Why the Seahawks Offense Fails, the Deep Passing Attack
by John Morgan on Nov 2, 2010 2:16 PM PDT
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I noticed something striking about Seattle's loss to Oakland last Sunday. The Raiders had 10 or 11 players within ten yards of the line of scrimmage on play after play. I don't have a version to take screen caps from yet, but it's a look we have seen from the Cardinals,
Rams,
and Broncos.
Lots of different down and distance, and personnel groupings, but all four images have a couple things in common: a single deep safety and nine to ten players within five yards of the line of scrimmage.
It's not uncommon for a team to put a lot of players near the line of scrimmage, and I know at least for the Cardinals, that's not a strategy designed to stop the Seahawks. Adrian Wilson is an in-the-box safety. That's how they run their defense. I compared how Arizona lined up to stop similar packages in similar down and distance against the Saints, and I saw similar formations and spacing.
But what I wondered is, why is this so effective. The Cardinals and Rams are both slightly above average pass defenses, and the Broncos and Raiders are among the league's worst, but all were able to completely shut down the Seahawks. Compare that to the Chargers and Bears, two teams Seattle had decent success passing against, and two top five pass offenses.
Again, I think it's about spacing.
Chargers against shotgun
and against a balanced run-pass look.
and the Bears in their customary two deep look.
Teams that do not respect Seattle's ability to throw deep, and instead jam the short field by blitzing, run blitzing, attacking the short passing game, and stuffing the run, seem to have more success against the Seahawks.
Is it because Seattle lacks a deep passing attack?
Maybe, but first we need to figure out if the Seahawks lack a deep passing attack. Some may accept is as evident, but let's see what the numbers say. How does the Seahawks passing offense perform on passes marked deep?
My method to figure that out is simple: I went through the play-by-play, searching for passes marked "deep." I didn't count illegal contact penalties but I did count pass interference penalties as receptions. I excluded Michael Robinson's deep pass, because it was a trick play. The NFL seems to mark anything past 15 yards as deep, which is a debatable definition, but for the sake of consistency, let's just use that. I counted 47 passes listed as deep.
Completion percentage: 29.8%
Touchdowns: 1
Interceptions: 4
Yards per attempt: 8.3
Adjusted yards per attempt: 4.7
That seems pretty bad on the surface. A lot has to happen right for a long attempt to be made, including pass protection and, typically, an open receiver down field. We should expect the completion percentage to be low, but 29.8% seems particularly low.
On the face of it, it seems like opposing defenses have good reason not to respect the Seahawks deep passing attack, but does Seattle compare to similarly weak passing games. Is Seattle particularly bad at completing deep passes, or is its ineptness at completing deep passes simply a function of its overall poor passing game. The next thing I will check out is how Seattle's deep passing offense compares to other teams with similar overall numbers.
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Deep pass requiring better protection
Is there a reliable way to look at whether the failure of a deep passing game is due to the passing, or due to the protection being unable to hold up for the amount of time required?
That isn't too difficult, actually.
It wouldn’t be exact, but you could get a rough idea of how much pressure Hass was under by just watching each deep attempt.
Specifically from the Raiders game, we had no protection on nearly every play, never mind if it was pass or run. I was surprised that we didn’t go shotgun more and give Hasselbeck a chance to at least attempt a throw before the rush occured.
by sadface on Nov 2, 2010 3:38 PM PDT via mobile up reply actions
Yes. Sorry for being flippant.
Empirical evidence. Yes, I think it can tell the story, here, and it has. I guess I assumed he was asking whether there is a reliable, calculable formula for that kind of analysis. Tallying subjective analysis, I guess that’s about it.
No need to apologize.
It seems most of the stuff Burke does is subjective, too. While I feel its just predicated on the results and a combination of stats and quantifiable (sp.) things. Football doesn’t lend itself to statistical analysts like baseball does, just too many variables.
by sadface on Nov 2, 2010 4:23 PM PDT via mobile up reply actions
Yeah
But I was more thinking about stats over some kind of formula. Maybe something that is kept track of that we could look to. Like a ‘time before contact’ stat – that shows the number of seconds on each passing play before the QB is either touched by the other team, throws the ball, or runs out of pocket. I guess the ‘knock downs’ stat kind of tries to do this, but knockdowns doesn’t show how much time the QB had in pocket.
by Snuffleupagus on Nov 2, 2010 6:53 PM PDT up reply actions
What do the formations look like post-snap?
Often teams will put players at line of scrimmage that are intended to look like blitzers/run-stuffers that end up in coverage. That is one of the great strengths of our Bandit/dime formation.
by Greetings from the Lord Humongous! on Nov 2, 2010 2:33 PM PDT reply actions
Even still I think that would not explicitly conflict with the notion that teams aren't compelled to keep more guys deeper.
Whether sent in pressure or left in coverage, they’re kept close.
15 yards: Is that new? I thought the league considered 20 yards to be the "deep threshold."
Which I agree, is questionable, and arbitrary, but Elias Sports Bureau has always made the 20 yard distinction.
Anyway, even among the very best QBs it’s quite rare to have anything north of 40% over 20 yards. I am not looking at any numbers I consider to be close to conclusive on this matter, and at best it’s only a partial factor in what you’re looking into, but Manning & Brady’s best years usually still were in the 20-40% range of 20yd+ splits. The attempts are few so sample size is subject to quite a bit of skewing. 2007 Moss-Brady helped his figures, but not as much as I’d expect. Pre Moss, he was about a 26% career passer past the 20, though.
2004 & 2005 Hasselbeck had comparably pretty good numbers in that split. And some volume, so the raw numbers look impressive. 2007 Hasselbeck did not have impressive deep numbers.
Yeah that's exactly where I was looking.
So fromthe fruits of your labor it will be an interesting study on the usefulness of those splits. I recognize they are raw numbers and I try to be cautious in drawing conclusions from them. But it’s probably influenced my perspective quite a bit.
John, Brian Burke has a sortable stat that may be useful:
“Deep Pass Percentage (Deep%) – The proportion of pass targets in which a receiver is greater than 15 yards beyond the line of scrimmage.” To my surprise, Matt’s solidly in the middle of the pack.
Thank you, Walter Jones.
Thank you, Ken Griffey Jr.
Aaaaand it was already posted below. Damn you, Nate Dogg!
Thank you, Walter Jones.
Thank you, Ken Griffey Jr.
League averages for all teams
for the stats would be a good point of reference in these writeups. do you have to go through the full play by play for that stuff?
Not to give you more work, and it was just the preseason
But it’d be interesting to see the same stats on how Charlie Whitehurst did in the preseason games. I seem to remember him hitting quite a few 20-40 yard passes.
That would be comparing apples and oranges
Unless you somehow controlled for whether the teams were playing starters or backups. You also have to figure that teams don’t usually gameplan on the preseason.
by Greetings from the Lord Humongous! on Nov 2, 2010 3:15 PM PDT up reply actions
Some of the defenses were so close
I thought they were the offense
Some of our offense was so effective in preventing points or even 1st dowNs
I thought they were on defense.
I would say this is a shared indictment between Matt Hasselbeck and the OL
The OL for obvious reasons – long pass plays require longer routes, ergo more time to pass.
Hasselbeck has never been a long ball guy. He’s best throwing short and medium range throws especially between the numbers. Also I would question whether long balls are the obvious solution to beating defenses that stack the line. Quick slants and other passes can be equally effective. Especially with a good YAC receivers. I just think opposing defenses have no respect for Hasselbeck’s passing abilities. May as well make us one dimensional.
The lack of short passing yesterday was really frustrating.
Like you said, Hasselbeck in his prime didn’t have a very good deep ball but all the Hawks seemed to want to do was challenge the press coverage down field. The only time I can remember them trying to take advantage of the middle of the field being empty was the BMW drop.
I don't think Bates & Carroll went deep so much because the line was stacked.
I think it was because the Raiders were very aggressively using press coverage. If you can establish a passing game that gets behind their press coverage they have to give themselves more cushion.
by jacobstevens on Nov 3, 2010 11:23 AM PDT up reply actions
47 passes marked deep.
I’d like to find out how that number compares with the rest of the league or at least the rest of the league that are good passing teams. Did the Chargers attempt 100 compared to our 47? Do we refrain from deep attempts more than average? I’ll keep reading, but those popped into my head immediately because my presumption has been that we have a good chunk of the playbook collecting dust to to the combo of line and Hasselbeck’s limitations. (and now I see that will be covered in other posts. Cool!)
Start Charlie Whitehurst. / #24 = Beast Mode! Welcome, Marshawn
Advanced NFL stats tracks this now!
Heres the page that introduces it, you can find the %deep on the QB stats page. Doesn’t really seem to be a trend in whether good QBs throw deep more or less often. Peyton is ~tied with Hasselbeck, Rodgers throws quite a bit more than those two and Brady is at the bottom of the list. It’s pretty scattered.
Interesting that Matt is near the bottom in a few areas:
32nd in % deep in 2009, 22nd in 2010
25th in AY/A in 2009, 33rd in 2010
…as I suspected.
Start Charlie Whitehurst. / #24 = Beast Mode! Welcome, Marshawn
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