In Regards to Artose Pinner’s Rushing Success Leading to Victory

October 7, 2004 on 12:58 pm | In Uncategorized |

USA Today featured an excellent factoid 0n 10/4/04 in regards to relationship between winning percentage and certain levels of performance in an NFL game. It shows by a large margin that if a team has a 100-yd rusher they have a greater chance of winning than if that same team has a receiver gain 100 yards, or a quarterback throw for 300 yards:

      100-yd rusher  100-yd receiver  300-yd passer
2001     .766              .591            .486
2002     .706              .598            .570
2003     .709              .567            .517
2004     .718              .385            .389

Obviously, the 2004 statistics are a bit premature. As an example, the Lions only had one 100-yd rushing performance last season, in game 14 versus Kansas City (Shawn Bryson carried 18 times for 102 yards). The Lions also had no receivers gain 100 yards last year and had one game, versus Seattle, where Harrington approached 300 (26-48, 285 yds). The Lions lost both of these games, by the way.

2 Comments

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  1. This is fascinating stuff, actually. It just goes to show why so many teams struggle in today’s pass-wacky NFL. Tuesday Morning Quarterback on NFL.com (Gregg Easterbrook) is always going on about pass-wacky teams - one of the stats he’s always throwing around is how often a team converts third-and-short (under, say, two yards) by running or passing. I’d have to check for sure, but I’m nearly certain the percentage is in the high 50’s for running and below 40 for passing.

    But I should check that out.

    Comment by Jay — October 7, 2004 #

  2. Thanks for pointing that out Jay. I will have to check out what Easterbrook has to say. I am sure that a balance between run and pass is the way to go. I like running the ball because besides controlling the clock it seems to assert a pyschological advantage over an opponent when succesful. It also seems to open up so much in the passing game that the Mike Martz’s and Andy Reid’s of the world can scheme to death and not obtain.

    Comment by steve — October 8, 2004 #

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