The Process by the Numbers: Part III - Running Man

It looks like the thing my dad used to spray around the house

this post gets a rec, as you earn a great big ole +1 for the Ingram caption.

…one of the most interesting statistics here is the difference in passing yards between 2009 and, well, any of the previous three years. Thanks, Macs (GMac and Coach Mac)!

came to Bama everyone thought we would become pass happy. What they failed to realize is that the reason McElwain’s past teams had passed so much was that was the way the approach the head coach had wanted for his team. When he got to Bama, Saban wanted a balanced approach and that is what has emerged. It is a solid, balanced offense that can win by the run, the pass, or both.

In the process we are developing offensive lineman that can really play at the next level. This will only serve to gain us more access to these lineman that can run block and pass block.

Love the Smart quote. The fun is in the winning. Coach Stallings used to say that a lot when he got criticised for being too conservative. He only won one ring, I think Saban is going to win more.

And I wish we could somehow lock up Kirby Smart.

has its uses, it has severe limits in its application. Certainly in the NFL if you can throw the ball and then run the ball, you will be successful, no real news flash there. Their methodology has IMHO a severe problem with selection bias: Teams which are successful run more in the 2nd half, teams less successful throw more in the second half.

I truly think that selection bias is extremely hard to overcome when they conduct their analysis. The fact that they are taking actual data and testing it only tells you what has worked, and that only for most teams. It does not do such a good job at telling you what could work, or what may work for one specific team.

A more imaginative approach would be to convert a philosophy into numbers, and then run those numbers against simulations to determine if the underlying assumptions behind the philosophy is correct. However this is very hard to do, as it requires you as an analyst to understand the philosophy well enough to construct such a model. Doing this for all 32 NFL teams is challenging. Doing it for all college teams is impossible.

However we can recognize the limitations of the FO method and we can cobble together our own little model of the Saban/Alabama philosophy. Converting into math is beyond my abilities, but the general concepts are clear:

1) Run the football – running plays are more of a team play, and therefore give you as a coach a better ability to utilize your overall edge in talent than passing plays. If you have all 11 men working together, you can overwhelm all 11 opponents if you have bigger, stronger, faster players who are coached better. Given Alabama’s obvious edge in depth, this is quite clearly the strategy they should follow to maximize success.

Another advantage to mastering running the football is that if you do that well enough, you don’t need to do anything else on offense that well to win. If you are a great passing team, you still need to be able to run the ball to protect leads, convert short yardages, etc. If you are a terrific running team, the only time you’ll have to pass is if you fall behind by more than 1 score late in the game. As we saw in 2010 (and in 1992) you can go the entire season when this basically never happens.

2) Stop the run – This is basic from the second half of the point above. If you can stop the run, even teams with terrific passing attacks can bog down in short yardages and late in the game, which means you will always have the chance to stop them.

If any team can master these two elements of the game, particularly a team like Alabama which will almost always have a large edge in talent, they will win many, many games. TOP is a short hand way of determining if a team is doing these two things well.

This is not to say there’s not a whole lot more going on here than these basic points, but I just wanted to clarify that the studies done by the guys at FO have their limits. You put all your eggs in that basket and you end up with an omelet.

At the University of Alabama, we are not about fun. We are about toughness, being physical and winning ball games. The players have fun by winning games and championships.

AWESOME.

he’s drinking pesticide during practice.

the Tebow tears for a blindness cure.

“First of all, I know you can’t win a championship if you can’t stop the run. I don’t know how you can ever teach a defense to stop the run if their offense doesn’t run the ball well. It promotes physical practice and it promotes learning how to hit and play blocks. That’s the first thing, for the defense.

“Secondly, there’s times in the game where you have to run it to win the game, in the red area where everything shrinks down, in short-yardage, in four-minute offense at the end of the game. And if you can’t finish in those critical situations by being able to knock it in there, it’s always a problem. Running out the clock, I mean how many times have you seen it?

“The third things is, it takes the heat off a quarterback. The more you run, the better the quarterback, the less decisions he’s got to make. Then, I’m just a little old school. I just believe that’s what wins. Now balance, if I had it my way we’d throw it and run it equally well. It’s not that I don’t like to throw it. I will say this, if we ever develop a team and a quarterback and receivers where we’re more effective throwing it, then yeah, (we’ll do it).”

Derek Dooley