Why can't Andy Admit it?
by cavortingEagle on Dec 9, 2008 12:59 PM EST
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PrintIn Andy Reid's press conference yesterday, he was asked five separate questions about the Eagles sticking with the running game against the Giants. Questions like, Why continue to beat your head into a wall, and should Eagle fans hope for wind in future contests.
He responded to these questions in typical Andy Reid fashion. Ambiguously. In his opening remarks Andy stated pretty clearly that the weather conditions were largely responsible for the number of rushing attempts - that it was important that the running game got going because it was tough to move the ball through the air. However, Rich Hoffman in a column yesterday and AndrewB (in a typically stat laden fanpost right here), both noted that the Eagles offensive philosophy were little changed until early in the 4th quarter against the Giants. Rich Hoffman put it rather succinctly:
Westbrook scored on the third play of the fourth quarter on that 40-yard pass play, giving the Eagles a 17-7 lead. At that point of the game, the ratio of called runs vs. called passes was 55 percent passes and 45 percent runs. The difference between yesterday at that point and a typical Eagles game this season was four play calls in three-plus quarters of football, four play calls out of 58 plays. With that, viva la revolucion.
What's truly important to note is that at this point the Eagles were in the driver seat. In response to Westbrook's TD, the Giants had a 4 minute long 9 play drive that ended with the Giants failing to convert a 4th and 1 at the Eagles 38.
So, with 9 and a half minutes left in a football game, a 10 point lead, and control of the ball, what would you call on first and 10? That's right - a running play. Andy and Marty borrowed from Bill Parcells, and managed a clock burning drive that leaned heavily on the run and converted third downs with short passes and a QB scramble.
Why then, can't Andy say it? Seriously, there has been no magical change in philosophy. The wind isn't even to blame. The Eagles had a significant lead and wanted to kept it that way by running the football. Next week the Eagles will throw the football and attempt to establish a lead in the first half and then assuming the Eagles are up a couple of scores in the second they will run the football. Hopefully, Westbrook will have the help of his battery mate Buck to keep his touches down to a more realistic 25 or so, but we'll see who practices on Thursday.
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Cui bono?
Why should he say anything?
The more he says that has the remostest grain of truth, the easier it is for opponents to peg what he will do. Who knows, maybe the dumber head coaches, you know, the ones getting fired every 3 or 4 years who don’t employ good stats departments, will actually fall for his spiel of running in the wind. I mean, its not like the Eagles starting QB is not well known for throwing lots of short passes low and hard where the wind hardly has any effect on them … oh wait …
I suspect that just about everything he says at press conferences that doesn’t involve injury news and praising obvious good play by his players is outright calculated obfuscation, halftruths, and misrepresentation. Or else its tired nostrums like “putting players in position to make things happen”.
I keep dreaming that eventually we will get some sports reporters who learn how to pry interesting information out of Andy Reid by not antagonizing him with endlessly repeated nonsense. Of course, that would require sports reporters who actually understand that a QB scramble is a called pass, and that a kneel down is not really a called run, and that three consecutive runs of 4 yards, 2 yards, and 3 yards equals 4th and 1.
In a certain sense, I can hardly wait until Reid retires and does something like take over from John Madden doing Sunday Night Football color commentary. I think he’d be really interesting to listen to once he can freely open up and isn’t being pestered by morons.
I think Andy would be tremendous in the booth.
by cavortingEagle on Dec 9, 2008 2:30 PM EST up reply actions
I never thought it really mattered how ambiguous coaches were in press conferences—what they say doesn’t matter, all that matters is what they do on the sideline. I will say that the eagles are a passing team-and unless they decide to completely revise their playbook, they will be. That doesnt mean a passing team can’t run the ball half of the time….it just means they throw to take the lead and run to maintain it (as has been said ad nauseum), and to keep pressure off the passing game. When you have a back like Westbrook- that just means you get the bonus of him breaking one for 30+ yards pretty much every game that the eagles give him a reasonable number of carries (can this be verified?).
If the fat man has any sense as a coach (and with a career record like his, you have to believe he does), then he will stick with what’s working.
Who cares
Like andrew said he doesnt have to say anything. The important thing is that he is running
E-A-G-L-E-S EAGLES!!!
Andy would rather order a salad
than admit that a 60/40 balance of run/pass is working. But he’s never been a guy that talks a lot, even on his own show. And I’m fine with that, as long as he continues to let Marty handle the playcalling and continues a balanced attack.
The point is that the “attack” wasn’t balanced.
It only ended up that way because we had a lead.
On another note, but related – Nice article about risk reward in the 4th Quarter on another blog…
by cavortingEagle on Dec 9, 2008 2:27 PM EST up reply actions
Not balanced?
Wait, so 55/45 is not balanced??? Says who?. The Cincy game was not balanced going into the same point of the game. The Ravens game was not balanced going into the 4th Quarter. 55/45 is the kind of balance I would like to see going into a 4th quarter.
suppose 2 children are sitting on a teeter totter.
one of them eats a lot of candy, sits on the couch and plays xbox all day – suppose he weighs 55 pounds.
the other eats lots of fruit, run around in the back yard with his dog and weighs in at 45 pounds.
Is that balance?
As Hofmann noted, 4 more pass attempts would have put Andy and Marty right on their season averages. FWIW, 2 of the Eagles rushing attempts were scrambles by Donovan McNabb.
The Eagles “attack” was not balanced.
by cavortingEagle on Dec 9, 2008 2:55 PM EST up reply actions
it does matter how you slice it though.
The effectiveness of the run and the score caused this “more balanced” effort.
"I need to do a better job of putting players in the right position to perennially come up short of expectations"
More statistical games
Both Hoffman and Andrew’s arguments rely on playing with the stats.
Hoffman includes the two spikes in his math, and still had to round to get to 55/45. Without the spikes, the numbers were 29 called passes to 26 called runs (about 52/48). With the spikes, the number is still 53.4%. So Hoffman cheats three percent, then doesn’t show his work on what he’s using as the year long ratio.
Lousy statistics Rich, and lousy rhetoric too.
Andrew stops his count when the game was 10 – 7 with about 19:30 left. Right after his arbitrary stopping point, the Eagles went 3 passes, 7 runs, scored to make it 17 – 7 with 13:30 left. You can chose whether the win probability was more significant at Andrew’s point, or Hoffman’s. I think it’s fair to assume the Eagles weren’t simply running the clock out with 19:30 left and a three point lead.
In any case, even a 55/45 ratio is much better than a 60/40 ratio for simple game theory reasons:
http://www.advancednflstats.com/2008/06/game-theory-and-runpass-balance.html
There are good reasons why other successful West Coast coaches kept the ratio around 55/45. The main one is that the defense must respect the run for the pass to work efficiently.
The article you site is well written indeed.
I would tend to accept it at face value, but the numbers the author uses at best are league wide averages. On a team by team basis the model would be different.
For instance, the Eagles are a blitzing team. They blitz against the run and the pass. They have a high rate of success when they blitz whether or not the opposing team is rushing or passing. Therefore the consequences in the model would be significantly different for the Eagles when they blitz.
by cavortingEagle on Dec 9, 2008 6:27 PM EST up reply actions
Thanks for that link
That really is an interesting article.
Upon giving it a second read, the author is not calling for a 63-37 Run – pass ratio at all. He’s suggesting utilizing game theory to help set a team’s play calling on any given Sunday.
You know that the Pittsburgh Steelers like to blitz. Your playbook contains several runs and passes which seem to maximize gains against the blitz. You should work them into your quarterback’s audible package for the week.
You know that the Tennessee Titans are going to try to run the football. You tweak your gameday defensive playbook to contain more 8 man boxes.
I wish I knew more about game theory, it’s frightfully interesting.
by cavortingEagle on Dec 9, 2008 6:39 PM EST up reply actions
Right
He is saying tailor the gameplan to the expected strategy of the opponent (like the Steelers’ blitzes).
I was citing him because he talks about the interplay of calling a mix of runs and passes. The idea is that even if passing is expected to get better results overall, if a team goes too far in one direction, then it’s easier to game plan against them.
So the real balance question is how much can a team use the more efficient play call until the negative effect of predictability overtakes the extra efficiency that play call would get in a neutral situation. Finding that balance is where game theory comes in, and the numbers get more complex the more choices you have (like instead of just choosing between running and passing, teams are really choosing between dozens of plays on their play chart). Finding the real ratio is incredibly complex.
I think that history has suggested 55/45 is a good balance for teams from the Holmgren coaching tree. That’s about where the Packers were when they won a Super Bowl, got to another, and Favre won three MVPs. If 55/45 is the “golden ratio”, then an extra five passes a game, or 80 a season, make the team that much more predictable and likely to have negative results.
There’s another wrinkle: passing is much higher risk / reward than running, so those extra 80 plays a season are likely to have many more negative results than a team that runs 80 times more than they optimally should.
Season Pass / Rush Ratio
According to ESPN, the Eagles have 501 pass attempts and 341 run attempts. McNabb and Kolb have combined for 41 of those run attempts:
http://sports.espn.go.com/nfl/teams/stats?team=phi
Let’s say 11 of those QB runs were called sneaks, because I don’t feel like going through the play by play for all these games. So now the ratio is 531 called passes to 311 called runs.
That makes the season long ratio of called passes to called runs 63 % pass to 37 % run.
If the team runs 65 plays a game, the difference between 55% passing and 63% passing is 35.75 passes per game to 40.95.
So Hoffman is wrong again, we’re talking about five plays per game, or 80 plays over the course of the season, or 8% of plays called.
If you don’t think 8% is significant Rich, I’m sure the government would be happy to take another 8% of your income.
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