by Aaron Schatz

Based on a couple of comments in the article on "failed complete" passes, here are three new tables for your analyzing enjoyment.

First, there were a number of requests to give the percentage of failed completes, rather than the total.  This table gives that percentage based on total pass plays (including sacks) for each offense:

Second, there was a request for the defensive numbers.  Remember, the goal here isn't to discover the quality of each defense, but its shape:

Yes, I'm sure many people are shocked to find the Patriots near the bottom of this list.  Remember, of course, that before a pass can be a "failed complete" it has to be complete to begin with.  Once I had thought about this a bit, the numbers made sense.  Based solely on my subjective watching of every Patriots game last year (except Cleveland, the day my daughter was born) I don't remember a lot of short completions against the Patriots.  Judged solely by the metric "number of times Aaron screamed at the television" it seems like every third down completion was a new first down, and the Pats would give up a couple of these before making their big third down stop or getting the interception.  The low number of catches tackled for a loss would seem to jive with New England's weakness against passes to running backs discussed here.

Another number above that jumps out at you is probably the 42 third down catches against Tennessee that failed to achieve a first down.  That's far and away the most in the league, but the Titans did face the most pass plays of any team in the NFL last year.  Guess what: the gap is even wider when you look at the percentage of such catches on all third-and-long plays (defined as six or more yards to go):

I'll leave the rest of the analysis, for the time being, to the readers.  Feel free to go nuts in the discussion thread.

Posted by: Aaron Schatz on 10 May 2004

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