six different quarterbacks a year ago.

https://www.patspropaganda.com/new-england-patriots-final-dvoa-chart-note-2/