One stat that former Ravens head coach Brian Billick brought to the attention of stats enthusiast a few years back was what he termed as the Fox-Tox rating. Basically the stat takes the differential of explosive plays, a play of 20 yards or more and adds it to the differential of the turnovers gained and lost to come to come up with this rating. The video below describes it in more detail, but it is pretty simple. With the Steelers set to take on the Ravens this Sunday, I thought we would look how this stat shakes out in individual games in the series dating back to the 2000 season. The two Read more [...]

Below are the individual coverage stats and totals from the Thursday night preseason game against the Carolina Panthers. The top table is by play and consist of which Panthers player was targeted with the pass, the yards gained on the play and the yards after the catch the receiver had on the play. Also included is the number of pass rushers the Steelers used on the play and if they blitzed or not on the play. I have included the down and distance as well as well as the direction of the pass. There were three plays not included as they were running back screens behind the line of scrimmage. Coverage Read more [...]

Sure it's only preseason and the stats are pretty much useless, but they are fun to look at nonetheless. Below are the Steelers preseason stats rushing and passing stats through the first 3 preseason games that are broken down by offense and defense for your viewing pleasure. They include direction, number of plays, average gain and the NFL rank in the preseason for each. These stats will be part of the weekly post-game content you can look forward to this preseason on the site. The only thing that sticks out in these meaningless stats is the deep middle passing by the offense where the Steelers Read more [...]

Below are the individual coverage stats and totals from the Saturday night preseason game against the Atlanta Falcons. The top table is by play and consist of which Falcons player was targeted with the pass, the yards gained on the play and the yards after the catch the receiver had on the play. Also included is the number of pass rushers the Steelers used on the play and if they blitzed or not on the play. I have included the down and distance as well as well as the direction of the pass. There were five plays where it was impossible to tell who really had coverage as three of those were running Read more [...]

Below are the individual coverage stats and totals from the Thursday night preseason game against the Philadelphia Eagles. The top table is by play and consist of which Eagles player was targeted with the pass, the yards gained on the play and the yards after the catch the receiver had on the play. Also included is the number of pass rushers the Steelers used on the play and if they blitzed or not on the play. I have included the down and distance as well. There were two plays were it was impossible to tell who really had coverage. One was incomplete and the other was the 40-yard gain to the running Read more [...]

These are pretty much meaningless stats during the preseason, but they are fun to watch week to week as the Steelers progress through the preseason. Below are play direction stats from the Steelers first preseason game Friday night against the Redskins. The thing that sticks out the most is that the Steelers did not run to the left side any on Friday night. Now they of course are a right handed running team and they only ran 18 times on the night with 2 of those times being Dennis Dixon scrambles. We should see a few runs to the left this week mixed in. As far as the passing offense went, 16 Read more [...]

Below are the individual coverage stats and totals from the Friday night preseason game against the Washington Redskins. The top table is by play and consist of which Redskins player was targeted with the pass, the yards gained on the play and the yards after the catch the receiver had on the play. Also included is the number of pass rushers the Steelers used on the play and if they blitzed or not on the play. The bottom table shows the totals for each defensive player thrown at in coverage for the Steelers as well as the completion percentage and yards per attempt. Let me know if you find Read more [...]

It should come as no big surprise that the Ravens acquired veteran wide receiver Lee Evans from Buffalo today in a trade. I posted last night on Twitter that this was my guess as the Ravens lack experience at the wide receiver spot after dumping Derrick Mason and failing to land Malcom Floyd. Before the trade the Ravens only had rookies Torrey Smith and Tandon Doss to go along with Anquan Boldin, so the move was not hard call. The Ravens will attempt to use Evans much in the way the Steelers use Mike Wallace. He is a vertical threat receiver used to strike for big plays and take the top off Read more [...]

Per the usual, the Steelers were not very active in signing outside free agents this year. They normally concentrate on their own free agents and add an inexpensive player here or there for depth. Today they agreed to terms with former Jets wide receiver Jerricho Cotchery and it could end up being a steal if he is fully recovered from his offseason back surgery. Cotchery fits the mold of a player much like Hines Ward is, as he can line up both outside and inside and is very good at finding soft spots in the secondary and move the chains. Over the last 3 regular seasons Cotchery has caught 169 Read more [...]

I wrote back in mid April how the Steelers cornerbacks did not get enough credit last season as they played the Dick LeBeau system pretty well. It seems everyone only wants to remember the loses against Saints, Patriots and Packers though. Most seem to forget that those three teams all have pretty good quarterbacks and all three indeed had pretty good games against the Steelers. Two of those three games were still very winnable for the Steelers. The latest article by Football Outsiders takes a look at how the Steelers defense did against various numbers of wide receivers sets. The Steelers ranked Read more [...]

The other day I posted about the Steelers and the passer rating differential stat tracked by Cold Hard Football Facts, but wanted to explore it further going back to 2002. There are two tables below that make up this study. The top table is the passer rating differential by year of each team and is colored with blue for teams that won their division that year and yellow for teams that earned a wildcard birth. The differential is determined by subtracting the defensive passer rating from the offensive passer rating. You hope your team has a positive number and the greater the number the better of Read more [...]

If you missed the recent article by Kerry J. Byrne of Cold Hard Football Facts on Sports Illustrated this week, you missed a great article on the passer rating differential stat. Basically, the stat subtracts an opponents passer rating from its own passer rating to get the differential of the two. While I admit that the passer rating stat is overrated to a degree, the differential stat, that uses passer ratings, certainly does pass the mustard in regards to winning as Byrne easily points out. Here are the differential stats of all 32 teams from the 2010 regular season and you can see the Green Read more [...]

Every since Plaxico Burress was released from prison earlier this month, all most people want to talk about is how Burress can be a great redzone addition to their respective team, Steelers fans included. Maybe even quarterback Ben Roethlisberger is enamored with him. Most people tend to do this because of the size of Burress, but in reality, Burress does not live up to the redzone hype he gets. On the flip side, Steelers wide receiver Hines Ward does not get the redzone respect he deserves after all of his years in league and the stats back it up. I pulled the set of numbers from 2002-2008 Read more [...]

Let me start off by saying that I love Pro Football Focus and suggest you subscribe to the premium stats if you are not already doing so as it is a great source of information. This past week they have focused on pass blocking efficiency of the offensive lineman using a formula that encompasses quarterback sacks, hits and hurries. They also only used the formula on lineman who stayed into pass protect on at least 200 occasions for their rankings. To the best of my knowledge there were around 79 guards, 76 tackles and 32 centers that fit the snap criteria although I think a few were left out of Read more [...]

After posting the penalties on the offensive line last week, I was asked by a few readers if I had an updated Steelers penalty report of all the penalties both accepted and declined from the 2010 season. I have these all tabled up below by player and by week from the 2010 regular season and the players are listed from most to fewest. In total, the Steelers were flagged 124 times with 23 being declined. They resulted in 913 penalty yards and nullified 307 yards in total. The defensive penalties resulted in 29 first downs while the offensive penalties resulted in 22 stalled drives. Jonathan Read more [...]

I was going through my charting of the games last year and noticed I had not posted the charting of games and stats of the Steelers defense versus their opponents personnel used. I will start formatting these up and will posting them over the next few weeks and then give a final post of the cumulative totals for the stat geeks like myself. I have included at the bottom a complete play by play as well. The personnel numbers are easy to read as the first number is the running backs on the field and the second number, if there is one, denotes the number of tight ends on the field. Add these two numbers Read more [...]

NFL.com recently did a post on the most penalized teams of 2010 and as you can see by their results that the Oakland Raiders, Detroit Lions, Philadelphia Eagles, Tennessee Titans and San Francisco 49ers were the worst in the league in accepted penalties. If you are curious about the Steelers regular season penalties, they were flagged 124 total times with 101 being accepted. I knew that the Steelers offensive line had been flagged quite a bit in 2010 so I wanted to see where they ranked in comparison to the other 31 teams and their offensive line penalties, so I compiled all of the offensive Read more [...]

I have seen the term explosive plays by a running back on the ground being used a little bit more in articles as of late so I wanted to do a study of both running backs and teams last season in relation to the stat. An explosive rushing play on the ground by a running back is one that goes for 10 yards or more. In the first table below I compiled the running backs from last season with 75 or more carries and how many times per carry they produced an explosive play on average. To be fair, I pulled out all carries from inside the 10 yard line as a running back can not get a 10 yard carry from Read more [...]

Pat Kirwan had an article on NFL.com back in 2008 entitled, "First-down success is the key to third-down conversions" and I rediscovered it by going through some of my old bookmarks recently. The article is pretty straight forward with quite an obvious tone. The more yards you get on first down the better the chance you will stay out of 3rd and long or avoid 3rd downs as often as possible. Not really an earth shattering revelation by any means, but not necessarily a measure of success though as you will see in the tables below. First let us start with the 2010 conversion rates like Kirwan did Read more [...]

John Clayton had a story that caught my attention the other day on ESPN.com in which he was trying to convey the notion that teams facing true 3-4 defense need bigger backs to get the job done on the ground. Clayton did preface this by saying, "To beat a 3-4 defense on the ground you need a bigger back, or at least a runner who can break arm tackles." I wanted to take a look myself at the running backs and fullbacks that ran against true 3-4 defenses in 2010 and see how accurate the big back compared to smaller back theory holds up. Clayton notes that 15 teams ran 3-4 schemes last season, but Read more [...]