A whole bunch of offenses will be battling not only defenses but adverse weather as well. Will that hold them down? Or give them a bonus? Ian Allan explores.
An usually high number of games today will be played in inclement weather. It will be under 20 degrees at a number of sites. How much does affect production?
The answer, of course, varies from game-to-game. When Green Bay and Detroit met at the end of the 2011 season, Matt Flynn and Matthew Stafford combined for 1,000 yards (exactly) and 11 TD passes. Tom Brady threw 6 TDs in a snow game against a depleted Tennessee secondary in 2009.
But when you look at hundreds of games, rather than just a few isolated cases, it becomes clearer how poor weather affects offensive production.
It’s my opinion that we tend to see less passing production, while the shift away from that area translates into BETTER production for running games. This is an issue I kicked around in the last issue of the mailbag on Friday.
But here, in more detail, are some of the numbers. These are taken by looking at the 5,120 offenses that have taken the field for games in the last 10 years. I looked at production each week. In totaling up those numbers, we can see average production in Week 1, and compare that to how teams did in the 4th, 8th and 13th games.
For scoring, I don’t see much difference. You look at the 16 different weeks and they’re all pretty similar. I don’t see any big patterns here. The only interesting number I see here is that scoring for the first games – 20.2 per team – is almost a point lower than any other week. Apparently it takes a little time for offenses to round into form. Note that the second and third games are also among the lowest scoring.
| WEEK-BY-WEEK SCORING | |
|---|---|
| Game | Points |
| 1 | 20.2 |
| 2 | 21.2 |
| 3 | 21.4 |
| 4 | 21.9 |
| 5 | 21.6 |
| 6 | 22.2 |
| 7 | 22.0 |
| 8 | 21.4 |
| 9 | 22.2 |
| 10 | 21.1 |
| 11 | 22.2 |
| 12 | 21.5 |
| 13 | 21.2 |
| 14 | 21.5 |
| 15 | 21.6 |
| 16 | 21.9 |
It’s in rushing production where it gets interesting. For openers, not again that the worst numbers come in Week 1, where the teams averaged a season-low 108 rushing yards per game and scored a season-low .71 rushing TDs per game. It takes time, it seems, for offensive lines to get their timing down.
But we’re looking at weather, and the interesting trend here, I think, is that the four most-productive weeks are the last four of the season. Teams average 120 rushing yards per game in those last four games, along with .87 TD runs. In the first 12 games of the season, they averaged 114 rushing yards and only .80 TDs. So about a 10 percent difference in touchdowns, and about 6 yards per game.
What I believe is happening is that teams aren’t passing the ball as effectively. When the weather is really lousy – winds, temperatures, snow – they’re therefore calling more running plays. And maybe it’s harder to tackle guys in those kind of conditions, I’m not sure.
But how many games are actually played in lesser conditions? Maybe 20-25 percent? There are a lot of games played in domes, warm weather cities, or in weather that just isn’t that bad. Maybe the game’s in Baltimore in mid-December, but it’s about 50 degrees and dry. So you’ve got a fifth or a quarter of the games being played in poor weather, perhaps, and the increase in those games is enough to drive the average of all games up. If we assume that it’s 20 percent of the games that is causing the average overall to rise to 120, then it would mean that in those 20 percent, teams were averaging 147 rushing yards (33 over the league average).
If you want to assume 25 percent of the games are “bad weather”, then to have a 114-yard average rise to 120, those 25 percent of teams would need to average 138 rushing yards.
It’s the same kind of deal with touchdowns. If you want to assume it’s 20 percent of the games that are driving the increase, then you have 80 percent of the offenses scoring their regular .80 rushing touchdowns per game, and the 20 percent in poor weather would be scoring 1.16 rushing touchdowns – and increase of close to 50 percent.
If you go with the 25 percent model, than you would have 75 percent of the offenses scoring at the regular level and the poor-weather teams scoring 1.08 TDs per game – an increase of about 35 percent.
This isn’t perfect science, of course. I don’t have access to all of the thousands of games with the weather reports tied in. And it’s a sliding scale. What is a poor-weather game? Is 40 degrees and 7 mph wind “poor weather”. If a game was played in 5 degrees and 30 mph wind, that would have a greater impact. It’s a sliding scale. And there could be other factors at play. Some teams in December are out of it and just start messing around – playing young guys, resting starters, whatever.
But for me, I think there is some weather dynamic at play here. It’s something to keep in mind when mulling whether Montee Ball might punch in a touchdown today against Tennessee. With Knowshon Moreno gimpy, I think Ball makes a lot of sense in a TD-only format.
| WEEK-BY-WEEK RUSHING PRODUCTION | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Game | Yards | TD | F Pts |
| 1 | 108 | .71 | 15.0 |
| 2 | 112 | .79 | 15.9 |
| 3 | 111 | .80 | 15.9 |
| 4 | 115 | .79 | 16.2 |
| 5 | 112 | .77 | 15.8 |
| 6 | 116 | .89 | 16.9 |
| 7 | 118 | .79 | 16.6 |
| 8 | 113 | .83 | 16.3 |
| 9 | 115 | .82 | 16.4 |
| 10 | 113 | .74 | 15.8 |
| 11 | 116 | .85 | 16.8 |
| 12 | 118 | .85 | 16.9 |
| 13 | 120 | .90 | 17.4 |
| 14 | 119 | .87 | 17.1 |
| 15 | 121 | .85 | 17.2 |
| 16 | 121 | .85 | 17.2 |
Finally, here are the passing numbers. They are not as dynamic. Considering the changes we saw with rushing, I expected a little more, to be honest with you.
Passing yards are down. The four lowest pass-yard averages are in the final four weeks. Teams averaged 229 passing yards in their first 12 games. They averaged only 220 in the final four. But not a huge different in TD passes (1.35, which is barely down from 1.37).
But as with rushing, we must keep in mind that it’s a fraction of the games that’s driving the change. If we assume that 80 percent of the games are played in so-called regular weather, than those teams would average 229 passing yards. For the 20 percent of bad-weather teams to drag the averages down to 220 for all teams, the bad-weather teams would need to average only 184 passing yards, which is 45 under the league average.
If we settle on 25 percent of teams being affected, then they would need to average only 193 passing yards to drive the overall average down. That’s a drop of 36 yards per team per game.
For TD passes, the differences aren’t that severe. Using the same kind of system, it works out for me that the poor-weather teams are throwing about 8-10 percent fewer TD passes, depending on where you set the threshold. I don’t fully understand the result, but that’s what I get.
| WEEK-BY-WEEK PASSING PRODUCTION | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Game | Yards | TD | F Pts |
| 1 | 226 | 1.30 | 30.4 |
| 2 | 233 | 1.33 | 31.3 |
| 3 | 236 | 1.34 | 31.7 |
| 4 | 233 | 1.40 | 31.7 |
| 5 | 228 | 1.36 | 31.0 |
| 6 | 228 | 1.38 | 31.0 |
| 7 | 227 | 1.41 | 31.1 |
| 8 | 231 | 1.36 | 31.2 |
| 9 | 228 | 1.43 | 31.4 |
| 10 | 231 | 1.38 | 31.4 |
| 11 | 230 | 1.40 | 31.4 |
| 12 | 226 | 1.36 | 30.7 |
| 13 | 218 | 1.30 | 29.6 |
| 14 | 221 | 1.35 | 30.2 |
| 15 | 223 | 1.40 | 30.7 |
| 16 | 218 | 1.36 | 29.9 |
Anyway, that’s what I get. And that helps to explain why I’ve got some of the guys slotted the way I do. I am nervous about Drew Brees playing against Carolina’s defense. But to me, that looks like a lesser evil than counting on Peyton Manning or Josh McCown to put up big passing numbers in really harsh conditions.