Week 10 WIN against the Titans - Stats & Analysis

[KB_fan]

Three Panthers make PFF's weekly "best of" team:  Cam, Luke, and Ted Ginn for his returns.

https://www.profootballfocus.com/blog/2015/11/16/pro-best-players-at-every-position-for-week-10/

 

 

[Mol3m4n]

1 hour ago, KB_fan said:

PFF has weighed in on the "is Cam playing at an MVP level debate"

https://www.profootballfocus.com/blog/2015/11/16/pro-why-cam-newton-comes-up-a-little-short-in-mvp-discussion/

Fairly standard analysis... but the comments are worth reading - they are better than the article!

Here's an excerpt of the article:
 

 

Thought the article was trash tbh.

[KB_fan]

Yay, got my big work report submitted on time.  So glad to have that finished....

Hope to get the gamebook data entered this evening (Tues) and to post some original tables & analysis tonight and tomorrow.

In the meantime, I appreciated some of the game summary / analysis at Panthers.com

http://www.panthers.com/news/article-2/What-We-Learned-Panthers-at-Titans/78bc50ac-f9f3-49e6-8946-280f118852ec

Among other points, they highlight the importance of some good 4 minute offense / 4 minute drives, and also a good job by Special Teams ensuring we won the field position battle:
 

Quote

 

OFFENSE HAMMERED HOME VICTORY: For several weeks, the Panthers have talked about closing out games. They put the words to action Sunday against the Titans.

"I thought our team and our offense grew a lot today," right tackle Mike Remmers said.

Carolina, leading 20-10, started a drive at its own 36-yard line with 7:26 remaining in the game.

After quarterback Cam Newton completed an 18-yard pass to tight end Greg Olsen , the Panthers ran the ball nine consecutive times and ran 4:44 off the clock. Newton finished the drive with a 2-yard touchdown run to put the game out of reach.

"Really important," center Ryan Kalil said of the game-sealing drive. "One of the things we’ve been lacking is a really good four-minute drive. A couple of these games we should have been able to close out and we didn’t. I thought that was a really good job on our part, and we have to take that into some games moving forward."

 

CAROLINA CONTROLLED FIELD POSITION: Only two the Titans’ possessions began ahead of their 20-yard line, one of which started at the 50 with just four seconds to go before halftime.

That meant a day full of very long fields, and that played right into Carolina’s hands.

"I thought special teams did a nice job," head coach Ron Rivera said.

Punter Brad Nortman had a strong outing, with two punts fair caught by Dexter McCluster inside the 20 and the other two out of bounds.

Nortman’s best effort came from his own end zone thanks to a very fortunate bounce that turned a short punt into a 63-yarder. The ball trickled down the sideline and went out at the Tennessee 29-yard line to completely flip the field early in the second half.

 

You know, one thing I'm really noticing is how the Panthers keep improving on identified weaknesses.

1) Early in the season we struggled on pass rush.  Since then we've been doing much better.

2) Our WRs were dropping tons of passes.  Haven't seen a drop in weeks.

3) Cam struggled with his accuracy.  He comes out and completes 11/11

4) We struggle with closing out games.  Come out against Titans and play good Hammer Offense.

I'm sure I'm missing some areas where the team has obviously applied what the coaches focus on for correction.  This is a huge reason we're 9-0.  The team keeps improving and keeps working to overcome weakness.  Love it.

 

[KB_fan]

BBR has a very good article on the Panthers Defense. 

A stat I'd not seen before:  We lead the league in fewest points allowed per possession.  AWESOME.

I also had NO IDEA that prior to the Titans game our defense had the highest number of plays per game in the league.  Kudos to them for holding teams in check really well in spite of all the wear & tear on the field.  Great that the number of defensive plays dropped so sharply against the Titans.  Memo to our Offense:  More 4 minute+ offensive drives please.  Thanks.

http://blackandbluereview.com/how-the-panthers-dominant-defense-is-getting-even-more-efficient/

Quote

 

Despite being one of three NFC teams to hold opponents’ scoring average under 20 points, the Panthers went into Sunday’s game against the Titans allowing a league-high 76 plays per game.

That’s a lot of bullets.

“Any time you’re facing the number of bullets we’ve faced … you’re giving the opponent opportunities to score,” McDermott said.

Yet thanks in part to sound special teams and a grinding offense, the Panthers’ defense saw a league-low 46 plays in Sunday’s 27-10 win. The significance of that number, according to head coach Ron Rivera, cannot be understated.

“It’s huge. One thing it does is keeps our defense on the sideline and gives them an opportunity to rest up and get fresher,” he said. “If you have the ball and possess it, I think you wear down their defense and you get your rhythm.”

 

Quote

 

Filed under “Great Problems to Have” is that the Panthers’ offense generates .43 points per play, which is a faster score rate than all but three NFL teams. Faster score rates mean less time on offense, which means more time on defense.

McDermott is fine with that, so long as the defense keeps doing its job.

“You never want to take away our offense scoring points,” he said. “We’ve gotten takeaways on defense and created short fields at times for our offense, and they’ve converted those into points. Then bang, we’re right back on the field again.”

McDermott even suggests that, given the number of high-tempo offenses making their way into the NFL, a more telling statistic for defenses might be points allowed per possession.

The Panthers’ rank in that category? No. 1 in the league.

 

 

[KB_fan]

Here's a fun stat.  King of the Heismans

https://twitter.com/SportsCenter/status/666014786682028032

[KB_fan]

Black & Blue Review ‏@BlackBlueReview 9h9 hours ago

The Panthers’ 8-game home win streak is the longest in the NFL.

[KB_fan]

Joe Person ‏@josephperson 7h7 hours ago

Cam has almost 1,300 career completions. TE Greg Olsen has caught 1/4 of them. Dynamic duo: http://www.charlotteobserver.com/sports/nfl/carolina-panthers/article45268086.html …

[KB_fan]

Here's the week 10 Rookie Watch:

http://blackandbluereview.com/carolina-panthers-rookie-watch-after-week-10/

Good to see Funchess' yards going up.

Also good to see Daryl Williams getting at least a few offensive snaps in the Jumbo pkg.

[KB_fan]

Working on my gamebook spreadsheet... as I finish various sections, I'll be posting tables and some comments throughout the day.  Much of the commentary is likely to be focused on "season-to-date" trends since I didn't ever get a chance to do a mid-season review given work demands in the past 2 weeks. 

First off, let's look at scoring trends season-to-date:

What I found most striking is that of the 18 halves we've played, the Panthers have only been outscored in 3 halves of football - in the first half by Seattle, and in the second half by both Indy and Green Bay.

We've never trailed in 4 of the games we've played. However, it's only been in 3 games where we've wrapped up the game (i.e. game-winning score) in the first half.

We've never trailed by greater than 2 TDs, but we've led by 2 TDs or more in 6 of our games, including our last 4 games.

I'm extremely impressed by the CONSISTENCY of our scoring.  In only 1 half of the 18 halves played (our 1st half against Seattle) have we scored less than 10 points. 

We've been stingier on points in the first half of games, holding our opponents to less than 10 points in the first half in 5 of our 9 games, whereas in the second half, we've only held our 9 opponents to < 10 points in two games - Jax & Tenn when we shut them out in the 2nd half.

[KB_fan]

It doesn't show up in the table posted above, but I did a little bit of checking to see how we fared when we held the lead going into halftime.

We've led in 7 of our 9 games at halftime

We were tied in 1 game (against New Orleans)

We trailed in 1 game (against Seattle)

In only 1 of the 7 games where we led at the half, did we ever trail in the remainder of the game (against Indy, who tied the game in the 4th, and briefly had a lead in overtime.)  Houston came back to tie us in the 2nd half of their game, but the Panthers never trailed in the 2nd half.

That shows me that in spite of the recent worries about allowing teams to come back int he 4th, we've generally been doing a VERY good job of getting the lead early, and generally are solid in holding on to our lead.

 

 

[KB_fan]

Here's a quick table that shows the Panthers' leading / trailing status by half in each game.  It's encouraging that in 3 of the 4 games we trailed during the 1st half, we were able to tie or get a lead before half-time.  Only against Seattle could we not at least even the score.

 

[KB_fan]

A bit more on scoring...  Again, something that is really impressing me this year is the fact that so much of our scoring is due to touchdowns.  At least last year, it seemed that we relied so heavily on field goals.  This year we've scored 3 or more offensive touchdowns in all but 1 game (against JAX).  (Technically, the fumble recovery return by Ed Dickson against Tampa counts as a return TD, but it was our offense that was on the field.)

If time permits, I may try to go back and see how this TD% vs. FG% compares to recent Panthers' seasons.

We've only allowed 3 of our opponents to score at least 3 TDs against us.  None of our opponents has had a defensive TD against us, though New Orleans did have the return TD.

(note: you can click on the table to see a larger version)

 

[yasuhara2241]

@KB_fan I always love reading these every week. Sometimes it takes me awhile to get to them but when I do I am never disappointed! Great job!

[KB_fan]

Ok... lots more stats & commentary ahead.  I've got a free evening and I'm looking forward to getting caught up on all these tables.  Next up: 

The Rushing Game.

Again, the first word that comes to mind is CONSISTENCY.  Look at the consistency of the number of our rushing attempts, and the fact that in every game so far we've rushed for over 100 yards.

(you can click on the table for a larger view)

The second word that comes to mind about our rushing game is EFFECTIVE.  We've led our opponents in rushing yards in all but the game against Tampa.  We've limited our opponents to < 100 rushing yards in five games.

And even though I don't think of our run game as that explosive or "flashy," we are getting the big plays - at least "big plays" as defined by NFL stats.  (A rushing big play is 10 yards or more.)  We've had 3 or more rushing big plays in every game except Seattle, which is interesting, because it was against Seattle we scored the most rushing touchdowns. 

It's no surprise that we lead the league in rushing attempts per game.  We remain the ONLY team in the league which has a higher % of rushing plays than passing plays.  We're at 51.1%  Behind us is Minnesota at 49.02% rushing plays.

We are 3rd in rushing yards / game

We are 1st in rushing 1st downs per game

We are 3rd in rushing TDs per game

The one stat where we're quite a bit lower is rushing yards/attempt;  We're 13th at 4.1 yards/att  But that doesn't really seem like a concern given our effectiveness in getting 1st downs and scoring.