Run Game is largely irrelevant

[jrry32]

53 minutes ago, whitehops said:

i'll give one reason why the run game is important. while passing is more efficient, it is also higher variance. that's what people mean when they say a good run game keeps drives alive. the average completion percentage in the league is roughly 65%, so on 35% of passing plays you gain zero yards. even though on the other 65% you'll gain ~7.5 yards (vs. 4.4 yards per rush), that 35% is a relatively big percentage to gain nothing. 

example: if you throw two incompletions on the first two downs you're facing third and ten, which has a conversion rate of ~25%. if, however, you have two FAILED rushes of three and three yards on first and second down you're facing third and four, which has ~50% conversion rate. again, if you simulate a thousand drives it would probably make more sense to throw the ball every time, even with the defense selling out to defend the pass. the thing is though, in an actual game you only have about 12 drives so you have to be careful to preserve and sustain them, which means taking the conservative approach and rushing appropriately. 

The 7.5 yards is per attempt. On those 65%, you're gaining more like 11 yards (yards per completion). But the running game is important because it makes the passing game far more effective.

2 hours ago, Danger said:

The team also needed to be prepared better. Nothing against McVay Belichik just caught him off guard and he along with the team wasn't able to make the appropriate adjustments in the time given.

That is . . . accurate.

[Hunter2_1]

9 hours ago, ITS_RAMMY_PLAYBOI said:

No we need Cooks to catch that ball and we need a healthy Kupp 😘

He couldn't, it was a day late and McCourt made it impossible. Goff was shook, and an effective running game would have taken the pressure off him and presented a whole new dimension for us. It was easy for our secondary. 

[LeotheLion]

6 hours ago, Hunter2_1 said:

He couldn't, it was a day late and McCourt made it impossible. Goff was shook, and an effective running game would have taken the pressure off him and presented a whole new dimension for us. It was easy for our secondary. 

He's presumably referring to the ball right before the Gilmore pick. The one you are referencing was on Goff for being late but more on Mccourty for making a great play. The other ball to Cooks at 1 should have been caught. Would have been 10-10 if we punched it in. Though I wouldn't have liked our chances to win from that point. 

[Calamity_Cometh]

Belichick and Brady are extremely difficult to beat and I think that this has been written in stone at this point. Especially in the Super Bowl. 2015 Denver vs. New England is by far my favorite victory of all time and we came very very close to losing that.

Edited September 14, 2019 by Calamity_Cometh

[Xenos]

I posted this in the Statistic thread but here it is again since it essentially deal with the same question. If you have a subscription to the Athletic, here is a great article by Ted Nguyen about analytics with regards to the running game. He offers both the analytic side and the more traditional coaching side. I can't post the whole thing because it's so huge. You will get the bigger picture from the entire article.

https://theathletic.com/980870/2019/07/26/teams-dont-have-to-establish-the-run-to-win-games-and-the-analytics-proves-it-but-the-run-isnt-dead-either/

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For teams that are rebuilding, it just doesn’t make sense to draft a running back early. Those teams usually don’t have the offensive line to maximize a running back’s impact and they likely won’t play with a lead often enough to run the ball with frequency.

However, though the analytics community might advise against it, I don’t think it’s a bad move for a contending team with a strong passing game or elite defense to draft a running back early. Running backs have shown they can make an easier transition from college to the pros relative to other positions, and when they’re on a rookie contract, they don’t cost much.

With all that said, here are the recommendations from the analytics community:

1. Don’t invest heavily in your run game because it doesn’t correlate with winning

2. Use more play action because it’s more effective than drop-back passing and it has proved to work without having to “establish the run”

3. Don’t run the ball into eight-man boxes

4. Test the limits of passing, don’t force the run “unnecessarily”

5. Use the pass to set up the run (run when defenses start to adjust to pass)

6. Deception in all its forms is the most important element in offense

7. The run game is valuable in short-yardage situations, in the red zone and for running out the clock.

But what about the other side of the argument?

 

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Final thoughts

After looking at all the research and talking with experts in the field, it seems clear the hard-line philosophy of the importance of establishing the run is outdated and disproven. But there is still value in being able to run the ball. It’s a tricky balance, but in building a team, general managers and coaches have to put more emphasis on investing in a strong passing game, but at the same time, they can’t lose sight of creating an efficient run game.

In 2018, of the top 10 teams in offensive DVOA (Football Outsiders’ measurement for a team’s efficiency by comparing success on every single play with a league average based on situation and opponent), seven were in the top 10 in rushing success rate. Eight of 10 had winning records and made the playoffs. So while there isn’t a correlation with traditional rushing success stats, there are correlations with running, winning and efficient offensive production.

This research is valuable for starting important conversations, but some analytics experts have reached hard conclusions that are too black and white for an extremely complex game. There is still value in the run game that hasn’t been properly explained by numbers. The subject should be researched further, but it seems experts on both sides of the argument are in a constant shouting match with each other in which nobody ever wins. Analytics experts, coaches, players, analysts and even fans could all benefit from listening to each other and learning from each other in this conversation to advance the game.

 

[Joe_is_the_best]

"But the evidence is clear that teams should run less and pass more"


The evidence is not clear at all. In fact the opposite may be true. Once you get past a certain threshold (for example 40 pass attempts), it’s more likely than not you lose the game even if you were super efficient. Of course it’s true teams that are losing are more likely to pass more often (& run less often) and vice-versa for teams who are winning. That doesn’t make it any clearer exactly what the cause-and-effect relationship is, unfortunately.

Suffice it to say that predictability is what’s inefficient, not running or passing.